Satory Camp is presented as a place where state security takes both a practical and a human form: it is the site of specialized preparation for the Action Service, and it is also the training and headquarters camp associated with the police driver entrusted with Charles de Gaulle’s safety on the road.

Setting and Institutional Role

The camp is distinct from the Action Service’s headquarters, which are located in a group of nondescript buildings off Boulevard Mortier in Paris. Instead, Satory Camp is where a special section, kept apart from the rest of the camp, trains the service’s personnel. That separation gives the camp a dual character in the account: it belongs to a wider security establishment, yet contains a secluded facility dedicated to preparing operatives for clandestine violence.

Training and Preparation

The Action Service’s roughly one hundred men are first brought to a peak of physical fitness, then sent to the camp’s special section for instruction in destruction. Their preparation ranges across small-arms fighting, unarmed combat, karate, and judo, as well as radio communication, demolition, and sabotage. The curriculum also includes interrogation with and without torture, kidnapping, arson, and assassination. The range is consequential: the service is equipped not merely to gather information but to carry out violent operations, and its training joins bodily discipline to technical and coercive methods.

Security and Operational Associations

The camp also enters the narrative through the presidential motorcade. Francis Marroux, Charles de Gaulle’s personal driver, is described as a police driver from the training and headquarters camp at Satory. His cool temperament and ability to drive quickly and safely distinguish him from the ministerial chauffeurs; as the presidential car waits to depart, the other DS 19 is likewise driven by a gendarme from Satory. The camp’s significance therefore extends beyond the preparation of covert operatives: it is connected to the personnel responsible for moving and protecting the head of state. These roles place the same location within both the hidden conflict against the OAS and the visible routines of presidential security.