The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

9
The Battle is Lost
ON 13 MAY, General Lord Gort moved with his Chief of Staff, Henry
Pownall, and a number of other select officers and staff to a new command
post in a small chateau in the village of Wahagnies, ten miles south of Lille,
but some thirty north-east of the rest of GHQ. In wishing to free himself
from the cramped hubbub at Habarcq, Gort was revealing one of the
fundamental problems of the BEF’s set-up in France – that it was far too
unwieldy and massively over-staffed. With his departure, some 250 staff
were left at BEF’s Headquarters under the effective control of two
lieutenant-colonels. Communications were already poor in France: there
were not enough radios, too many loops to go through to pass on whatever
information there was, and too much dependence on an inefficient civilian
telephone exchange. By moving to Wahagnies, however, Gort made the
system even worse. In the crucial days that followed, vital information
frequently failed to reach him or Pownall in time.
On the BEF’s front, things had been quiet that day, but it was clear by
evening that to the north of their positions the Belgians were struggling
against the weight of the northern German thrust. ‘All the Belgians seem to
be in panic,’ wrote General Pownall in his diary that night, ‘from the higher
command downwards. What an ally!’ Incredibly, the news of the German
crossings in the south had still not reached them.
Nor had the truth hit home at the Headquarters of the French High
Command. ‘It is not yet possible to determine the zone in which the enemy
will make his main attack’ was the conclusion of the final situation report at
Gamelin’s HQ. Only at Général Georges’s Headquarters of the North-East
Front was the penny beginning to drop. At around 3 a.m. on the morning of
14 May, Georges and his staff were gathered in the map-room, listening to
reports coming in and staring aghast at the map spread before them.
Georges, sitting in an armchair, looked deathly pale. ‘Our front has been
pushed in at Sedan!’ he mumbled, briefly rising. ‘There have been some
failures…’ He then slumped back into his chair and began to weep.