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

21
Dunkirk: The End
LORD GORT WAS NOW preparing to leave. He didn’t want to; he wanted to
stay to the bitter end. But he received a personal message from Churchill.
‘On political grounds,’ Churchill told him, ‘it would be a needless triumph
to the enemy to capture you when only a small force remained under your
orders.’ Before he departed, Gort was also ordered to make sure more
French were evacuated – in fact, on a fifty-fifty basis from now on. After a
cordial meeting and farewell with Admiral Abrial in the depths of Bunker
32, Gort then saw Fagalde and Général Blanchard, offering them both a
chance to join him on the journey to England. Both declined; then they
shared farewell toasts and promised to see each other in France soon, and
Gort returned to La Panne.
There, Gort summoned Major-General Alexander, commander of 1st
Division, who, he had decided, was to take over from him after his
departure. Brooke had already gone; so too had Adam. General Barker, the
commander of I Corps, whom he had originally had in mind, had seemed
nervy at a conference the previous evening. His hands had been shaking and
he’d made a bad joke about soon having dinner in a Schloss overlooking the
Rhine. Alexander, on the other hand, was utterly imperturbable, as he
proved when told of his new task. He would be serving under Abrial, Gort
told him, but also gave him an important get-out clause: should any order
which Abrial issued seem to him to be likely to imperil the safety of his
men, he could make an immediate appeal to London.
Even before Gort had left, Alexander went to Bastion 32 to see Abrial,
who was insisting on holding the perimeter indefinitely. He was also
suggesting a different perimeter, in which French troops would hold a line
from Gravelines to Bergues, and then a combined French and British force
would hold a reduced line up the Belgian border. Alexander was taken
aback by this suggestion to put it mildly. To start with, Gravelines had
fallen four days earlier, and secondly the British were already in Bergues
and all along the line to Nieuport in Belgium. In any case, a reduced
perimeter in the east of the line would expose the beaches to German