On 12 June 1940, more than a week after the last British troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk, the 51st (Highland) Division was forced to surrender to General Erwin Rommel's 7th Panzer Division at St Valery-en-Caux. More than 10,000 members of the Division were driven into five years of captivity in prison camps. Down to their last few rounds of ammunition, desperately short of food and sleep after 12 days of remorseless combat, the soldiers and their brave commander, General Victor Fortune, were still full of fight, but the odds against them were overwhelming. Drawing upon over 100 personal interviews with survivors of the battle, upon unit war diaries, personal letters and journals, as well as official documents and reports, the author traces the story of the Highland Division from its arrival in France, through the excitement of patrol operations in front of the Maginot Line and its magnificent defensive battles on the Somme and the Bresle, to the final, desperate stand in the little Norman seaport of St Valery. This book gives a historian's view of the political background which led to the decision to sacrifice the Division, despite protestations of many generals, in the hope of persuading the French to fight on in the Battle of France - which, in truth, was already irretrievably lost - and to demonstrate to the world that Britain was standing firm by her ally.
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About the Author
Saul David is the acclaimed author of the Brassey's title Mutiny at Salerno: An Injustice Exposed, as well as Military Blunders: The How and Why of Military Failure. The author's most recent book The Indian Mutiny: 1857 (Penguin, 2003) has been a paperback bestseller.
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