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

friends, Stan had been greatly relieved at the posting, and even more so
when on his arrival at 4th HAA Regiment he was told he would remain at
Regimental HQ working with the surveyors. He soon found that his
mapping skills from his scouting days were particularly useful.
There had been a noticeably restless air about Headquarters the previous
evening, but now, with the offensive underway at last, the place had become
a hive of activity. Halfway through a quickly snatched breakfast, orders for
the entire regiment to pack up and move out had reached them. The heavy
guns had been limbered up behind their lorries, while the men had loaded
themselves and their equipment into trucks.
By one o’clock, they were nearing the Belgian border. From the back of
his truck, Stan saw numerous border fortifications: trenches, wire
entanglements, pill boxes and tank traps, and then an air raid siren droned.
Stan found it quite a thrill to watch infantrymen scuttling into their trenches
with their rifles and machine guns. Their own convoy pulled off the road,
the vehicles taking cover under some trees. Grabbing ammunition and rifles
the men clambered down. ‘These precautions were in case the planes came
low enough for our rifle fire to be effective,’ noted Stan, ‘and also in case
they tried to land troops or spies by parachute.’
As they crossed the border into Belgium, they were greeted by waving
and cheering civilians, scenes that followed them as they trundled along the
dusty roads. Progress was slow because of the traffic, so that when they
finally stopped at around 9.30 that evening, they were only just outside
Tournai, less than twenty miles east of the French city of Lille. As they
clambered out of their trucks and began unlimbering the guns, a flight of
twelve German bombers flew over and were met by a hail of anti-aircraft
gunfire. Much to the gunners’ delight, one of the planes was hit.
Back across the English Channel, the news of the German offensive was not
slow in arriving. Neville Chamberlain had gone to bed the previous evening
humiliated and defeated and knowing it was almost certainly his last night
as Prime Minister. Yet when he was awoken shortly after 5.30 a.m., it was
to be told the Germans had attacked and that there was now a new crisis.
Winston Churchill, too, had been woken early, and he was immediately
confronted with reams of telegrams pouring in from the Admiralty, War
Office, and Foreign Office. At 6 a.m. and again twenty minutes later, he
spoke to the British Ambassador in Paris. The news was that Belgium and