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

14
Decisions
THE MIRACLE HAD HAPPENED. The gamble had paid off. Late on Monday, 20
May, having advanced more than 250 miles in ten days, troops of Panzer
Corps Guderian had reached the Channel coast near Abbeville. Battles and
campaigns rarely, if ever, go according to plan, least of all when they are
carried out with so many pitfalls and obstacles to overcome, and when so
reliant on luck and on the incompetence of the enemy. Yet, to all intents and
purposes, that was what had happened.
Now caught in the mightiest encirclement ever in military history were
more than 1.7 million men: the Dutch army, already in German hands, the
entire Belgian army, one French army and large proportions of four others,
and nearly all the British Expeditionary Force of half a million men – all
trapped with their backs to the sea. And just ten divisions out of Germany’s
135 available for the offensive were all it had taken to achieve this
extraordinary panzer drive to the coast. The stupefied French, stunned to
see German tanks and vehicles having advanced so far so quickly, seemed
to have been powerless to stop them.
Guderian and his men were euphoric about their incredible
achievement, but had no idea what they were supposed to do next. No plan
had been made; neither von Kleist, nor von Rundstedt, nor von Brauchitsch
or even Hitler himself had dared believe such rapid progress was possible.
Thus he and his men had to impatiently twiddle their thumbs while they
awaited new orders. Visiting 2nd Panzer Division he had asked an Austrian
soldier how they had ‘enjoyed’ the operations to date. ‘Not bad,’ the soldier
told him, ‘but we wasted two days.’
While Guderian’s men were kicking their heels near Abbeville on the 21st,
the great Allied counter-attack was getting underway – except that it was
barely a counter-attack at all; more a kind of demonstration. Only two
British columns, each consisting of an infantry and armoured battalion, a
battery of field artillery and anti-tank guns, and a few recce motorcycles,
and a few French tanks were all that had been allocated for the task. In