The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Union, Reims, France, page 4, on November 1, 1954.
See the case file.
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MONTLUÇON. -- The gendarmes from Huriel came to collect the testimony of a farmer's wife from Mesples, Mrs. Gentil, in whose house a 14-year-old schoolboy had sought refuge on Saturday, shouting: "Come quickly and see, I'm afraid: a saucer is chasing me."
Mrs. Gentil stepped onto her doorstep but at first saw nothing. However, scanning the sky, she in turn noticed a disk "three times as large as the sun, tinted red and violet." The craft spun rapidly on itself and then disappeared.
The young Jean-Pierre Coubret, who lives in Saint-Palais, was riding his moped to the Huriel continuation school when, according to his statement, he saw, at the exit of the village of Mesples, a large disk which suddenly began to move, approaching the ground at great speed.
The boy, intrigued, stopped to observe the phenomenon. The "saucer" was standing vertically rather than in a horizontal position. It appeared as a large silver-colored disk, sometimes haloed in red, sometimes in violet, leaving behind it a luminous trail.
The young schoolboy, growing increasingly worried, then had the clear impression that the craft was diving toward him. Terrified, he mounted his moped and turned around, heading back to Mesples where he entered the first farm he came to.
A "reception committee for the first Martians" has just been formed by Mr. Marcel Rubens, a Brussels engineer.
Mr. Rubens decided to create this committee after reading that the authorities of Châteauneuf-du-Pape had forbidden the landing of flying saucers under penalty of confiscation.
That is not at all a reasonable way to welcome visitors, said Mr. Rubens. We must be kind to them, otherwise they might not be kind to us.
