Les paras français du Jour J

They are a bit forgotten in the history of D-Day. On the night of June 5 to 6, 1944, while men of the 92nd and 101st airborne divisions, and those of the 6th British Airborne Divisions were about to jump over Normandy, thirty-six French commandos were dropped on Britain. They belonged to the Special Air Service (SAS), a unit of British Special Forces established in July 1941 and whose motto was “who dares wins”.

While their numbers were much smaller than that of their fellow paratrooper allies, their missions had no less capital: coordinate and lead the resistance – very active in this region – to prevent the Germans stationed there to go build troops already positioned on the coast or nearby. The thirty-six men who jumped were precursor elements; they had to create two bases for the arrival of the rest of the workforce and equipment in the following days to launch guerrilla operations and sabotage: Samwest in the BERT Duhault (Cotes d’Armor) and Dingson, in the forest of Saint-Marchel (Morbihan).