They can't shoot straight.

“They can't shoot straight.” is Charles de Gaulle’s curt assessment of the OAS gunmen after their ambush fails to kill him. Delivered amid the damaged car and the anxious response of the officers around him, the line makes survival sound less like a reprieve than a judgment on the attackers’ competence.

The remark in its immediate setting

At Villacoublay, Charles de Gaulle insisted on going straight to the helicopter waiting on the apron. Officers and officials crowded around the car and helped his shaken wife out. He emerged with glass splinters on his lapel, ignored the surrounding officers’ alarm, and walked around to take her arm. Only then did he tell her they were going home and offer his verdict on the OAS: “They can't shoot straight.”

Tone and contrast

The sentence is strikingly plain beside the scene that prompts it. The attack has left the presidential car damaged, Madame de Gaulle shaken, and the security detail in a state of alarm; de Gaulle answers with a short, almost casual insult rather than a speech about danger. Its understatement converts the immediate aftermath into an expression of control: he attends to his wife, dismisses the attackers, and proceeds with the journey.

Narrative significance

The remark compresses the reversal at the heart of the ambush: the OAS has mounted a violent assault, yet de Gaulle and his wife leave alive. Its confidence is sharpened by the physical evidence of the attack, including the glass on his lapel and the car’s eventual ride on its rims. The phrase thus reads both as contempt for the gunmen and as a public performance of composure in the face of an attempt on his life.