Demi-Brigade SAS

Demi-Brigade SAS is an Allied Airborne division in Back in Hell. The DBSAS, made up of two special forces airborne battalions, was dropped on Day -1 in Britanny to wreak havoc and divert as many enemy troops as possible in order to tie them away from Normandy. Joined by thousands of Résistance members, they fought a pirate war against occupation troops, culminating with the battle of Saint-Marcel on June 18, until relieved by Patton's army.

A citizen-soldier attracting bullets like a magnet but always cheating death, the « One-Armed Man » fight the SAS way : using stealth to strike fast and hard, then retreating to safety. Pierre-Louis Bourgoin wasn't meant to be a soldier : a school teacher in French Oubangui-Chari (now Centrafrican Republic) and a big game hunter, he was nonehteless among the first ones to join General de Gaulle in London in June 1940. Returning to Africa with the Free French infantry, he fought in Syria in 1941 where he received his first of many wound. Transferred to the Air Force, he was shot again in the leg while flying then seriously wounded in a crash three months later. Once healed, he went through a parachute course with the British Intelligence Service and took part in commando raids in Tunisia : after several successful sabotage operations, his vehicle was straffed by a German plane, leaving him with 37 wounds and an amputated right arm. Nicknamed « Le Manchot » (« One-Armed Man ») from then on, he took command in November 1944 of the 4th SAS Regiment which was meant to be dropped in Britanny 24H before D-Day to distract German troops there from reinforcing the Normandy front. Despite his handicap, Bourgoin insisted to be dropped by parachute, a blue-white-red one (gift fom his British friends), with his men and went on to command the SAS & FFI troops during the battle of Saint-Marcel on June 18, 1944.

Tactics

 * The Partisan

The DBSAS has very few armored, artillery support & AA of its own, and has to make do for some time on a few captured German vehicles & guns. In Phase A, it can rely on a high number of cheap and very lightly equipped FFI partisans and a few non-German Wehrmacht deserters providing some trained troops; in Phase B come the small core of highly aggressive SAS-trained paratroopers, while in Phase C relief arrives in the form of Patton's armored vanguard, acting like the cavalry of old cowboy movie. The DBSAS doesn't fight the usual way and don't care much about frontlines. Remember that many airborne division's units (identified by wings on their cards) can't be surrounded. Or at least, if they are, they don't care…

The division is unique in that it's supported by American troops in Phase C, with a complement of American tanks, infantry, and other units.