This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Courrier de l'Ouest, Angers, France, on October 19, 1954.
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The Martian looked at them in silence and when Georges Gatay, the construction site foreman who felt himself invaded by a strange torpor raised the eyes towards the edge of the career, the most fantastic appearance which he had been able to imagine froze him on the spot. That occurred here two weeks ago hardly, and since the strange visit, this solid boy aged about thirty years does almost not eat anymore and hardly sleeps.
It was about 04:30 p.m. and the five companions extracted gravels and the stones from the quarry of Marcilly-sur-Vienne for the Bridges-and-Roadways using a mechanical excavator and a certain number of noisy machines. Dug at the edge of the road of Nouatre, this quarry is the only excavation in the middle of a vast plain deprived of trees. These five workmen, Mr. Rougier, Dried, Berois, Lubanevic and Villeneuve, expected a sixth, Mr. Amirault, the driver of a heavy truck which came to fill the tank. The sunny air of this end of afternoon was clear and without the least cloud. At this point in time the thing arrived...
"I am not hallucinating, George Gatay thought while putting the hand on the hair, it is really a flying saucer and a Martian." Successively, his work comrades looked in his direction and made the same thinking. A circular object, surmounted of a dome of a metallic gray, stood motionless approximately one meter above the ground. It seemed that blades turning at very high speed were attached to it. The whole had the appearance of a reversed bowl. But the strangest of all was this small being of one meter fifty five approximately, who stood motionless in front of it. Dressed of a kind of plastic suit, fitted of booties of the same matter, he carried on the head an opaque helmet which covered his face.
"A kind of projector emitting a very soft gleam was attached to his chest and attracted our glances", the witnesses told later. "In the being from another world's hand was a sort of metallic revolver or tube. The appearance lasted only one minute and half maybe, then the individual disappeared little by little as an image which is erased on a screen and the apparatus went up jerkily towards the sky. Arrived at a hundred meters from the ground, it was surrounded by a circular cloud, reminding of an artificial white smoke and it disappeared." It is at this time that Mr. Amirault arrived. From his truck's cabin, he only had the time to see the strange machine before it disappeared in the cloud.
To the investigators who pressed them with questions, the witnesses of this astral visit answered categorically: "we are not crackpots, we are sure of what we saw."
Today, these witnesses are much less categorical. Their little story made its way and in front of the scoffing and skeptic population, they adopted the most careful attitude: that of silence.
Other people in France saw or touched these mysterious beings. A child of Morez who had never heard about flying saucers said to have been kissed by a being "as tall as a door and shining like a fridge", and the spanking did not silence this 12 year old kid. Finally, here's a real bomb. An Englishman states that he he the first earthman to have come into contact with a Martian.
"He had a charming smile as few earthmen have." And Cedric Allingham who will publish in London the story of this short encounter raised the arm to greet the Martian who answered him courteously. This Englishman, an astronomy buff and a professional ornithologist, did not suffer from hallucination either and provided in support of his claims several photographs and the sworn testimony of a peasant who witnessed the scene.
C. Allingham's book will be translated before long into French and the curious will then have all the leisure to criticize it. Let's retain only the seductive description of the space visitor. He was large, well proportioned and his voice reminded of the sound of running water. The only strange details in this silhouette were two small tubes connected by a wire engaged in the nostrils of the unknown and when he was turned back a strange strap whose utility was not discovered. Let us wait until the thing from another world decides to land again to explain this.
"Flying saucers have landed". Under this title, the great champion of the interplanetary diplomatic relations Georges Adamski launched with the U.S.A. the account of his enthralling conversations with the Venusians. The book was a best-seller translated at once and reissued several times, but the declarations of the author, apparently too impressed by scince fiction stories, did not receive a confirmation yet and perhaps never will. Like Cédric Allingham, Adamski proves his claims by plaster catsters of Venusian footprints and photographs of their marvellous flying apparatus. He even had, it seems, the great honor to travel during twenty minutes in one of these machines and could discuss lengthily with the Venusians without opening the mouth... by thought transference. H. G Wells is very clearly beaten by Adamski and the author of the "War of the Worlds" hardly had imagination.
[Photo captions:]
Those who have seen "it":
Mrs GUILLEMOTEAU in the Vendée
Georges GATAY, chef de chantier en Touraine
Young Henri CLEMENT in Deux-Sèvres
