5. General Ismay at the War Cabinet that morning: “The French were disinclined to retire, but Lord Gort was urging them to come back as the British could not wait for them” (CAB 65/13, WM 146).

6. Churchill to Ismay, CA 20.13. In a later letter to the prime ministers of the Dominions about the air fighting over Dunkirk, Churchill wrote that Dunkirk was a sort of no-man’s-land.

7. “It brings me to the fact that the Bosches may equally well be able to land men in England despite the bombing. Had the Germans had any Navy they might have upset our embarkation. What have their submarines been doing?” (The Ironside Diaries).