The Need for Organisational Resilience - Chapter 7

Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the encircled Allied Armies, was completed on

June 4th. Around 400,000 troops made it back to Britain.

Vast amounts of equipment had to be left by the evacuating British and French. (BArch, n.d.)

One hundred and ten thousand French soldiers were repatriated to the south via the

Normandy and Brittany ports to bolster the Weygand line. The line of fortified positions

running along the river Somme was manned by a depleted French Army, consisting of some

40 divisions plus the remains of three armoured divisions. To offset the weakness of a

continuous line, the French Command pursued a ‘hedgehog’ strategy of mobile defence in

depth. For that purpose three groupements de manoeuvre were established. At 04:00 on June 5 th , the German offensive started with preparatory artillery fire and

aerial attacks: Fall Rot (Operation Red). By noon, the German armoured divisions were 10

km ahead of their infantry units, and were greeted by fierce resistance from the French

defenders. Captain Jungenfeld, 1st Battalion, 4th Panzer described the events:

Our tanks were greeted with truly hellish gunfire. In a trice the first of them, caught in the

cross-fire, were in flames. The position was far from heartening … Now it was up to our

artillery to deal with the French; their defence was really very strong, and we had very

little ammunition for the guns on our tanks. It was exactly noon – 11:00, French time. A

long day still lay ahead of us, and there was no telling how much longer the enemy’s

blocking fire would keep us from our supply line. (Benoist-Méchin 1956, 243)

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