Gabriel Sabattier
Camille Ange Gabriel Sabattier (2 August 1892 – 22 May 1966) was a French general in Indochina during World War II. The highest rank he attained was lieutenant-general.[1]
Sabattier was born in
By 1944, Major-General Sabattier was commanding the Tonkin Division. He asked Lieutenant-General Eugène Mordant for permission to prepare to fight a guerrilla war in the event the Japanese chose to end French administration. This would have included establishing supply caches in the mountains. The request was refused. Anticipating a Japanese coup, Sabattier put his troops on armed exercise status on 8 March 1945. Although this was countermanded by Mordant, not all units heeded his order and some were prepared when, on 9 March, the Japanese staged a coup d'état and overthrew the French colonial government.[2]
Under Sabattier's command, about 6,000 men from the vicinity of
When the Japanese launched a campaign to destroy the French in the mountains, Sabattier led his soldiers on a retreat of 600 miles (970 km) to China in May.
Sabattier returned to Paris at the end of 1945. He wrote a memoire, Le destin de l'Indocine: souvenirs et documents, 1941–1951, that was published in Paris in 1952. He died on 22 May 1966.[2]
References
- ^ Bruce M. Lockhart and William J. Duiker, Historical Dictionary of Vietnam (The Scarecrow Press, 2006), p. 332.
- ^ a b c d e f g Spencer C. Tucker, "Gabriel Sabattier", in Spencer C. Tucker, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History, 2nd ed. (ABC-CLIO, 2011), Vol. 3, pp. 1009–1010.
- ^ Commission française du Guide des sources de l'histoire des nations, Sources de l'histoire de l'Asie et de l'Océanie dans les archives et bibliothèques françaises: Archives (De Gruyter, 2012 [orig. K.G. Saur, 1981]), p. 551.
- ^ a b Archimedes L. A. Patti, Why Viet Nam? Prelude to America's Albatross (University of California Press, 1980), p. 490.
External links
- Camille Ange Gabriel Sabattier at The Generals of World War II
