157th HAA Battery Diary entry 30 April 1940

All remains quiet on the Western Front with only 10 days to go before the German invasion.  None of those involved in digging trenches and building huts on the airfields of the AASF would believe that all this work, undertaken on most days since October 1939 would be abandoned and France would be under German occupation from 20 June 1940.

I think it is clear from the daily routine of the soldiers of the BEF that the Generals were expecting a second war of attrition.  Whilst the British Army were digging their defences the French were sitting inside the "impregnable" Maginot Line content that the Germans would never get through.  As April comes to a close, although intelligence was suggesting that the Germans were preparing to attack, the Allied forces were preparing to defend.  The soldiers on the ground, such as Frank and his colleagues from the British Territorial Army (part time soldiers) had no idea of the storm that was about to hit them and the Generals had no idea of how quickly a battle could be lost when armoured fighting vehicles and aerial supremacy were deployed as the Germans did. 

Looking at the grand sweep of the history of Europe in the 20th Century from 2015, I think it is clear that the Battle of France 1940 was a continuation of World War I, which the German leadership felt had been left unfinished in 1918.  The French continued this during the 1920s and 30s with the building of the Maginot Line and the Germans with the develop of the tank warfare.  Taking this thought forward it was not until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s that Europe was truly at peace again after a war that started in 1914, or even the Prussian Wars of the 1870s.

However, back to April 1940 and the 157th HAA Battery were continuing to prepare for 
battle that they believed would last much longer than 6 weeks.

30/04/40
08:00 Seven guns ready for action.  Field works and hut construction continued.