Avenue de la Libération is the road at Petit-Clamart where Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry’s planned ambush of Charles de Gaulle became a close-range attack on the President’s moving convoy. Chosen for its straight approach to a major crossroads, it was supposed to give the OAS gunmen a controlled firing position; instead, a mistaken calculation of dusk and a late signal turned the road’s geometry against them without preventing the convoy from being hit.

Setting and Selection

Bastien-Thiry spent days preparing the site, measuring the vehicles’ speed and distance, the angles of fire, and the force he believed would be needed to stop the convoy. Avenue de la Libération was a long, straight road leading toward the main crossroads of Petit-Clamart. The plan placed the first group behind an Estafette van at the roadside, where the men would fire as the presidential car came abreast of them.

The chosen position was meant to make the road itself part of the attack: the van concealed the gunmen, while the straight approach gave them a predictable line on the oncoming cars. Bastien-Thiry calculated that about 150 bullets would pass through the leading car before it reached the van. If the presidential car stopped, a second group would emerge from a side road and attack the security vehicle at close range; the assailants would then withdraw to three getaway cars in another side street.

Planned Positions

Bastien-Thiry took the role of lookout rather than joining the firing group. He stood by a bus stop about a hundred yards on the Paris side of the ambush, holding a newspaper; waving it was to signal Serge Bernier, who commanded the first group beside the van. Bernier would then order the men lying in the grass to open fire. A second group was positioned to intercept the security police vehicle, with Georges Watin beside Alain Bougrenet de la Tocnaye in the intercepting car.

By 8:05 p.m., the groups were in position. The convoy approached through the suburbs after leaving the heavier traffic of central Paris, and its speed rose to nearly sixty miles per hour. On entering Avenue de la Division Leclerc at Petit-Clamart, the motor-cycle outriders dropped back to the rear of the convoy. At the front, driver Francis Marroux increased speed further as the road opened out.

The Mistimed Signal and Attack

The ambush depended on a calculation that proved badly wrong. Bastien-Thiry had consulted a calendar showing dusk on August 22 at 8:35, but the calendar was for 1961. In 1962, dusk fell at 8:10. At 8:18, as the convoy came down Avenue de la Libération at about seventy miles per hour, Bastien-Thiry saw it and waved his newspaper.

The delay left Bernier straining to make out the lookout in the gloom. The President’s car passed the bus stop and came into view just before Bernier gave the order to fire. Rather than the shallow angle built into the plan, the gunmen fired at a roughly ninety-degree angle at a fast-moving target. The change in angle and the late recognition compressed the carefully prepared attack into a brief, hurried burst.

Damage and Significance

The gunmen nevertheless hit the Citroën twelve times. Most of the rounds struck from behind; two tyres were shredded, and the sudden loss of pressure sent the speeding car into a front-wheel skid. Marroux’s handling of the car saved Charles de Gaulle’s life. Further shots tore through the bodywork, and one shattered the rear window, passing within inches of the President’s face. Colonel de Boissieu turned and shouted for his parents-in-law to get down, while Madame de Gaulle lowered her head toward her husband’s lap.

The road’s significance lies in the contrast between the attackers’ exact preparation and the failure of a single timing assumption. Avenue de la Libération offered the straight approach and roadside positions on which the plan depended, but the mistaken year on Bastien-Thiry’s calendar meant the convoy arrived in fading light later than the attackers could effectively manage. The planned shallow-angle fire became a late, near-perpendicular assault: enough to damage the presidential car and bring it close to a stop, but not enough to complete the ambush.