• Operation Amherst

Date of birth:

December 21st, 1920 (Pamiers, France)

Date of death:

April 8th, 1945 (Smilde, The Netherlands)

Buried on:

French War Graves Smilde

Nationality:

French

On the night of April 7-8, 1945, Gabriel de Sablet jumped out of a plane with a parachute to participate in Operation Amherst. Operation Amherst was the Allied code name for an operation intended to prepare for the Canadian attack on the city of Groningen.
Lieutenant de Sablet jumped together with his "stick" (a group of paratroopers from the SAS) with the intention that he would land in the municipality of Norg. Sablet jumped first that night but got entangled in his parachute and landed in a deep peat ditch in the municipality of Smilde. Here he died by drowning. His lifeless body was found the next morning. By order of the German occupiers, his body had to remain there on the shore and was not allowed to be buried. A resistance group did not obey this German order and later secretly buried the body. Fortunately, the rest of Sablet's "stick" landed in the municipality of Norg and made a major contribution to the liberation of the north of our country. In 1951 the Sablet was awarded the bronze cross.

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• - French battle for Province of Drenthe (Dagblad van het Noorden van 08-04-2020).
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  - MemorialGenWeb Fiche individuelle
  

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