The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Nouveau Nord Maritime, France, page 1, on September 30, 1954.
See the case file.
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Oh! we thought we were holding our saucer. Or a flying cigar. Or finally - and to console us - one of those many machines that have been haunting, at a frightening pace, our tormented skies for several weeks.
It started off in the most ordinary way. Someone told us, with a touch of mystery: yesterday, around noon, a strange thing was seen in the sky of Malo-les-Bains, towards the sea.
As we expected, as we hoped for this news. And although we have long been prepared to venture - after so many others - into the hallucinating domain of the Martians - or some other strange interplanetary journey - the fever took hold of us.
The first "witness" was the wrong one. He had only "heard about it". Fortunately, the one who did see, with his own eyes, was there. Hope grew in us.
Patiently we tore a few scraps from him and we were able to reconstruct the "thing".
A kind of mushroom smoke, following a clap more muted than that of thunder, had risen above the beach of Malo-Terminus. A ball with fuzzy outlines and indefinable color had emerged from it; after a moment of immobility, it had moved away HORIZONTALLY towards the sea. Our man added: "Others have seen it like me." But he had not dared to put forward the word saucer and even less that of cigar, taking the precision for too dangerous an adventure.
Never mind, there was still a mystery. That was the main thing.
The investigation continued.
Quickly the most varied hypotheses arose.
"It was a blast from Minck’s side,” said one woman. Amazing! Especially since in Dunkirk no one had heard anything.
"The earth shook at 12.15 p.m." affirmed three North Africans at the same time as the owners of a café lost in the dunes. Interesting!
"We heard nothing and we saw nothing" assured the workers of a construction site on the dike. Disappointing.
And then the investigation was cut short in the city of barracks from which the "thing" had been "seen".
"I'm sure it was shooting at sea" explained with technical comments in support one of the inhabitants. Such a statement should have put an end to all our hopes.
Stubbornly, however, we pulled the net and it was only to hear a lady say to us: "I heard repeated blows; I went out and saw." We were emulated to the extreme, literally breathless. The revelation was brutal: "I saw, continued our interlocutor, very far towards the sea a kind of small black balloon - like a child's balloon - which rose in the sky".
From there we stopped our questions for fear of seeing a soap bubble burst.
Too bad! Another month ending and still no saucer for Dunkirk.
It's not for lack of looking for it and scanning the sky.
Perhaps it will be necessary to ask the Syndicat d'Initiative or some other equally influential organization to deal seriously with this question of world interest. We too have the right to our saucer, otherwise Dunkirk will once again feel frustrated.
Couros
See our information
on the "SAUCERS"
on page 7 and 9
