The site of the 1962 attempted assassination of General de Gaulle at Petit Clamart. As depicted at the start of the 1973 "The Day of the Jackal" movie - clip in comments.
In the Summer of August 1962 at ten past eight in the evening...De Gaulle's car, another car with bodyguards and two motorcycle outriders... while en route for the military airport at Villacoublay were ambushed by a bunch of OAS assassins waiting in a van with submachine guns. They had a lookout ("with eyebrows like caterpillars") posted at a bus stop to alert them to De Gaulle's arrival by waving a rolled-up newspaper. However it was too dark to see him and De Gaulle's DS Citroen was almost upon them...going quite fast - 100kph or so... when they burst out of the van and opened fire with sub-machine guns. Both the Police motorbike escorts on Triumphs had their tyres shot out and crashed.
Further up the road another Citroen came out of a side street and got off a number of shots before the gun jammed. De Gaulle's back window was shot out by one of the assassins - Georges Watin - nicknamed “the limper” because of a childhood accident. He was an ugly giant of a man "with a head like an inverted bucket", and one of Algeria's biggest landowners. He had been a member of a terrorist organization called "The Red Hand" and was infamous in Algeria for vigilante actions against Moslems suspected of rebel sympathies. “He had a small defect...he collected the ears of the fellaghas (rebels) he had killed and kept them in a glass jar. His fondest wish was to add de Gaulle's ears to his collection.”
De Gaulle's car took 14 hits - including two to the front tyre - but managed to escape...on three wheels - thanks to its hydropneumatic suspension and mass distribution, the DS is one of the only vehicles in the world capable of traveling on 3 wheels.
De Gaulle and his wife escaped injury and made it to the plane. Madame De Gaulle was overheard saying "I hope les poules are ok". There were two hens in the boot they were taking to their country house. The police thought she was talking about them - "les poules" was French slang for the Police.
This wasn't the first time someone had tried to kill De Gaulle. There were thirty attempts during his lifetime. He was particularly unpopular after promising in 1958 that "Algeria Francaise toujours" - "Algeria will always be French" - a promise he broke soon after when granting independence to Algeria.
In the comments I've posted a clip from the Sixties movie "The Day of the Jackal" - based on Frederick Forsyth's bestselling novel of the same name and showing this event.
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