The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Nouveau Nord Maritime, France, page 2, on November 4, 1954.
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Boredom was born out of uniformity. It is by uniformly calling all the phenomena or unusual objects noticed in the sky "saucers" that the "moon fishermen" prepare themselves for painful disillusionment because real saucers, no one has yet been captured while we are starting find fake ones!
This retired miner who had embarked on the intensive manufacture of paper "Montgolfiers" which haunted the skies of the region of Nord, was very wrong to get the honors of the press, because his process seems to have been taken up and modernized by our neighbors.
Indeed, it is in Limmel, near Maastricht in Holland that a false saucer of Belgian manufacture was captured on the ground: it is a wicker circle covered with silver paper on which is attached a Belgian-made flashlight, all hanging from four children's gas-filled balloons. And here is a beautiful piece of museum that in a century or two, those which will perhaps then know the new joys of interplanetary travel will contemplate curiously.
Wouldn't it be one or two devices of this kind that would have crossed the Dunkirk sky. We reported yesterday that a personality from Calais had seen a colored disc above the Calais-Dunkirk road. Now here is a Coudekerque reader writing to us to report and describing the phenomenon he witnessed Monday evening around 7 p.m.
"Finding myself Monday evening at 7 p.m. on the beach of Malo-les-Bains, I looked up by chance and I saw, what I thought was an airplane, and which was nothing other than a disc or something of the sort. In fact, not hearing any engine noise, I said to myself that I was in the presence of a mysterious machine. It was a disc that crossed the sky at low altitude. From this disc escaped rays sometimes red, sometimes orange, sometimes green. The rays resembled electric sparks. The disc advanced slowly, then faster. It disappeared for 2 minutes approximately and reappeared at the same point. The disc started again very slowly, then stopped, always releasing the same rays. Then it moved away at a brisk pace, rising slightly and disappeared completely."
"I know that optical illusions have to be taken into account, but I am positive about the appearance of this device which did not look like an airplane."
And our correspondent adds that the phenomenon was certainly observed by other people.
... This is no mistake because a Saint-Pol resient also saw Monday evening around 6:30 p.m., in the firmament a round object, a little larger than a star, which shone with a bluish glow and moved slowly, horizontally above the sea. The object moved away and disappeared. "It didn't seem extraordinary to me," our observer wisely concludes.
At this hour, the night must have been dark and it is difficult to imagine a balloon or some object of this kind lit by the rays of the setting sun... on the other hand, a disc of silver paper lit by a small lamp could well give this bluish reflection... Yes but...
The object seen Tuesday morning around 6 a.m. - the night is still very dark - by an inhabitant of Malo-les-Bains also radiated a bluish and scintillating glow. But this hue changed to the red...
The witness of this fact, very careful, and not suffering from the "sauceritis" hastens to point out to us: "I did not say that it was a saucer." According to him this object, which seemed to turn on itself did not move, was apparently large, like three times a star. Stillness ruled out the hypothesis of a shooting star; but this luminous thing that our interlocutor had observed for 2 or 3 minutes before returning home (a little later it had disappeared) was, according to him, above the shore towards Bray-Dunes or Belgium.
Hey! Hey! Would there be across the border, little pranksters anxious to ensure healthy distractions for their compatriots?
Journalists have been accused of exploiting the story of the saucers like the legend of the Loch Ness monster was. In this case we will soon reach the end of our roller because the celestial apparitions multiply so much that they risk no longer attracting attention. And then, if individuals start making saucers, what will we have to invent? Martians? Yes, but carnival is not yet so close...
A. M.
This time, it is in Malo that the saucers were seen; they vary from white to red through green and blue, [... illegible ...] which has ultramodern equipment for dyeing and cleaning all clothes.
"Bigouré-Teinture", 6, rue du Général-Roche, Malo.
Vienna, 3. -- A massive formation of "flying saucers" having been reported yesterday afternoon in the Habsburg region, headquarters of the American headquarters in Austria, the American authorities, alerted by the Austrian population, launched at its pursuit a reconnaissance device.
These objects have been identified as a package of some two hundred balloons carrying leaflets intended for populations in countries beyond the Iron Curtain.
