Word: belgians
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...follows: From the moment when the defenses at Sedan on the Meuse were broken at the end of the second week in May only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the south could have saved the British-French Armies who had entered Belgium at the appeal of the Belgian King...
This strategic fact was not immediately realized. The French High Command hoped it would be able to close the gap. The Armies of the north were under their orders. Moreover, a retirement of that kind would have involved almost certainly the destruction of a fine Belgian Army of 20 divisions and abandonment of the whole of Belgium...
...flooded and held by French troops. Thus the port of Dunkirk was held open. When it was found impossible for the Armies of the north to reopen their communications through Amiens with the main French Armies, only one choice remained. It seemed, indeed, a forlorn hope. The Belgian and French Armies were almost surrounded. Their sole line of retreat was to a single port and its neighboring beaches. They were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and were far outnumbered...
...escape of our Army with so many men, and the thankfulness of their loved ones, who passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster. The French Army has been weakened, the Belgian Army has been lost and a large part of those fortified lines upon which so much faith was reposed has gone, and many valuable mining districts and factories have passed into the enemy's possession...
Leopold's case: "The time comes when a man has to decide between sacrificing life and holding out as a theatrical gesture." Thousands of Belgian refugees poured back from Dunkirk, Calais, other cities to which they had fled, looking along gutted streets for lost husbands, wives, parents, children. The King had to appeal to the International Red Cross to see to the safety of his own three small, motherless children. No one seemed to know where Crown Prince Baudouin Albert, aged 9, and his brother and sister were. Paris said in Rome; Berlin said in southern France...