[DirtyDick]

Hello Geoff

I am actually part Scots and have a Scottish surname (I do not mention it when football is involved, though!).

I think man-for-man the British regular army was as good as ever, with long-serving soldiers, some of whom had experience of active service in Palestine and India. So too was the Lee Enfield with which it was equipped and various pieces of ordnance like tanks and artillery.

However, it was padded out with badly trained and equipped territorials -who were thought to have sufficient time to be fully trained and equipped whilst in France. The decision not to group together their tanks, but rather use them in small groups in support of the infantry, meant they were prone to being overwhelmed. Lastly, always at the back of the minds of the politicians was the need to retain sufficient aircraft in the UK.

The French were badly led and the prior concentration on defence does limit the options available to a defender once an attack is underway: where, when and how is chosen by the attacker. If it were not for the Channel, the UK would undoubtedly gone the same way in 1940.

I think the crux of the problem was the small size of the Army - it had had a difficult enough task to avoid defeat in 1914 because of this problem - and the French insistence on defence until the last moment: had they crossed into Germany during the invasion of Poland it might well have been a different story.

Cheers
Richard