This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Lorrain, Metz, France, page 7, on October 9-10, 1954.
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While his little brother, eyes wide opened, looked at the "Field-that-Burns"
then fled, believing he saw a ghost
MOREZ (from our correspondent). -- In a recent issue, we briefly reported the mishap to a 12 year old boy, victim a strange being resembling a huge sugar lump from another world, using one of these mysterious unidentified flying objects that currently invade Europe.
Investigations. Observations... Was a 12 years old Jurassic boy the hero of the first interplanetary battle?
Perhaps future will tell. But certainly this cute story won't be noted in History!
6 p.m.. Raymond will not come. The green van of the baker of Les Rousses who, today, carries out the bi-weekly round, had disappeared long ago from the turning of the road. Raymond did not come to get the bread this evening. Just like his brothers and sisters, he didn't go to school this day.
I did approach the maisonnette, laying "Under the Rock" ["Sous la Roche"]. I did see the kid there, playing two steps: but at my sight he had run away.
Since that Wednesday when the gendarmerie squad of Les Rousses came at "Under the Rock", by Prémanon, a small village nested in the Jurassic forest, at a few kilometers of the France-Switzerland border, since the extraordinary adventure of Raymond Romand was known, tens of cars had passed in the rocky path. Thousand times, the young boy had answered the same questions: shown the treaded colchicums, the marks on the fir tree mast...
His had become tired. He too, and he did not intend any more to talk about this strange story; this unreal being with whom he "played" or "fought" by a evening rainy, in a landscape of the end of the world.
And yet, the 12 years of Raymond had, that evening, with a handful of stones and a toy gun spitting arrows with rubberized ends, written one of the most beautiful chapter of the bulky "Flying saucers" file!
That Monday, the Romand family lived an evening like all the others. It was eight hour thirty. The night fell and, with it, a small cold rain which announced unpleasantly that October would soon run away in search for snow.
In the barn, Raymond, 12 years old, Janine, 9 years old, Ghislaine, 8 years old and Claude, 4 years old, organized a big game. They were going to live another game. A game that most imaginative children of this age cannot create, and, undoubtedly, cannot know!
Captain Brustel of the section of Saint-Claude will tell us. Mrs. Genillon, teacher in Prémanon also: Raymond is not imaginative. Tall, solid for his age, lost in the depth of his native Jura, he does not read illustrated magazines for children. Obviouslyhe had never heard speak about "flying saucers."
So?
So, Raymond did not dream. His brothers and sisters neither, who never contradicted one another during the investigation.
A mysterious machine must really have landed "Under the Rock."
But let's go back to this Monday, September 29, at the hour when, suddenly, the plot would unfold as in the best science fiction novels.
A barking of dog. A child's laughter. Raymond goes tot on the doorstep of the barn in which Janine, Ghislaine and Claude seek a good hiding-place. Police and thieves... Raymond, who is armed with an arrow gun will be the representative of the law. He will wait a few minutes outside, and then, thanks to his intuition...
But what's that then? The young boy, half anxious, half curious, suddenly sees within a few meters of him, moving in the half-light, a brilliant "object."
"It was high as the door, the kid would say, and resembled a large rectangle..."
A tiny nervous finger which presses the trigger of a kid's gun. A split second during which a heart beats at a crazy pace. And then a shock which produces a metallic sound.
Raymond becomes daring. A handful of stones flies towards the "shining object" which produces the same noise of "struck metallic sheet."
At this point in time, still approaching, Raymond feels "something cold, impalpable and icy" which weighs upon him on the shoulder. Pressed unto the ground, he shouts his fear and, trembling, runs away home, where, with the reserved character usual with people in the mountains, he won't say a thing to his family.
But Janine, too, inside the barn, whereas she shrunk behind the hay, saw "a similar object", of aluminum color, moving without noise.
A few minutes later, the youngest among the kids, Claude Romand, will come to pull her from the bottom of her skirt, taking her in front of the farm, to show her "the field that": a ball of fire moving while oscillating from left to right at more than 200 meters, in the meadow downwards.
Without saying anything, they went to bed.
But as soon as the next day, at school, Mrs. Genillon will be their confidante.
"We saw ghosts yesterday evening", they told her. And the 12 years of Raymond wont even boast in repeating that he had fought with one of them.
Two days had passed, and the rain was still falling when the gendarmerie of Les Rousses opened the investigation. Perhaps the traces... Not, they were still very visible.
And at the foot of a mast set by a vacation camp, at the very place indicated by the children, in front of grass pressed in a counter-clockwise motion, more than one curious people one would demonstrate their amazement.
Four holes in the ground, of triangular form, tilted by 45 degrees and the mast of fir tree marked on 15 cm at a height of 1.50 meter still came to support the statements of the Romand kids!
As for the great parallelepiped seen by Raymond and Janine, it isallowed to make the assumption that he was the passenger of the mysterious apparatus.
And, small story of the great History, one will perhaps forever be unaware that a handful of stones and an arrow gun were the weapons of the first interplanetary battle whose single soldier was a 12 year old boy...
J.M.
The case was a hoax. See the case file here.
