3381st Special Forces Battalion
Sarna News
Contents
Overview
The 3381st Special Forces Battalion was an elite formation within the Star League Defense Force, under the command of the Special Forces Command.[1]
History
Formed shortly before the Amaris Civil War, the 3381st was due to deploy into the Periphery as a part of the SLDF response to the Periphery Uprising when Stefan Amaris launched Operation APOTHEOSIS, his coup to take over the Terran Hegemony. The 3381st had been rotated onto Caph alongside another Special Forces Battalion, the 3378th, and several battalions of infantry in early December for several months of training exercises prior to their Periphery deployment. The 3381st and the bulk of the other units were still out in the field, deployed at company and battalion strength, when the Rim Worlds Republic forces headed up by the 118th Amaris Dragoons and the mercenary Salazar's Irregulars launched their attempt to secure Caph.[1]
Unfortunately for the Republican forces, the 3378th were on furlough in New Brunnel, the capital city of Caph, when the time came to launch APOTHEOSIS; more than that, the commanding officer of the 3378th, Major Derjan Sefik, had observed the Republican's movements, at first as a training exercise for his own troops, before becoming suspicious and redeploying his command to block any attack the Republicans might launch. Major Sefik's actions led to the 3378th thwarting the Republican attempts to secure the planetary HPG and led to a day-long battle for the capital.[1]
The planetary ruler, Duchess Micha Confalonieri, announced that the Rim Worlds Republic forces were on Caph as liberators, and that the people shouldn't participate in armed resistance. This caused the level of support from the citizenry for the SLDF forces on Caph to drop to token levels during the defense of New Brunnel, and the Republican forces initially met little or no resistance elsewhere on Caph during the first few days. That soon changed; the 3381st and the other SLDF forces which had been deployed in the field began to launch attacks against Republican bases and to ambush and wipe out small detachments of Republican troops. This began a spiralling campaign of attack and counterattack that culminated in the commander of the 118th Amaris Dragoons, Colonel Orestes Tomasevi, ordering that the barriers that surrounded many Caphian settlements be destroyed or deactivated, giving the local megafauna free reign. In doing so, Tomasevi hoped to both punish the native population for hiding the SLDF, while also limiting the areas within which the 3381st and other forces could safely operate.[1]