Remedial Assault Hex Exiting

[cjsiam]

I believe the rules state something to the effect that ALL Demoralized units; first, roll for morale (to bring it up to "Disrupted"), failing that, the next step is the retreat step..... all Demoralized units MUST leave the assault hex. This MAY or MAY NOT be with a Leader.

Again, this leaves little room for "leaving a Demoralized unit behind".....", acccording to Hoyle, anyway.

I sometimes misread places in the rules where demoralized is construed, by me, to be a generic term rather than a specific term used to denote a more serious condition than merely Disrupted.

(I'm SOOOO confused!)

GG

You are still bound by the framework of the activation system. The units must activate to attempt recovery, it is not a free action, although it is a mandatory action at some point in the turn (unless cut off by Fog of War). The player agency enters the picture in how and when they choose to activate those demoralized units to recover/flee. If you have a stack of 2 x INF (dem), you can self activate one unit to attempt recovery, have it fail, and have it flee out of the assault hex, there is no free shot because there are still other friendly units in the hex. If you activate the stack to recover simultaneously, and they both fail, then they leave the hex in the same activation, and thus are both hit with the free shot.

All true....but...
1) you have to activate 1 unit at a time---1 per activation-- in order to run out a demoralized unit without chance of free shot in your example--RAW.
2) if you had a "un-demoralized" unit in the hex---you COULD NOT activate it at the same time as one of the DEM units--to move/fire:

  1.1 Summary of Concepts
Action Segments: In an action segment, a player can activate one unit, or a stack of units, or a leader and all units of his type (regular or tank) in his hex...

(Point being the above does not say "some units in the hex" it says "ONE", "a stack"(the units in the hex--ALL OF THEM), A leader and ALL UNITS of his type---
like ALL INF....

So you'd have to deal with those two demoralized units with two activations---independent of any other activations that are taking place.

3) So---Rules as written----given 1.1----is it even possible to activate a Leader and ONE of the DEM units?  I would say the 1.1 AS WRITTEN says NO.
The last phrase says "a leader and all units of his type".....Not some, not just one of the two DEM---it would have to be both?

--this cause me consternation as it's NOT how I've seen it played, or played it,---but---perhaps I/we've been wrong?

Aside--the FOW house rule I use when I play FOW REQUIRES rolls for recovery for Demoralized units IF they have not yet rolled during
normal turn, and FOW strikes....They do so without help of any leaders (if you wanted to do it, should have done it...).  Player agency to game the
demoralization by delaying until FOW by moving trucks, or whatever is lost---the point is they are demoralized, and you don't get to control what happens...
They are Gonna roll, like it or not.