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

Nonetheless, it wasn’t all bad, and although tactically the British army
had barely moved forward, its kit was quite impressive. For starters, it was
in relative terms far more mechanized than the German army. Its field and
anti-aircraft guns were good, and most of the tanks were on a par with the
majority of German panzers. The Bren light machine gun, of which there
was one per section of ten men, was an excellent and reliable piece of kit,
while the Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle was as good as any in the world,
with a short bolt that meant a reasonable marksman could fire twice as
many rounds per minute as his German equivalent could with the Mauser
K.98. Furthermore, the majority of soldiers in the BEF were now dressed in
the modern 1937 pattern battledress, a warm and practical uniform that was
light and allowed greater freedom of movement. Both German and French
troops, on the other hand, were still dressed in traditional-style, heavily
tailored tunics.
Yet because Britain had only lately decided to build up the strength of
its army, the BEF’s contribution – on the ground at any rate – was small. By
May 1940, the BEF’s nine divisions in France were fewer than the ten the
Dutch had mobilized, and under half the twenty the Belgian army could
field. The French, on the other hand, had three groups of armies on the
North-East Front alone, containing no fewer than sixty-six divisions at the
front with a further eighteen in reserve.
Since both Holland and Belgium, as neutrals, had made it clear they
would remain so unless their countries were invaded, they had not become
involved in any planning discussions about what should be done if
Germany launched an attack in the west. Thus France and Britain, as allies,
had prepared for a German attack together, while the Dutch and Belgians
worked on their own, separate plans of action.
Yet there could be no doubting that in such preparations Britain was
very much the junior partner. The BEF was effectively just one of five
armies that made up Général Gaston Billotte’s No. 1 Army Group, part of
Général Georges’s North-East Front. However, Gort was under the
command not of Billotte, the Army Group Commander, but of Georges.
Above Georges was Général Gamelin, the Supreme French Commander.
Gort was ordered to carry out ‘loyally’ any instructions given to him by
Georges in ‘pursuit of the common object, the defeat of the enemy’. There
was a get-out clause, however. ‘If any order given by him appears to you to
imperil the British Field Force,’ his written instructions decreed, ‘it is