The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Alsace, France, October 9, 1954.
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[Captionned picture:] "The machine was this close from the ground," states Mr. Ott by accompanying his words by hand indication.
More perhaps that the emotion, fright was still readeable on his face, when, for the fifteenth time, Mr. Rene Ott repeated yesterday morning the amazing adventure of which he had just been the witness. What happened to him? Well, a thing altogether extremely banal for some time: he had seen a "flying saucer. Extremely ordinary in truth, for hardly days go by any more without one announcing under all the latitudes the presence of these machines. But what is much less ordinary, are the circumstances in which Mr. Ott was put.
For this time the first saucer landed - or almost landed (to 50 cm near) -- in a field of the Sundgau.
It is between Berentzwiller and Jettingen, in the valley of Hundsbach, at three meters of the secondary road No 16, that the exact place is. We saw it... or more exactly, we did not see anything at all (not even pressed grass or the least motor oil stain!...
And that is understandable: according to the testimony of Mr. Ott, the machine was not directly posed on the ground, but stood motionless at approximately 50 cm above the latter. It had the shape of a "mushroom" or of a hut, was approximately 3 meters long, was rounded at the top like a cupola, in the middle of which was a door opened towards the interior of a height of 1 m 50 and broad of 60 cm approximately.
Needless to add that everyone at the SNCF [national railway co] district, bld du Chemin de Fer in Mulhouse listened with interest - and more or less skepticism - to the adventure which had just lived, yesterday morning, René, the office boy.
Mr. Rene OTT, 35 years old, domiciled in Berentzwiller, is a civil servant, considered serious, his chiefs confirmed it to us. It is unthinkable that he invented this adventure and the emotion which still held him was not pretended.
In short, curiosity prevailed and his chiefs, two inspectors of the SNCF, decided to bring back on the spot our man so that he explained in detail what he had seen.
Driver and car were ordered, which rushed at full speed towards Berentzwiller. We were the first at the rendez-vous, and, a little later also arrived, a chief officer of the General Intelligence of Saint-Louis, an inspector of the General Intelligence, Blotzheim airfield, the lieutenant of the gendarmerie of Altkirch and four gendarmes...
Here is verbatim what he stated.
"It was about 5:30 of the morning and I had just left my home in Berentzwiller, to go, like every morning, to Altkirch, where I take the train for Mulhouse. I drove by scooter when at this precise place, at the exit of the village towards Jettingen, approximately 3 m on the left of the road, in the meadow, I clearly saw in the beam of my headlight, a craft, mushroom-shape, in the medium of which a door was opened...
I was seized by fright and accelerated, but I had not made 50 m that I was taken, from behind, in the beam of a powerful headlight, whose white light carried well at two hundred meters. A few seconds later, I suddenly saw in front of me, approximately three meters away and at a 6 m height above the road, a craft of conical shape whose rainbow gleams dazzled me and lit as in full day...
Instinctively, I put the headlight of my scooter in low mode. At the moment when it me exceeded me I clearly felt the breath of the machine. It then preceded me, always at the same distance and the same height and this, on several hundreds of meters, to the first house of Jettingen.
There, I stopped, feeling more reassured. It is at this time that the "luminous mushroom" went up vertically and an unbelievable speed behind the first houses of Jettingen to quickly disappear in the sky.
It made absolutely no noise, at least, I did not hear anything, owing to the fact that the engine of my scooter was running and that I wore a helmet.
At no time have I seen men or living beings around or in the machine, not even moving shadows. The mushroom was opaque when it was on the side of the road and completely luminous, even blinding, when it preceded me at 6 m from the ground".
Such are the statements made by Mr. René Ott to the investigators who could absolutely not a thing which could deny of confirm them, for the moment.
We have, as for us, the feeling that the report by Mr. Ott was sincere and that in any event one can grant credit to his statements. It is not excluded that in two or three days from now, Mr. Ott remembers this or that detail which could have a cardinal importance. Anyway, nobody could find the least contradiction in this testimony which corroborates as a whole all those already provided on the saucers: total silence, high speed, dazzling multicoloured light.
Here thus one more testimony to pour into the bulky file of the saucers whose mystery - is necessary it to say alas or so much better - remains nevertheless whole.
[Photo caption:] Mr. Ott (indicated by a cross) shows to the representatives of the railroad company and public authorities the place, at the edge of the road, where he saw the saucer hovering sixty centimetres above ground-level.
("L'Alsace" picture)
