RETREAT HELL, WE JUST GOT HERE.

Blog number   186                                                              12 June 2008

In the beginning of WW 2, Norway was quickly overrun by the Germans, as was Poland, France, Belgium, Holland, et al.  Briton had a squadron of aircraft parked on a frozen lake in Norway, thirty - forty aircraft?  Anyhow, the Germans simply bombed the frozen lake and sank the whole squadron.

Briton didn't do too well in that war by itself, evidently.  Took a lot of punishment - more than it dealt out - due to infighting, carelessness, bad leadership, also et al.

Harold Nickolson, in his dairy wrote, "It is perhaps fortunate that the British Expeditionary Force is so good at retreating, since that is mostly what they do.

It is not just in the European theater that the British were so ill thought of.  Gen. Stillwell in Burma also had the same trouble with them.  Bad leadership, quick to retreat.

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Clare Boothe, American Journalist was driven around the Maginot Line - a series of French fortresses and pill boxes designed to keep the Germans on their own side of the fence.  It was a magnificent fortification and the French were quite proud of it. 

Since it was obviously impregnable, Boothe asked if the Germans couldn't simply come some other way. 

The commandant and his subordinates laughed.  "What other way?

"Holland?  Belgium?"

They laughed some more.  "The Germans are stupid, but not that stupid."

Of course, that's the way the Germans came.
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