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came across. ‘Their behaviourwas terrible!’ he noted. 14 ‘From all sides I heard that this was typical of the New Army Discipline, as a result of the Democratising of the Army.’ General Karslake also came to the conclusion that the men were being given excessive quantities of rations.
    After withdrawing from their original position in the Saar, the Highlanders had been isolated from the rest of the BEF by the German drive for the coast. They were dog tired, and their numbers were depleted by battle casualties. The commander, General Victor Fortune, called the front he was meant to hold south of the Channel coast ‘ridiculous’. His ‘dead beat’ men, he noted in a letter, had not had a proper night’s rest for six weeks. 15 The remnants of one battalion had sheltered under hedges from an air attack for ten minutes – as the bombs fell, the commanding officer and half his men fell asleep.
    ‘I feel it is time we explained to the [French] Commander-in-Chief and Army Commander that there is a limit to gambling with troops on a wide frontage,’ Fortune added ina report. ‘Also please some air [support]! . . . Forgive me for being vindictive but I do not want to see 51st destroyed and useless for the future which it will be at the present rate. I am quite willing to ask them for a good deal, but I think they have been asked for too much.’ Weygand took tocalling the Highlanders’ commander ‘Misfortune’. 16
    The division was ordered to head for the Channel coast to be evacuated. Its original destination was Le Havre, but this was switched to the small Norman port of St-Valéry-en-Caux. A fleet of rescue ships set out to pick it up. Most of the boats lacked wireless communications and, when fog covered the sea, they were cut off from one another. Forty thousand French troops on the flank surrendered, and Rommel’s Panzers occupied St-Valéry before the Highlanders could embark, shutting them into an isolated pocket. A few British troops escaped by running for six miles under machine-gun and mortar fire until they reached the port of Veules-les-Roses where ships were waiting. In all, this evacuation fleet took off 2137 British and 1184 French troops. But General Fortune was forced to surrender, and was photographed looking disconsolate on the quayside with a smiling Rommel beside him. Eight thousand British soldiers were taken prisoner. Churchill called it a ‘brutal disaster’. Half a century later, a granite monument was erected on the towering white cliffs overlooking the pebble beach from which the Scottish division had not escaped, with the inscription ‘In proud and grateful memory of the 51st (Highland) Division who gave their lives during the war 1939–45’. Down below, one of the main streets in St-Valéry is named
l’Avenue de la 51ème
.
    An ill-equipped scratch force known as the Beauman Division, from the name of its commander, was put togetherfrom various British units to help defend the Norman capital of Rouen on the River Seine. Thinly stretched over a fifty-mile front, it was told to destroy bridges, and lay anti-tank mines. A sergeant with the division noted in his diary that, as they moved to the front, they passed a stream of French refugees who put their thumbs up, ‘even the kids’. In villages, girls blew them kisses. But they were soon swept back by the Panzer advance – in all, the division had just twenty anti-tank guns.
    Further forward, the 1st Armoured Division, which had been sent to France in the spring, had never had time to organise itself properly. One brigade only got its equipment a day or two before crossing the Channel. Bicycles for messengers were still in their wrappings. None of the men had been trained tofire an anti-tank gun. 17
    The divisional commander, Roger Evans, decided to make a stand on the railway east of Rouen. Weygand told him that the struggle for the city would be decisive. Since the French could not produce any more troops for their Tenth Army in