The BEF Marches into Belgium

This article appeared in The War Illustrated in late May 1940. When you read this article bear in mind what happened to the BEF just a week later. The view from early May 1940, without the knowledge of what was to come, is priceless.

Strict in her interpretation of neutrality, Belgium had permitted no preliminary consultations between her general and the Allied High Command. Nevertheless, the latter had prepared plans for the eventuality of the little country's invasion, and so the BEF wasted no time in proceeding to her succour.

Many a British Army has marched into Belguim - red coats and men in khaki, the veterans of Marlborough and Wellington, French, Plumer and Haig. But the British Army which crossed the frontier from France on Friday, 10 May, had left far behind the days of foot slogging and foot sore infantry. Gort's men sped over the long, straight roads in roaring tanks and armoured cars, in mile upon mile of rumbling motor lorries.

For eight months this great force had been encamped within a few miles of the frontier ready to counter just such a desperate lightening stroke as Hitler had now delivered. All through those eight months the men had looked across into the Belgian fields and villages and where only a short generation before their fathers had marched to ultimate victory. To cross that line had meant internment, but now it was obliterated. With the Germans thundering at his eatsern gates, King Leopold appealed to his father's ally for succour in Belgium's hour of tremendous danger. Within thirty minutes of that appeal the first British and French 'planes had flown into Belgium to make combat with the hordes of Nazi bombers. Within a few hours the men of the ground forces followed in their wake.

The frontier barriers were still in position when the vanguard of the British troops appeared in sight, but it was the work of a w moments to thrust them aside or even in some places uproot them in joyous frenzy of new-found fraternity. As the first detachment crossed the frontier saluted by the customs officers and gendarmerie, a sergeant yelled out to a platoon seated beside him in the motor -lorry, "Now we're in boys!" and to the Belgian girls who lined the footpath they shouted "Which way to Berlin?"

"Leading elements of the BEF, in co-operation with the French army, entered Belgium today," announced a communique issued by the British GHQ on that evening of the first day of real war on the Western Front. "They were accorded a great welcome by the Belgian population."

Wild enthusiasm, indeed, made the progress of the British one long triumphant procession. At the first Belgian village the inhabitants ran out with mugs of beer, which they offered to the soldiers; the older amongst the peasants no doubt remembered that the British soldier always has a thirst! Belgian girls tore sprigs of lilac from the roadside bushes and flung them in the path of the advancing cavalcade or rushed to hand them to the soldiers. Soon every lorry and many of the men were decorated with bunches of lilac, and the sinister shapes of the tanks and anti-aircraft guns were made gay with bunches of tulips, poses of lily-of-the-valley and trailing strands of creeper.

"The Belgians have been wonderful to us all along the route," one of the drivers told Paul Bewsher, special correspondent of the "Sunday Dispatch", on Saturday.


"Early this morning they brought out jugs of hot coffee which we gulped down as we stopped for a few minutes. The bakers brought us packets full of cakes and buns. At other places they gave us toffee and chocolate, and just outside this town they gave us a glass of beer. Though we been on the road since late last night with no stop for a meal, it has not been at all bad."