Pillar of Fire

Early in May 1940, after months of phoney war, the armies of the Third Reich burst out of the Ardennes into northern France. Brilliantly conceived and executed, Operation Sichelschnitt was one of the most astonishing military plans of all time.
Cutting through weak French defences, Rommel's panzers raced for the Channel behind the main British and French armies. Over 300,000 men were taken off the beaches of Dunkirk, and it was they who became the nucleus of the armies which swept Nazism from Europe in 1944 and '45.
Pillar of Fire: Dunkirk 1940 is a unique, soldier's-eye view of this extraordinary story, making sense of the chaos and anarchy of an army in defeat in the words of those who lived through those tumultuous weeks.
Praise for Pillar of Fire: Dunkirk 1940:
’This is a superb book because it is literally written by the men who experienced the debacle that was the "Phoney War" and the blitzkrieg in the West. It flows easily through the lack of preparedness, the flawed tactics, the lack of co-operation between the Allies and the ultimate tragedy and heroism, farce and surrealism that was the disembarkation of the British forces at Dunkirk. I cannot recommend it highly enough...’ - Amazon review
‘An exceptional book with first-hand accounts of what really happened, this book is a shocking account of the hell of the battle of France and the evacuation’ - Amazon review
Ronald Atkin is a British journalist and author.