The article below was published in the daily newspaper Libre Artois, Arras, Pas-de-Calais, France, page 2, on October 30, 1954.
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We've been talking less about flying saucers lately. And yet, if the mysterious craft really exist, it seems that they continue to haunt the sky of our region. Recently, a hundred people in St-Sanlve observed a luminous disc moving in the azure. A lawyer from the Valenciennes bar, Me Gheslin, discovered at the same time, a saucer heading for Belgium.
For a while, there was no shortage of testimonies. And then suddenly it seemed that witnesses to the sidereal manifestations preferred to keep the apparitions of cigars and other flying objects to themselves.
The skepticism of most of the consulted scientists has often ridiculed people who, sometimes in good faith, have reported their visual encounter with the flying saucers.
It is so true that Mr. Marius Dewilde, the Quarouble reisdent who, first, saw the "interplanetary" passengers, thought for a moment to request the Public Prosecutor in Valenciennes about the sarcasm of which he was the subject. To calm him down, he had to be demonstrated that his complaint was not justified.
Since then, of course, Mr. Marius Dewilde no longer wants to receive people. One may have had the honors of the press and the cinema and not be happy. However, Mr. Dewilde is so dissatisfied with the somewhat overly satirical publicity about him, that he only confided to the authorities his latest encounter with the "Martians."
Because our Quarouble resident claims to have seen a saucer and its passengers. This time it happened in broad daylight! The craft, again landed on the railroad tracks near Mr. Dewilde's house, not in the same place, however.
The little men spoke to him: a few words in an unknown language before flying away silently and disappearing.
On the railway sleepers, the same traces as before were observed, a little wider all the same and presenting a perfect symmetry. A few places of crushed grass marked the place of landing.
What to think of this new testimony? For those in favor of the existence of flying saucers, it would have been preferable for Mr. Dewilde to stick to a first appearance. It will be difficult to admit that the Quarouble territory is of such interest to the pilots of the mysterious craft. And then, as we have observed, the points of impact noted on the sleepers were all in the longitudinal axis of said sleepers. However, it is hardly admissible that an aircraft landing can find with such precision the center of such a narrow plateau. There should have been claws on the edges of the pieces of wood. But the saucers are already the enigma. What's the point of looking for detail? You have to believe or not believe ... while waiting for the revelation.
Let's point out that Mr. Petoux, a bank employee in Valenciennes, saw Wednesday evening between 8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m., a saucer moving above Aulnoy. Several other local people observed the phenomenon.
Mr. Charles Pierru, secretary general of the town hall of Oye-Plage, also saw at 9:15 p.m., an opalescent glow ten meters in front of him and at a height of twenty meters, which advanced over the national road in the same direction as him, that is to say Oye-Plage to Calais.
Having not thought aoubt the saucers, he was therefore extremely surprised and stopped for a few seconds, regretting the late hour which left no light shining in the houses. Resuming his walk, Mr. Pierru went on by foot, the witness could realize very exactly the figure of the craft: the shape of a cigar (like the cabin of an airplane devoid of wings), no noise, no smoke escaped from the craft. Even at this short distance, no window could be distinguished, only this uniform luminescence demarcated the thing.
It was visible for more than a quarter of an hour, its speed not exceeding that of a cyclist. Arrived at a certain distance, towards Merck, it veered at right angle towards the interior of the grounds and, thus placed, it appeared like a sphere: the apparatus seen by the section, whose ratio with the length was about a tenth.
A farmer from the village of La Vaureille, Mr. Aimé Bousard, 47 years old, told the gendarmes of Aubusson of the "strange encounter" he made while returning from the borough of Alleyrat (Creuse).
At the place called "La Madière", he said, I saw a shape moving on the side of the road. I stopped to better observe the individual. The latter, who was lowered, got up suddenly, pointing at me two powerful projectors, lamps projecting a very dense light blue light.
He also had, on each side of the head, a very dense light green lamp which emitted much weaker rays than the others. It appeared to be 1.60 m tall and I first thought he was dressed in a spacesuit.
Suddenly, under the pressure of a blow, I was thrown across the road where I stayed for ten minutes without being able to shout or call for help. The light blue lamps were still on me. I felt and still feel pain in my legs and my right hand.
At the place indicated by the cultivator, the gendarmes noted that the earth had been freshly moved. The grass had been uprooted over an area of 70 cm in diameter. No footprints were found.
