This article was published in the daily newspaper Samedi-Soir, Paris, France, on October 14, 1954.
|
[...]
Quarouble (Pas-de-Calais), Friday September 10, 1954, 22 h.15:
MARIUS DEWILDE, aged 34, workman with the steelworks Blanc Misseron, reads a magazine in his kitchen (it would be interesting to know what this magazine was about) [the shipwreck of l'Abeille], On the first floor, Mrs. Dewilde and her son have rested already for a moment. All is quiet. Only the tick-tock of the clock and the crumpling of the turned pages break the silence.
Suddenly, Marius Dewilde raises the head, attentive. Outside, Kiki, his dog, barks furiously as when a foreigner penetrates in the small garden. Somebody at this hour? Certainly not a visitor. Then? A tramp, perhaps, or a smuggler? Marius Dewilde takes a flashlight and goes outside on his doorstep. The fresh air of the night hits him in the face. During a few seconds, his eyes badly accustomed to the darkness cannot distinguish anything. Then, beyond the barrier which separates the way from the railway, he sees a dark mass, like a cart abandoned on the rails.
"Hold on..., thinks Marius, a peasant uncoupled on the railway. I will have to warn the station so that it gets removed, that could cause an accident."
Meanwhile Kiki, towards the right, continues to bark furiously. Marius Dewilde presses the button of his flashlight and directs the luminous ray towards the place where Kiki is. And then, he sees...
within three or four meters of him, on the way which passes in front of the house, two beings go one behind the other towards the dark mass seen on the railway. They are small (no more than one meter). The one from the pair who walks in front turns the head towards Marius Dewilde who has the impression to find himself in the presence of two extremely broad shouldered divers whose helmets throw metallic reflections.
First amazed, Marius runs towards the garden's door, to cut the road to the unknowns. Then, in the dark mass posed on the way, a window of square design opens, from where spouts out a green ray which is directed at Dewilde. At once, the man is paralysed, nailed on the spot. His legs refuse to serve him.
During several seconds, he is thus unable to make even one movement, then suddenly, the projector extincts, and Marius finds the use of his muscles. He runs towards the apparatus, but he is too late. With a whistle and a thick black smoke, the dark mass rises in space while slightly rocking. One would say a cheese cover three meters high and from five to six meters in diameter. The thing goes up... goes up... It takes a red-orange color, and disappears towards the west. Marius Dewilde and his Martians enter the legend.
As in the Mazaud case, the police forces investigate. This time, it is the Air police forces. Why the Air police force? Well, because this is about a flying apparatus, of course. One "seeks" landing traces on the railway and one of "finds" it. Five scratches on the cross-pieces. One of the inspectors states:
- AN APPARATUS WHICH WOULD HAVE LANDED ON QUILTS WOULD NOT LEAVE DIFFERENT TRACES!
Marius Dewilde was victim, formerly, of a cranial traumatism in the continuation of which he had, one says, expressed some nervous disorders. Perhaps a psychiatrist would have questions to ask, but this assumption is excluded. Nobody will subject the witness to what Americans calls a "cross-examination", i.e. a true interrogation intended to find contradictions or the improbabilities in his account. In what authority, anyway, would this be done?
Marius Dewilde is not a criminal or a madman. He does not threaten the safety of anybody. He did not call the police. He is perfectly free, like any French citizen, to tell what he saw or what he believed to have sees and to give of the events of which he claims to have been the witness any version which suits him or in which he believes.
Under these circumstances, however, it is allowed to raise the question: where is the scientific truth?
[Photograph with caption:] A few hours after Mazaud, Marius Dewilde, of Quarouble (Pas-de-Calais), saw, too, two "Martians". Moreover, he had the privilege of the diving-suits and the "paralysing ray". He also wanted, afterwards, to get a gendarme as witness.
