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eight more Fairey Battles. Seven were destroyed, mostly by ground fire.
    Allied aircraft attacking the Maastricht and Albert Canal bridges to the north-west also suffered heavily, but these attempts were too little and too late. The German Eighteenth Army was by now deep into Dutch territory, where resistance was crumbling. Reichenau’s Sixth Army was across the Albert Canal, bypassing Liège, while another corps advanced on Antwerp.
    The BEF, now established along the pitifully narrow River Dyle, and the French formations advancing to their positions received little attention from the Luftwaffe. This worried some of the more perceptive officers who wondered whether they were being drawn into a trap. The most immediate concern, however, was the French First Army’s slow progress, now made infinitely worse by the growing volume of Belgian refugees. There were many more waves to come as scenes observed in Brussels indicated. ‘ They walked, they rode in cars and carts or on donkeys, were pushed in bathchairs, even in wheelbarrows. There were youths on bicycles, old men, old women, babies, peasant women, kerchiefs covering their heads, riding on farm carts piled with mattresses, furniture, pots. A long line of nuns, their faces red with perspiration under their coifs, stirred the dust with their long grey robes… The stations were like drawings from those of Russia during the revolution, with people sleeping on the floor, huddled against the walls, women with weeping babies, men pale and exhausted.’
    On 12 May, both in Paris and in London, newspapers gave the impression that the German onslaught had been halted. The Sunday Chronicle announced ‘ Despair in Berlin ’. But German forces had crossed Holland to the sea, and the remnants of the Dutch army had pulled back into the triangle of Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam. General Giraud’s Seventh Army, having now reached southern Holland, continued to suffer heavy attacks by the Luftwaffe.
    In Belgium, General René Prioux’s Cavalry Corps, the advance guard of the delayed First Army, managed to beat back the over-extended German panzer units advancing on the Dyle line. But again Allied squadrons attempting to bomb bridges and columns were massacred by German light flak units with their quadruple 20mm guns.
    To the slight resentment of the German forces fighting to cross theMeuse, German news broadcasts emphasized only the battles in Holland and northern Belgium. Little was said about the main attack in the south. This was a deliberate part of the deception plan to distract the Allies’ attention from the Sedan and Dinant sectors. Gamelin still refused to acknowledge the threat to the upper Meuse despite several warnings, but General Alphonse Georges, the commander-in-chief of the north-eastern front, a sad-faced old general much admired by Churchill, intervened to give air priority to Huntziger’s sector around Sedan. Georges, who was detested by Gamelin, had never quite recovered from serious wounds to the chest in 1934 inflicted by the assassin of King Alexander of Yugoslavia.
    Matters were not helped by the confusing chain of command in the French army, largely designed by Gamelin in his determination to undermine the position of his deputy. But even Georges had reacted to the threat too late. French units north-east of the Meuse were pulled back across the river, some in complete disorder. Guderian’s 1st Panzer Division entered the town of Sedan against little opposition. The withdrawing French troops at least managed to blow the bridges at Sedan, but already German pioneer bridging companies had demonstrated their speed and skill.
    That afternoon, Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division also reached the Meuse downstream near Dinant. Although the Belgian rearguard blew up the main bridge, grenadiers from the 5th Panzer Division had discovered an old weir at Houx. Concealed by a heavy river mist that night, several companies managed to cross and establish a bridgehead.