The 1954 French flap:

The Courier of the Somme

Again and again the saucers

Flying saucers are still on the agenda. They continue to excite public opinion and to be the subject of all conversations.

Every day, new mysterious craft are seen. This is how the day before yesterday, around 6:30 p.m., a resident of Hornoy, who wishes to remain anonymous, working in the fields on the road to Thieulloy, saw in the sky a very bright craft whose exterior seemed to contain facets which gave it the look like a lark mirror. The craft was moving very high and at a very high speed in the east-west direction.

The lady who saw the saucer was hitherto incredulous: she kept of this an emotion which was still showing when, yesterday afternoon, she informed Mr. Godard, our devoted correspondent of Hornoy.

Monday, around 9 p.m., Mr. Biencourt, teacher at the boys' school in the Faubourg Saint-Pierre, in Amiens, who lives near the Citadel, was returning to his home when, in the sky, he saw a globe of fire descending vertically and at very high speed. It lasted a few seconds, then various colors appeared to Mr. Biencourt's eyes to suddenly go out.

Also, the young apprentice typographer of our newspaper, Henri Duchêne, who will be 15 next month, said yesterday only that on Saturday, around 7 p.m. while returning to Dury by bicycle, he saw in the fields, between the Saint-Dominique farm and the Dury cemetery, a large object posed on the ground some 50 meters from the road.

The craft was in the shape of an elongated egg and could be ten meters in diameter and three meters high. At the back was a sort of tail through which blue smoke escaped.

The machine made no noise.

After having made his discovery, the young man had only one haste: to move away as quickly as possible; which he did with all the speed being possible to his machine...

***

In addition, we are informed that in Hesdin, in the Pas-de-Calais, that is to say near the Crécy region, where "saucers" were already seen on Monday 18 at 8:45 p.m., Mr. Jean Gambier, sworn police officer, was on rue Farré, on his way to the Familla movie theater, when his attention was drawn to a blaze of the sky, northerly, above the forest. The craft, which had an elongated shape, seemed, according to the witnesses, to descend from the sky. Its upper part was bright red, its center was bright white, and the lower part left behind a shower of stars and light trails.

The phenomenon lasted about twenty seconds. The whole sky was lit up. The craft then resumed vertical height and disappeared at a dizzying speed, leaving behind it a trail similar, the witness told us, to a spate of fireworks going up vertically.

Several residents of Huby-St-Leu also witnessed this phenomenon, and if this information had not been reported to us by a sworn official, we would have hesitated to insert it. But the fact is here and for now, like all the others of the same genre, it is inexplicable at least for us.

So as not to change...

FLYING
SAUCERS

Although not yet explained, the appearances of mysterious craft in the Picardy sky seem to become the most ordinary thing there is and it is with much less interest that one records the statements of people who, for their part, have seen...

It is for example, a resident of Hornoy who was working in the fields in the afternoon, when she saw a faceted craft, shiny, which moved at high altitude and very high speed.

In Amiens, it was a schoolteacher, Mr. Biencourt who, around 9 p.m., was returning to his home, when he saw a vertically descending fire globe. For a few seconds various colors appeared to M. Biencourt, who subsequently saw nothing. Saucer or atmospheric phenomenon?

Finally, a young typographer was returning to Dury-les-Amiens by bicycle in the evening, around 7 p.m., when he saw a large craft posed in the fields, 150 meters from the road, between a farm and the cemetery of Dury-les-Amiens: the craft had the shape of an egg of 10 m. in diameter and 3 m. in height; smoke was escaping from behind and the craft made no noise.