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

Blanchard still felt the situation was useless when a liaison officer
arrived from Général René Prioux, now commanding First Army. Prioux,
apparently, also thought a withdrawal was impossible – his men were too
tired; an evacuation could not be made from Dunkirk in any case; it wasn’t
worth the effort involved. Blanchard backed up Prioux’s decision then
asked Gort whether he still intended to withdraw on his own. Yes, Gort
replied. So that was that – the First Army would have to be left to its fate.
‘So ended the meeting,’ noted Pownall. ‘Except for one or two excited
moments, there was no unfriendliness and we said goodbye quite cordially.
But Blanchard is a professor, no general, and the situation was much too big
for him to compete with.’
In the south, Guderian’s panzers, now that they had been allowed to move
forward, were taking a back seat. In reserve now was 10th Panzer, while 1st
and 2nd Panzer pressed on towards Dunkirk and the 20th Motorized
Division, with the SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler and Grossdeutschland
Regiments subordinated to it, was pushing hard against the British line.
Guderian still hoped to reach Dunkirk, but his part in Germany’s
miraculous victory was now almost done. His panzers could play a
supporting role, but it was infiltration by the infantry that was going to clear
the kind of stubborn, dug-in defence they were now encountering. There
were ugly scenes too. On the 28th, eighty POWs from the 2nd Royal
Warwickshire Regiment were executed by Waffen-SS troops of the SS-
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Regiment, while further south, near Merville,
SS-Totenkopf troops also massacred ninety-seven men of the 2nd Royal
Norfolks. Hans-Ekkehard Bob may have been suffused with a sense of
knightly chivalry, but not so these men, many of whom had carried out
multiple executions of Jews and others during the Polish campaign.
The Totenkopf was still part of Panzer Corps Hoth, but no longer
subordinated to Generalmajor Rommel, whose 7th Panzer was pushing a
wedge between the British 42nd Division – where novice infantryman Sid
Nuttall was still fighting – and the French First Army to the northwest of
Lille. Early that morning they had blocked the arterial road that led to
Dunkirk – so Prioux’s men would have had to fight their way north anyway.
Hauptmann Hans von Luck had still barely stopped moving since 10 May,
despite being wounded in the hand a week earlier. Having worn a sling for a
few days, he had carried on regardless and by now was managing with just