This article was published in the daily newspaper L'Aurore, Paris, France, on March 21, 1972.
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The flying saucers did not miss their spring rendez-vous with the Earthmen. It was even believed that "The Invaders" had bad intentions towards us since they chose to land one their "unidentified flying objects" on the commune of Civières, in the Eure. In fact, one could believe in a story of a madman, if the witness of the landing of the saucer were not a balanced man perfectly aware of what he says.
To be sure for, I went to meet him at his place, and I went with him on the "landing strip" of the "thing."
His name is Daniel Loretz. He is a resident of Tourny, in the Eure, where he has a store of radio and television sets. He is a solid man, born in the area, who acknowledges sixty-three years and appears ten years less. Voluntary fireman since 1937, he is commanding the local brigade since 1949. It is thus a strapping man who saw a lot and who is not easy to fool. He even hesitated at the beginning to report the scene of which he was the witness.
"I spoke to the gendarmes about it only three days after, he tells me. That occurred the other Friday, in a field of the hamlet of Aubigny, in civières. It was 09:25 p.m.. I was returning from Pacy-sur-Eure where I did a repair. I drove quietly at the wheel of my R-6 [normal car] when I saw a dark object coming from the sky move towards me. I slowed down at once. The machine landed in a field, at approximately 150 meters, practically verticaly. It was a dark form of approximately two meters in height. At the front: two port-holes from which a pale light was directed towards the ground. At the back: a not very powerful red gleam. Thirty seconds after the landing, the lights died out. It made the noise of a large tractor.
"Very impressed, I set out in the car again. But I had all the trouble in the world to make my engine function suitably although it was practically new. It coughed during several hundreds of meters then started again normally.
"The next day, I came back on the spot, but the field had been harrowed and all the traces which the apparatus could have left had disappeared.
"In the area, one speaks, without joking at all, of the mishap of Mr. Loretz, and one wonders what he could have seen. As for the flying saucers buffs, they are not astonished that much. "This area is on a line usually flown by the U.F.O.s", they say, which passes by the edge of Switzerland, Paris, Nantes, and either Gibraltar, not the British Cornwall.
However the savants of the National Office of Aerospace Research and Studies evoke the "Tibère" rocket when one speaks about luminous phenomena observed these days. Who to believe?
Alain MATHERON.
Note: instead of "Tibère rocket" and alleged "line flown by UFOS", it would have perhaps been more advised to wonder whether Mr. Loretz could not have confused, from a 150 meters distance, this very farming machine making "the noise of a large tractor" and that had perhaps made the harrowing of the field noted the next day.
