Red Berets – June 1944: A French S.A.S. Paratrooper's Account

On the night of 5 to 6 June 1944, as the Allied armada approached the Normandy coastline, 36 Frenchmen were dropped behind enemy lines. They belonged to the 2nd Parachute Hunter Regiment attached to the British Special Air Service (the famous S.A.S.). Their mission: to prepare the arrival of their unit in Brittany.

Nearly 450 French paratroopers were dropped in the days and weeks following D-Day. Taking full part in Operation Overlord, their mission was to harass the enemy's rear areas in order to keep the 85,000 Germans stationed in Brittany well away from the Normandy front.

Henry Corta was one of them. Dropped on 7 June 1944, he took part in all the major engagements of this unit, which would be awarded the Croix de la Libération by General de Gaulle. From 1945 onwards, drawing on archives, his own memories and those of his comrades, he began writing Bérets rouges. In it he retraces the adventure of the French S.A.S. between 1941 and 1945, in Libya, Tunisia, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Regarded as one of the finest accounts of this epic, this book, published in 1952 by the Association of Former S.A.S. Paratroopers, recalls the still too little-known role played by these French soldiers on D-Day.