Petit-Clamart

Petit-Clamart is the suburban setting of the 1962 attempt by the OAS to kill Charles de Gaulle, and the place where an elaborate ambush collapsed into a near miss. Its importance extends beyond the attack itself: the failure exposed the difficulty of striking a target who remained in public view, prompted an immense police operation, and helped make any subsequent attempt against de Gaulle more demanding.

Setting and ambush plan

Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry selected a long, straight stretch of the Avenue de la Libération leading toward Petit-Clamart’s main crossroads. He spent days studying the site, measuring firing angles, the speed and distance of the vehicles, and the force needed to stop them. His plan depended on catching the presidential convoy at a point where the road and the position of the gunmen would make accurate fire possible.

The first OAS group was to fire from behind an Estafette van parked beside the road, beginning at a shallow angle as the convoy approached. Bastien-Thiry calculated that about 150 bullets would pass through the leading car by the time it drew level with the van. Once the presidential car had stopped, a second group would emerge from a side road and attack the security vehicle at close range. The attackers were then to finish off the presidential party and escape in three cars waiting in another side street. The design relied on coordinated gunfire, a disabled lead vehicle, and a rapid withdrawal; each step assumed the convoy would reach the ambush under the conditions Bastien-Thiry had anticipated.

Bastien-Thiry himself was the lookout, not one of the roadside marksmen. By 8:05 p.m., the groups were in position. A hundred yards toward Paris, he waited by a bus stop with a newspaper; waving it would signal Serge Bernier, stationed by the van, to order the gunmen lying in the grass to fire. Alain Bougrenet de la Tocnaye was to drive the car that intercepted the security police, with Georges Watin beside him carrying a submachine gun. The ordinary appearance of a man waiting at a bus stop concealed the signal on which the plan depended.

The attack and its failure

The convoy reached the suburban avenues at speed, and at Petit-Clamart its pace rose to nearly sixty miles per hour. As it entered the Avenue de la Division Leclerc, the motorcycle outriders fell behind to take up position at the rear. Bastien-Thiry saw the convoy on the Avenue de la Libération at 8:18 p.m., travelling at about seventy miles per hour, and waved his newspaper.

The signal came too late for the attackers to fire as intended. Bernier saw the presidential car flash past the bus stop before the order to fire was given. The marksmen then opened fire at a near right angle to a target moving at high speed, rather than at the shallow angle built into their plan. The Citroën DS 19 nevertheless took twelve bullets, a number the narrative presents as evidence of the attackers’ marksmanship. Most struck from behind; two tyres were shredded, and the loss of pressure sent the speeding car into a front-wheel skid. Francis Marroux kept control and saved de Gaulle’s life. Other bullets passed through the bodywork, and one shattered the rear window, passing within inches of the President. Colonel de Boissieu shouted for his parents-in-law to get down, and Madame de Gaulle lowered her head toward her husband.

The decisive miscalculation concerned the light. Bastien-Thiry had consulted a calendar for 1961 and expected dusk on August 22 to fall at 8:35 p.m. In 1962, dusk fell at 8:10. The mistake left the attackers in darker conditions than planned just as the convoy arrived, making the signal harder to see and the firing angle harder to execute. The carefully prepared site could not compensate for a timetable built on the wrong year: the convoy was late according to its usual schedule, yet it still reached the ambush after the light had failed the plotters.

Immediate aftermath and police response

The attack did not stop de Gaulle from continuing his journey. After he and his wife boarded a helicopter, Marroux remained on the tarmac behind the wheel of the damaged car; both tyres on its right side had finally given out, and the DS was riding on its rims. The contrast between the intended destruction of the presidential party and the battered vehicle left behind marks the outcome at Petit-Clamart: the convoy was hit, but its passengers survived and the President departed.

Journalists speculated publicly about the attempt, while French police, supported by the Secret Service and the Gendarmerie, launched what the narrative calls the largest police operation in French history. The search would become the country’s biggest manhunt to that point. Petit-Clamart thus shifted the story from a prepared roadside attack to an investigation extending well beyond the ambush site: officials had to identify those responsible and pursue them, while the failed attempt became a precedent against which later threats were measured.

A precedent for later security

In the account of the subsequent plot, the English professional assassin assessing a possible contract treats Petit-Clamart, alongside the Pont-de-Seine attempt, as evidence that earlier attackers had failed to make the final sacrifice needed to ensure de Gaulle’s death. The site therefore signifies more than a tactical failure. The attacks had also warned the authorities of a general intention to kill the President. As the assassin observes, that warning meant security could not simply lapse into mechanical routine; an attacker could expect alert guards and a response directed toward the gunman rather than the panic that might permit escape.

The later manhunt in the novel dramatizes the consequences of this heightened vigilance. The President’s formal orders prohibit publicity and a nationwide search while the authorities are still uncertain of the threat, and reject visible changes that might make him appear to be hiding from a foreign assassin. When preparations for the Liberation Day ceremonies are eventually described, they include steel crowd barriers, searches of nearby buildings and roofs, and bullet-proof windows secretly fitted to the presidential car. These later measures belong to the pursuit of a different assassin, not to the original ambush at Petit-Clamart; their relevance is that the earlier failed attack had made the danger of another public assassination impossible to treat as a routine security problem. The location stands at the hinge between the OAS’s failed operation and a lasting escalation in the protection of de Gaulle.