This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Républicain Lorrain, France, October 10, 1954.
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The "Flying Saucers" are still the subject of conversations
Three children of Pournoy-la-Chétive have just claimed to have seen in the evening of Friday, a weird craft going down from the sky and a strange small man com out of it and utter some words to them. Such is the news which was spread in the villages of the Seille area.
This is not a joke of bad taste. The children, indeed, saw something abnormal indeed and were the witness of a particular event which struck them in such a way that they lost their appetite of it and that they returned on their premises shaking with fear and seized by panic. But it is impossible to know if this was a real fact or the involuntary disfiguration of an authentic and natural scene by the imaginations impressed by many stories.
Gilbert Calba, aged 12; Daniel Hirsch, aged 9; and his younger brother Jean-Pierre, aged 5, had gone, Friday evening skating on secondary road N 41, at the edge of the disastered village. It was 07:30 p.m. and the night was falling. Suddenly, at the proximity of the cemetery, the children were the witnesses of the henomenon. Here is the scene such as Gilbert and Daniel - two excellent pupils of Mr. Martignon, the teacher of Coin-sur-Seille - told:
"In the sky, we saw something luminous. It was a round apapratus of 3 m 50 approximate diameter, which landed a little in front of us. The apparatus had black, yellow, and white stripes and rested on three feet. We waited one minute or two and one man came out of it. He had a lit lamp in one hand, a lamp which emitted rays, and in the other hand, a luminous object in the shape of a cross. The man had large eyes, a hairy face and was very small, 1 m 20 perhaps. He was dressed of a black cassock, like a priest. He stared at us right in the eyes. We weres afraid, but we could not move. He said something in a language that we did not understand. When he turned his lamp off, we fled. Afterwards we saw in the sky some luminous thing which went away very quickly."
And Gilbert Calba adds: "it's not to get publicity that I say that, but I swear to you that I saw it..."
Another inhabitant of Pournoy, Robert Magnin, aged 15, also saw, apparently, the mysterious machine in the sky. Such is this strangge story which leaves us perplexed.
For his part, Mr. Delacour, the very sympathetic mayor of Pournoy, hesitates to voice an opinion: "I tell you frankly, I do not believe too much in flying saucers... I am a little like Saint Thomas. But after all, there could have been something."
As for Mr. René Léonard, the devoted town hall secretary, he comes only on saturdays, and in this case, he is satisfied to doubt. Perhaps the future will tell if the three children were the subject of a too rich imagination.
