THE RED GAMBIT SERIES

Colin,

On the OOB you list some allied units which were ‘destroyed’. The Guards armoured division & 15 ‘Scottish’ division with the 82nd US airborne, 8th Armored & 7 other US infantry Divisions. When you say 'destroyed' what percentage casualties would you be thinking of? Are these divisions being(or going to be) reformed in the UK for redeployment later? As surely enough personnel would usually survive or escape to form a cadre to rebuild around.

Hi, what I mean by destroyed is removed from the OOB.

That may mean savaged so badly as to be unretrievable as a unit, or disbanded because there were too few survivors to make a viable cadre for the replacement unit to function properly, or damaged so badly that the unit is removed from the OOB but retains its cadre to build a replacement unit.

By way of explanation, the 51st Division has been removed from the OOB, but is presently being reformed using ex-POWs and new recruits, all built around a cadre of the units that survived Barnstorf and the like.

The division in which Hassler and Rosenberg first served is defunct, with not enough left to form a decent cadre, so the survivors were transferred to existing units, in the first instance, the 29th.

Having been made up to a decent strength, the 29th was again butchered and, as of this moment, is solely on the drawing board for a new division, built from scratch stateside.

the same applies to the 82nd, which was destroyed in combat early on in the new war. The 101st was the more viable [although technically the 82nd should remain and 101 become 82 by seniority]. it is only now that the US is reforming and training a brand new 82nd. to make up the deficiencies in the 101st strength, I believe I have disbanded existing airborne [not the 17th by memory] to bring them up to strength and maintain their para qualification.

Hope that helps :-)