Evacuation will not (repeat not) take place, and craft required for above purpose are to return to Dover. Verity and Windsor to cover Commander minesweeping and his retirement.

Calais was the crux. Many other causes might have prevented the deliverance of Dunkirk, but it is certain that the three days gained by the defence of Calais enabled the Gravelines waterline to be held, and that without this, even in spite of Hitler’s vacillations and Rundstedt’s orders, all would have been cut off and lost.

* * * * *

Upon all this there now descended a simplifying catastrophe. The Germans, who had hitherto not pressed the Belgian front severely, on the 24th of May broke the Belgian line on either side of Courtrai, which is but thirty miles from Ostend and Dunkirk. The King of the Belgians soon considered the situation hopeless, and prepared himself for capitulation.

By May 23 the First and Second Corps of the British Expeditionary Force, withdrawn by stages from Belgium, were back again on the frontier defences north and east of Lille, which they had built for themselves during the winter. The German scythe-cut round our southern flank had reached the sea, and we had to shield ourselves from this. As the facts forced themselves upon Gort and his headquarters, troops had successfully been sent to positions along the canal line La Bassée-Béthune-Aire-St. Omer-Watten. These, with elements of the French Sixteenth Corps, touched the sea at the Gravelines waterline. The British Third Corps was responsible in the main for this curled-in flank facing south. There was no continuous line, but only a series of defended “stops” at the main crossings, some of which, like St. Omer and Watten, had already fallen to the enemy. The indispensable roads northward from Cassel were threatened. Gort’s reserve consisted only of the two British divisions, the 5th and 50th, which had, as we have seen, just been so narrowly extricated from their southerly counterattack made at Arras in forlorn fulfilment of the Weygand plan. At this date the total frontage of the B.E.F. was about ninety miles, everywhere in close contact with the enemy.

To the south of the B.E.F. lay the First French Army, having two divisions in the frontier defences and the remainder, comprising eleven divisions in no good shape, cramped in the area north and east of Douai. This army was under attack from the southeast claw of the German encirclement. On our left the Belgian Army was being driven back from the Lys Canal at many places, and with their retirement northward a gap was developing north of Menin.

In the evening of the 25th, Lord Gort took a vital decision. His orders still were to pursue the Weygand plan of a southerly attack towards Cambrai, in which the 5th and 50th Divisions, in conjunction with the French, were to be employed. The promised French attack northward from the Somme showed no sign of reality. The last defenders of Boulogne had been evacuated. Calais still held out. Gort now abandoned the Weygand plan. There was in his view no longer hope of a march to the south and to the Somme. Moreover, at the same time the crumbling of the Belgian defence and the gap opening to the north created a new peril, dominating in itself. A captured order of the German Sixth Army showed that one corps was to march northwestward towards Ypres and another corps westward towards Wytschaete. How could the Belgians withstand this double thrust?

Confident in his military virtue, and convinced of the complete breakdown of all control, either by the British and French Governments or by the French Supreme Command, Gort resolved to abandon the attack to the southward, to plug the gap which a Belgian capitulation was about to open in the north, and to march to the sea. At this moment here was the only hope of saving anything from destruction or surrender. At 6 P.M.