The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Alsace, France, on October 14, 1954.
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Metz, October 13. -- Throughout the fair of Metz, a military projector, installed at the army axhibit, swept, each evening, the sky of Metz with its beam of light. Sunday evening, the servants of the device saw, at a height estimated at more than 10.000 meters, a luminous circle which remained motionless above their head during several hours. The radar service, also set up at the army exhibit, vainly tried to catch the strange circle in their device.
A local newspaper having reported the facts, the General governor commanding the 6th military area ordered an investigation which, until now, did not conclude. General Navereau awaits the report by Major Cottel, person in charge of the Army exhibit.
According to the first information collected as of yesterday, it seems impossible that the projector set up at the fair of Metz could catch any object put so high. Indeed, this projector hardly has a 5.000 meters range, a distances at which, in very clear weather, it could perhaps make it possible to distinguish something.
The luminous circle caught in the projector's beam could be explained by the presence, at a great altitude, of a whirling cumulus lit by the moon, full, and hidden at this time behind a curtain of clouds. One remains skeptical, in expectation, on the presence of a round object, which would have had, one estimated, fifty meters in diameter, and which would have remained perfectly motionless during several hours.
However the military services continue their investigations and will draw the conclusions from this case as soon as they are in possession of the report by Major Cottel.
Chateaubriant, Oct. 13. -- A 13 year old little boy, young Gilbert Lelay, claims to have seen yesterday evening, at about 10:30 p.m., a mysterious machine in a meadow, at a few 600 meters of the residence of his parents, at the village of Sainte-Marie-en-Erbray, close to Chateaubriant.
The child states he stayed ten minutes to observe, within ten meters, this machine which had the shape of a phosphorescent cigar. A passenger, a man dressed of a suit and a gray hat, fitted with boots, reportedly told him in French: "Look, but do not touch." He put a hand on the boy's shoulder while, with the other hand, he held a ball throwing purple fires. He climbed in the apparatus thtough a door which he slammed. On what could be a dashboard, were several multicoloured buttons.
Still according to the child, the machine rose slowly vertically, throwing fires in all the directions, made two turns in the airs and disappeared suddenly.
Vienna, Oct. 13. -- Mr. Harald Kreutzberg, the Austrian Serge Lifar, Seefeld resident, in the Tyrol, observed as he was in his garden, a flying saucer who flew over the small city during a few seconds before moving towards the north and disappear behind the mountains.
Some residents of Seefeld also observed the phenomenon and vainly tried to photograph the mysterious craft.
