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

being surrounded before it could fall back to the coast. The situation could
hardly have been worse.
Yet it did not stop the Prime Minister, fresh from his latest trip to Paris,
ordering Gort to counter-attack not on 26 May, but immediately, with eight
British and French divisions and the Belgian Cavalry Corps on the right.
‘Here are Winston’s plans again,’ railed Pownall. ‘Can nobody prevent him
from trying to conduct operations himself as a super Commander-in-Chief?
How does he think we are to collect eight divisions and attack as he
suggests? Have we no front to hold (which if it cracked would let in the
flood?) He can have no conception of our situation and condition. Where
are the Belgian Cavalry Corps? How is an attack like this to be staged
involving three nationalities at an hour’s notice? The man’s mad.’
It was true the British and Belgians had been holding off the Germans
reasonably well in the north up until then. But, of course, Army Group B
was largely infantry and almost completely so now that two of its three
panzer divisions had swung south. Thus it had to move mostly on foot and
this took time. Unteroffizier Hellmuth Damm and his machine-gun
company in the 56th Infantry Division had managed to commandeer some
bicycles – they discovered there were many around – and that made life
considerably easier for them. As Gruppe leader, he took a baker’s bicycle,
which had three wheels and a pannier on which he managed to set his heavy
MG08s and ammunition cases.
The division had been part of Sixth Army but on the 19th it was
attached to Eighteenth Army instead and so now was advancing almost due
west towards Ghent and Dunkirk – and facing the men of the BEF. On the
20th, Hellmuth watched the unusual spectacle of the division’s artillery
marching past its infantry to take the vanguard of their advance. It then
hammered the Belgian positions and the infantry followed. Hellmuth read
this unorthodox practice as a sign of the Germans’ dominance and their
mounting confidence. He and his men then found themselves in a ‘resting
position’ near Opdorp, some thirty miles east of Ghent, for a couple of
days. It gave them a much needed respite. By the 22nd, they were moving
forward again, however, this time to attack Ghent. The town fell to 56th
Division the following day.
Leutnant Siegfried Knappe and his 24th Artillery Battalion were now in
France at long last. As part of Army Group A, they had taken part in what