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

became like a rabbit trapped in headlights: scared, frozen to the spot and
unable to respond.
On the evening of 16 May, the BEF was ordered to fall back to the River
Escaut, the ‘E’ Line, just inside Belgium. It would be part of a collective
retreat but was necessary to ensure the British kept a straight front between
the Belgians to the north and the French First Army to the south. The move
was to take two days, and they would pause the first night along the River
Senne to the west of Brussels and then the second along the River Dendre, a
further twenty-five miles back. At Gort’s Command Post, his Chief of Staff,
General Pownall, wondered wearily whether it would be possible. ‘I don’t
see how we can get back again in two days in a hurry,’ he scribbled in his
diary, ‘especially as the roads are badly blocked with thousands of refugees
and we may be sure that we shall get properly bombed, which we didn’t on
the way up.’ To make matters worse, the truth about the German
breakthrough in the south had not become clear to all. ‘I hope to God the
French have some means of stopping them and closing the gap,’ scrawled
Pownall, ‘or we are bust.’