Virgil Armstrong

Virgil Armstrong: An American hero in Sedona

By Tom Dongo, UFO Investigator | Sedona Verde Valley Times

Sedona, AZ - In a time when America and Americans are struggling with individual and collective identities, real heroes are needed. Such a person is retired Major Virgil Armstrong; a real American hero in every sense of the word.

Virgil, 85, in recent years has had difficult health challenges and is now confined to a wheelchair. However, his mind is sharp and clear and his spirits remain positive and cheerful.

He is presently residing in the Village of Oak Creek.

Virgil began his military career in World War II and then onto the Korean conflict.

In 1942, he was assigned to the OSS, Office of Strategic Service, (predecessor to the CIA) and fought in the China, Burma, India campaign (also known as the CBI Theater).

After World War II, Virgil went on to Korea where he worked with the CIA interrogating captured Chinese soldiers. Along with the captured Chinese were their seized uniforms and Russian PPS42 machine guns.

Duplicate Chinese uniforms were produced and along with the captured Russian weapons, U.S./Chinese agents were sent behind the lines to gather intelligence on Chinese military operations.

Virgil was put in charge of this entire program and under Virgil’s command, deaths of these agents dropped to near zero, where before the loss rate was very high.

After retiring from the U.S. Army in 1962, Virgil dedicated his life to the spiritual path and spent the next 40 years working to improve the lives of people around the world.

He became an international speaker on spiritual subjects and lectured in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, Tasmania and Australia.

He was invited to speak at seven universities. At one university in Europe more than 800 people came to hear his presentation.

During his travels, Virgil also became one of the world’s first serious UFO researchers. He often spoke of his UFO research and frequently made a connection between UFOs, extra-terrestrials and spirituality in his talks.

Primary focuses, during this 40-year stint, were the Indian tribes of the U.S., Central America and South America.

Virgil strongly suspects that in a recent-past life he was a cavalry officer of some rank on the western frontier and was responsible for the deaths of many Indians. He feels he has been trying to make amends for his actions in that past life.

He remarked that some of his more interesting experiences were with Indians in Central and South America.

Several times Amazonian Indians, in their primitive cultures and beliefs, tried to kill him for his efforts in his quest to improve their standards of living.

Curiously, he found a great ally in an Amazonian Indian woman who had earned a Ph.D. from a university.

With her help, he was able to move forward to find a common ground with the Indians of the Amazon Basin. Virgil stated that she was “an utterly remarkable woman.”

Another experience, which stands out in his memory, is with the Huichol Indians of Central Mexico.

The Huichols are one of only several tribes in South America that were not conquered and destroyed by the Spanish. They lived in such rugged terrain that the Spanish could not reach them.

The Huichols are famous for their amazing endurance. Virgil has seen Huichols run many miles over rugged terrain with a goat over their shoulders as they traveled from place to place.

Huichols, although more modernized now, had curious cultural ways. One was that when a tribe member was found guilty of a crime, the guilty party’s sentence often was to be thrown off a precipitous cliff.

In the Huichol culture, the belief was that if the offender was blown by the wind back up to the top of the cliff, the offender was not guilty of the accused crime. Virgil was told that in fact, on several occasions, a Huichol tossed off a cliff was indeed actually lifted by the wind back to the top of the cliff.

This writer is of the opinion that Virgil Armstrong’s life story would make a great plot for a feature movie in the genre of Indiana Jones. Any script writers out there?