Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
Keep in mind that French divisions are smaller and are more like large brigades - but you are right about them being undermanned
Clearly the French have taken a lot of casualties
I dont see the FAR transferring men back to France - remember even the French dont have a lot of oil - if you read Going Home helos and armor patrols only happened if someone had a damn good reason - i.e. they had oil and gas but not a lot of it
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I'm not suggesting there's regular movement between the Middle East and France. I think it's more likely that some of the troops assigned to the FAR never left France in the first place. Remember the occupation of the Dead Zone predates the French deployment to the Middle East, so it's possible that parts of the FAR were already committed in Europe before the Mid East deployment came up.
It seems to me that the most likely areas for the French to have suffered significant casualties are either the invasion of West Germany / the Netherlands (and subsequent actions) where they were in combat against the Dutch and (presumably) German Armies (iirc published material is a little light on details of what German units might have been involved) or losses incurred as a result of the nuclear attacks on France (of which we know there were some, just not the details).
Also worth considering that the French Army of T2K would have had large numbers of conscripts, which raises the question of what desertion rates would have been like?