The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Journal du Pas-de-Calais et de la Somme, France, page 5, on September 9, 1954.
See the case file.
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It appears from the statements of two workers, that a mysterious machine, Tuesday morning, flew from a field bordering the road connecting Harponville to Contay.
Having left his home on a bicycle to go to work at La Houssoye, Mr. Emile Renard, 27, a mason craftsman, living in Acheux-en-Amiénois, was accompanied by his worker, Mr. Yves de Gillabez, 23.
The two cyclists had crossed Harponville and were heading towards Contay, when their attention was drawn to a large object placed in a field about 200 meters on the right of the road.
It looked like an unfinished haystack, they say. And the somewhat rounded top looked like an inverted plate. Intrigued, the two men jumped from their machine and, running, entered the fields in the direction of the gray-colored object, which might have been about ten meters in diameter. It oscillated a little, but made no noise and on its wall there was a kind of door wider than it was tall and which was closed.
However, declared Mr. Renard, while preceding his companion I had crossed fifty meters, I saw the apparatus which rose in diagonal, while smoke escaped by a kind of pipe placed in its lower part. Then at fifteen meters in height, the machine continued its vertical and faster ascent. And it ends up disappearing in the eyes of the two men who, dumbfounded, asked what phenomenon they had just witnessed...
At the gendarmerie of Acheux-en-Amiénois, where the two men were interrogated at length and separately, the most complete silence is kept, taking care not to deny or confirm what remains a mystery for all.
MM. Renard and de Gillaboz were also taken to the place where they had seen the craft. But there, no trace was found on the ground.
