KOMET’s Reviews > Assignment to Catastrophe, Volume 1, Prelude to Dunkirk, July 1939-May 1940 > Status Update

`"My job [as of May 30th, 1940] seemed odious. I talked while lives, younger and more valuable to the country than mine, were being destroyed. And it seemed suddenly unbearable to see at close hand the France I had cared for so very much collapsing before my eyes."
- p. 291.

`"That evening [May 29th, 1940] occurred one of the few pleasant incidents of this nightmare period. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the aviator, ... now a Captain in the French Air Force... asked me to dine in a small restaurant on the Avenue de la Grande Armée together with a cousin of his, a very charming woman... at whose houses I had met him several times in Paris and in the country before the war." -- p. 273.

`"[on May 27th, 1940]...I heard Weygand say to the Marshal [Pétain]: 'If only Gort [commander of British forces in France] had counter-attacked with more vigour,...the Belgians...might have resisted longer.' 'Mon Général, ' I broke in, 'that... is a very unfair comment. ... it is surely evident from the little we do know that Lord Gort...may be in a position to mitigate the blow dealt us by the Belgian collapse.'

".Weygand [General; the C.-in-C. of the French Army]... turned his head towards Reynaud [during a meeting on May 25, 1940 in Paris], and said with a voice like a saw on steel: 'This war is sheer madness, we have gone to war with a 1918 army against a German Army of 1939. It is sheer madness. What sort of air force have we got? ...; our tanks are inadequate and insufficient, ridiculously few in number.' " - p. 190.

"... the general impression [from the meeting of Parliament on May 7th, 1940] was that the Government was doomed. That the Prime Minister would be forced to reconstruct it, there was no doubt. Even the most fervent Conservatives agreed that most of the old gang must go, but would the Socialists serve under Chamberlain? If they would not, then he would have to resign." - p. 122.

"Tacitly admitting the impaired morale of the French nation, undermined by the constant reiteration that it was England's war and that Germany had no quarrel with France, [Prime Minister Paul} Reynaud argued [in March 1940] that German retaliation would hit France alone." - p. 95.

{Georges] "Mandel [then the French Minister for the Colonies as of November 1, 1939]... went on to say that it was imperative that the English should take over the direction of the war, and, as this rôle was apparently beyond Chamberlain, the sooner Churchill was in charge, the better." - p. 60

"A few days after this visit to Chartwell [where Spears had lunch with Winston Churchill on August 1st, 1939] I was in France with my car. Being convinced we should be at war in a few weeks and that this was likely to be my last holiday for years, I crossed the Channel on the day after the House adjourned for the recess." - p. 3