http://www.wargamer.com/articles/general-montgomery-and-the-fighting-retreat-to-dunkirk-may-1940/
“With the British Expeditionary Force now in their positions along the River Dyle following the German break through at Sedan, the British faced their first serious clash with the invading Germans on 14 May. General Von Bock’s troops tried to take the town of Louvain but Montgomery calmly responded by calling down a massive artillery bombardment on them from his 60 pounder heavy guns. This caught the German troops in the open and quickly turned back their assault. On 26 May, the Germans conducted a reconnaissance in force against the British. The following day, they launched a fierce three division assault on the British lines south of the town of Ypres. The attack too was soon beaten back. However, with the sudden and unexpected Belgian capitulation by their King, Leopold, there was suddenly a 20 mile long hole along the British left flank between their lines and those of the French, located along the channel at Nieuport. With inadequate forces at his disposal to plug the gap. II Corps Commander General Alan Brooke was forced to order Montgomery’s 3rd Infantry Division on the southernmost right flank of the pocket to conduct a night time 25 mile road march with his entire 13,000 man division from one end of the British perimeter to the other, oftentimes over unfamiliar roads while traveling extremely close to the German lines. The night march had to be made in order to avoid both day time German observation as well as air attacks on Montgomery’s troops while they were strung out along the roads. In the late afternoon of 27 May the 3rd Division’s armored cars, machine gun vehicles as well as 2,000 lorries, vans and troop carriers of all kind moved out onto the road as darkness descended upon the region. With next to no illumination to speak of other than the lively flashes of British artillery firing from nearby Mount Kemmel to guide them, the division made its way to the opposite side of the British perimeter where it arrived before first light. Arriving on his divisional front Montgomery was shocked to learn the Belgians had surrendered. This left him with an additional 13 miles of strategically important territory to defend. Montgomery later recalled: “Here was a pretty pickle! Instead of having the Belgian Army on my left, I now had nothing.” Montgomery quickly threw together an ad hoc force of British and French armored cars, Bren machine gun carriers, and a handful of infantry to guard the key bridges and road junctions along the recently evacuated line, eventually tying in with their French allies at the towns of Wulpen and Nieuport on the channel. Even then it was all an extremely close run business. An engineer from the 12th Lancers only just managed to blow up the bridge at Dixmude in the face of Von Bock’s quickly advancing infantry to keep it from falling into German hands. The seizure of this bridge could have cracked the Allied line wide open.”
Repost of mine from a thread last week:
For the amount of money spent I thought it was a shame that Nolan didn’t do a better job. I appreciate the importance of Dunkirk and there are some good scenes, but overall this movie is bad.
1. Super Loud. Thankfully I had read a review before I went recommending earplugs so I took some. I heard all of the dialog just fine - it was that loud. Much of the “music” didn’t fit with the scenes, and during some of the “non action” scenes there was super loud background noise that was not linked to anything (such as combat, boat motor, etc.) just this meaningless body jarring booming noise.
2. Sorry, but the three plot thing just didn’t work and the acting was deadpan horrible. I don’t know much about movie editing, but I believe that I could do a better job of making the movie flow better and making more efficient use of the hour and a half.
3. Technical. Where to begin. The movie industry must take us for total buffoons, and maybe most of “us” are. The so called air combat scenes were a joke. The fighters never did more than some lazy “S” turns. No hard G turns, pitch ups, split S, etc. Go watch some gun camera footage on youtube to get an idea of real ACM. After the spitfire ditching scene I could hardly stay for the rest of the movie. The whole drama of the sinking aircraft with the pilot stuck with a closed canopy went on and on and on. Sink and drown or get rescued already. Besides, the entire premise of that scene was bogus. Look at any photo of WWII type aircraft landing on carriers and the canopy will be OPEN. One of the first things you learn in prop aircraft (and some early jets without canopy jettison systems) was when taking off/landing on a carrier or when ditching is to have the CANOPY OPEN for the very reason that it might jam.
In another situation about 10 soldiers were hiding on the fishing boat waiting for the tide to come in and the Germans were taking pot shots at it. As the tide came in and water started coming in through the bullet holes, when there was several hundred gallons of water sloshing around, one of the soldiers said “one of us has to get off” so that the boat can float. I laughed out loud. This created the whole drama scene where the French soldier posing as a Brit was found out. A gallon of water weighs 8.5 lbs so even 200 hundred gallons would be 1,700 lbs, so one man at 150 lbs would be meaningless.