Word: dunkirks
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...armies of the North. Privately, he said "Militarily the situation cannot be repaired." On May 28, finding his Army swamped by refugees, overpowered by Germans, apparently destined only to fight a rear guard action for the British, King Leopold of the Belgians surrendered. On June 3, the evacuation of Dunkirk by the Allies was completed, leaving the materiel of four armies and scores of thousands of prisoners in German hands...
First, they hoped to crush the troops' morale in Flanders. "Far from collapsing, the morale of our troops and of our country proved worthy of our ancestors. The heroism of the combats in Flanders and of the battles in Dunkirk belongs to history. The greatness of our military chiefs magnificently revealed itself in those days." The second aim was to break the morale of Paris from the air. "A few minutes after [last week's] bombing I saw on the spot the proud faces of our men and women workers of Paris who cannot tremble...
...George VI, target for the first time last fortnight of direct Nazi press attacks, congratulated his troops and their French allies upon their valiant retreat from Dunkirk, visited an arms factory to observe munition-making gains, fired a target full of creditable holes with a Bren...
Leopold's case: "The time comes when a man has to decide between sacrificing life and holding out as a theatrical gesture." Thousands of Belgian refugees poured back from Dunkirk, Calais, other cities to which they had fled, looking along gutted streets for lost husbands, wives, parents, children. The King had to appeal to the International Red Cross to see to the safety of his own three small, motherless children. No one seemed to know where Crown Prince Baudouin Albert, aged 9, and his brother and sister were. Paris said in Rome; Berlin said in southern France...
Before the evacuation of Dunkirk was completed he predicted that the Germans would strike directly at France within five days. Before the Germans gained much ground on the Somme, Canadian headlines exulted over Allied planes bombing Berlin, and Allied guns blasting Nazi tanks, but Plewman wrote dispassionately: "Whether the Allied Air Forces can give enough help to enable the French Army to stand its ground during the rest of the week is un certain. . . . The French may have to evacuate the Peronne salient and fall back on positions probably well prepared along the Compiegne-Montdidier line...