[Asheshouse]

I've just finished reading two volumes of General Edward Spears book, "Assignment to Catastrophe" published in 1954. This is an excellent and very readable first hand account of the Battle of France from the perspective of the High Command. Spears, a former army officer, but then a member of parliament, was appointed by Churchill to provide liaison between himself and the French premier Reynaud. As such he was present at many key meetings which decided allied actions in the battle and was in personal contact with most of the key figures including Reynaud, Weygand, who was the commander in chief, and Petain.

Spears is very scathing of the efforts made by the French military to stem the disaster. His view is that the French forces were poorly lead and in particular the logistic support required to supply replacement and new equipment to the front line was almost non existent. The French seem to have been overcome by a collapse of moral and an air of defeatism in the commanders long before the troops on the ground were actually defeated.

The campaign seems to have ended with a complete collapse of order and discipline in the French army.

The last part of the book deals with de Gaulle arranging with Spears to be flown to England in order to continue resistance. Had he stayed in France it is likely that he would have been arrested by the Vichy Government, Weygand had already accused him of disobeying orders in seeking to transfer forces to Africa. Other members of the Reynaud government who contnued to advocate resistance were arrested and subsequently murdered by the Vichy government.

Weygand seems to have been a very unfortunate individual to have gained control of the armed forces at such a critical time. He was expressing defeatist views almost from the moment he took command and seems to have been more interested in maintaining his own reputation than in addressing the crisis. His total lack of attention to logistical support and apparent lack of effort in gathering together fragmented troops to form an effective reserve must remain as one of the principal reasons for the allies defeat.

Prior to reading these books I had thought that RAF involvement in France largely ended with Dunkirk. This is not the case though, since RAF squadrons continued to be based in France and additional squadrons carried out "day trips", refuelling and rearming in France, but returning to England at the end of the day. This whole campaign provides a wealth of scope for mission scenarios covering both air superiority tasks and ground attack, with the two opposing sides being reasonably well balanced in numbers if not in quality of aircraft.

My next read is Alistair Hornes "To Lose a Battle", which deals with much more of the tactical detail of the campaign.