Posted by Allen on 5/26/2003, 11:52 am "He[Guderian] wanted to be a part of the action. He went down to the river[the Meuse], crossed it, and joined Balck's regiment. On the far bank, he was greeted by the regiment's commander with the words, 'Joyriding in canoes on the Meuse is forbidden!' This was the same expression Guderian had used in one of the precombat exercises months before to dampen what he thought was the 'lighthearted' attitude of the division's younger officers." The author tells of how on May 14th, von Rundstedt visited the site of a pontoon bridge laid the day before, "Guderian talked with him right in the middle of the Gaulier bridge while an air attack was in progress. Rundstedt asked dryly: 'Is it always like this here?' Guderian could only reply, yes, it was". The author relates how by the 17th, some German formations didn't even bother to encode radio trasnsmissions. There's quite a bit about Operation Dynamo, which was named for the room in Dover Castle which Ramsey used as headquaters. I had not known that prior to the war, Dunkirk was the third largest port in France with seven deepwater basins, four dry docks, and five miles of quays. All of the facilities had, of course, been wrecked by German bombardment. In addition to embarking troops from the beach, the British also used the east breakwater, or mole, to serve as a pier from which troops could march directly aboard by gangplank. The east breakwater extended over a half mile into the sea(the approach to the west breakwater was blocked by a burning tank farm.) This allowed a destroyer to take on a load of 600 men in 20 minutes compared to the 12 hours necessary to bring that number aboard off the beach by life boats. A Military Police lieutenant, Harold J. Dibbens got the idea of pushing trucks out into the surf and planking them over to form makeshift piers. Fifteen of these were built at this time(May 31st) allowing the shallower draft boats to avoid being grounded. "Unfortunately, however, the makeshift piers fell apart when the tide swirled back in, causing the trucks to float and rock, and junk to spill into the surf and often into the propeller driven boats. The makeshift piers would have to be repaired at low tide". Dr. Powaski does not provide a proper bibliography which makes finding the source of a citation a matter of reading back through the endnotes to find it's first instance. I blame the publisher. Anyway, "Pillar of Fire: Dunkirk 1940" by Ronald Atkin looks like it might be a good read for some personal rememberances of the fighting men - as opposed to the grand strategy.
162.40.96.133
I've just finished Ronald Powaski's "Lightning War: Blitzkrieg in the West, 1940". I guess everyone here is familiar with the campaign, but the author does provide some interesting information.
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