This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Méridional, France, page 9, on July 4, 1965.
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VALSENSOLE (A.F.P.). -- If the strange visit of the "flying saucer" is the subject of more or less curious comments in Valensole, it however did not disturb the quietness of the charming low-alpine locality. We are really far from the emotion raised by the dreadful slaughter of 1929, when two farmhands massacred a family of five people. Mr. Maurice Masse, 42 year old farmer, child of the country, married, father of two, is the center of all the conversations. His face carved by the sun, his broad neck and shoulders give him the traditional appearance of the peasant. Good hunter, good fisherman, he also inherited this southernmost facundity which sings the joy in life, the sun and the nature.
Known in the village for his easyness and colourful speaking, he frequently happens that he tells of imaginary exploits such as for example fishing trouts "that big", showing the extent his arms. Finally he passes for a good storyteller of tales.
Was he the victim of his fertile imagination? As proof of this strange appearance of which he was the witness (he only spke about it to the gendarmes the next day) it remains a hole inordinately increased by the passage of the curious people and four small furrows hardly marked converging towards this excavation.
Obviously this is very little to authenticate beings who came from another world...
Mr. Masse indicated that at this point in time he was in his lavender field, located a few kilometres from Valensole, at 05:45, that he saw an apparatus, which he qualified as strange, having the shape of a rugby ball, that landed on the ground, at approximately 80 kilometers [sic!] from the place where he was.
A little later a being of human appearance went down from the apparatus. It had naked hands, was dressed in a suit of orange color and appeared to him of small size.
"I approached, he added, but the small creature nimbly went up in the apparatus which took off vertically at a vertiginous pace."
After having spoken to his family and has many friends, he went on the following day to the gendarmes to put on his statement there.
Unfortunately when the representatives of the law went on the location many people had trampled the place and it was already impossible to note any trace at all.
Mr. Masse left, yesterday morning, to accompany his daughter in the Giens peninsula, where she will spend her holidays.
As for the village, it fell back now in its tranquility, perhaps until the next manoeuvers that will bring again helicopters in the country.
The exercice named "Provence 65" is now finished and the aircraft which took part in it left the airfield of Saint-Auban.
As for the orange suit that was seen by Mr. Masse, it is perhaps a life-jacket baptized of the evocative name of "Mae West" that are all of this color and that the pilots are often quipped with when they travel by helicopter.
The adventure of the farmer of Valensole, will perhaps not be the topic of a story that the villagers will tell in the evenings.
It will probably join that of the "Loch Ness" monster or that of the sea serpent.
The one who will perhaps remember it best, after Mr. Masse, is adjudant Oliva, commander of the gendarmerie group of the locality who was badgered by the telephone calls: "they wanted to talk to me, he says, from New York and London, about this matter."
