7.Division had a good reputation within the Belgian army, but as was the case with so many Belgian units was below strength. Ten to fifteen per cent of its men were on leave or working as bricklayers or foresters, a shortfall of 2,000 men. Furthermore there was a certain “bureaucracy” in the transmission of orders, frequently an adverse factor for good organization.

The most extraordinary circumstance in this defensive design was that the monitoring, and if necessary destruction, of the bridges over the Albert Canal, the effective strongpoint of the Belgian defence, was not in the hands of 7.Division. The soldiers entrusted with this task for the bridges at Kanne, Lanaye and Petit Lanaye were under the direct orders of the commander of Fort Eben Emael and nobody else². The men responsible for the bridges at Briegden, Veldwezelt and Vroenhoven were under the orders of the Frontier Cyclists’ commander at Lanaken, a village well to the north of the “Albert Canal Defensive line”. The peculiar and complicated situation would have its fatal outcome when the Germans attacked and revealed to all and sundry that in the not very simple Belgian Army chain of command “something did not work right”.