Word: clamart
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...most determined assassin was the architect of the Petit-Clamart ambush (which the plotters called "Operation Charlotte Corday"*), an air force lieutenant colonel named Jean-Maria Bastien-Thiry. A brilliant engineer known as "the French von Braun" for his invention of the guided SSII missile, he masterminded both Petit-Clamart and an earlier attempt in which a napalm and plastique bomb was planted on the route to Colombey. De Gaulle commuted the death sentences of two other Petit-Clamart conspirators, Jacques Prévost and Alain Bougrenet de la Tocnaye. But he refused to grant clemency to Bastien-Thiry, reportedly...
Speeding through the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart early one evening in August 1962, the French President's black Citroën ran into a barrage of submachine-gun fire. The colonel riding next to the chauffeur yelled to his father-in-law in the back seat: "Father, get down!" The tall, imperial figure budged not an inch. Again the distraught colonel pleaded: "I beg you, Father, get down." This time the President leaned slightly forward. A split second later, a stream of bullets ripped through the limousine. When the firing stopped, Charles de Gaulle flicked fragments...
...Petit-Clamart ambush-the factual starting point of Frederick Forsyth's otherwise fictional The Day of the Jackal-was De Gaulle's closest brush with assassins. It was, however, neither the first nor the last. According to a new book published in Paris, Objectif de Gaulle, there were at least 31 serious plots against the general's life, and dozens of others that never got beyond the talking stage. Indeed, even as the would-be killers of Petit-Clamart went on trial for their lives, police averted a sniper's attempt to shoot De Gaulle with...