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

followed a lead, they arrived to discover the French general had already
moved on, without notifying Gort or his staff. Late that night, they even
found themselves following a false trail to Dunkirk. ‘Much of the town was
in flames,’ noted Henry Pownall, ‘and falling houses blocked the roads,
bodies of civilians were lying in the streets.’ They also learned that the port
had been destroyed and was thus unusable. It did not make them sanguine.
Without ever catching up with Blanchard, they returned to the new HQ at
Houtkerque at 3 a.m.
Plenty of troops were already moving that night of the 27th/28th,
however, some back to Dunkirk, others to fill the gap left by the retreating
Belgians. Even before news of their planned capitulation arrived it had
become necessary to urgently plug the gap on the north-east part of the line.
General Brooke, the commander of II Corps, which was now holding the
northern British front, had held a conference with his commanders early
that morning. His three divisions were spread out from west of Menin to the
east of Lille, but now some complicated movements were needed. In the
middle, 4th Division was to move back a short distance behind the River
Lys around the village of Warneton. As the new battalion adjutant, Second
Lieutenant Norman Field had an important role to play in getting the 2nd
Royal Fusiliers back to the Lys as part of 4th Division’s move. Vehicles
were brought up and by 11 p.m. the companies along the Comines Canal
around Halluin began to be thinned out. The rain helped keep the enemy at
bay, although it made life miserable for the men.
Major-General Bernard Montgomery’s 3rd Division, however, then at
the bottom of II Corps’s line, was to swing behind 4th and 5th Divisions
and fill the hole on 5th Division’s left flank. This was a major operation,
which involved moving the entire division some fifty miles. In order to
achieve this, it was decided to abandon its medium guns and for the infantry
to do away with any kit that was not absolutely necessary so as to cram
them into the available vehicles. Passing under the noses of the Germans,
on a wet and windy pitch black night, it was much to Montgomery’s credit
and his powers of organization that this was successfully achieved. It
certainly gave the BEF a day’s grace on the northern front.