And yet I did not believe the
Germans would find Dunkirk an easy place to take. I had been round
its fortifications, and had seen the details of elaborate works which
even against German guns might prove impregnable. Outside the
outer forts the ground was bare and flat, so that not a rabbit could
scuttle across without being seen and shot. Sandbag entrenchments
and earthworks, not made recently, because grass had clothed them,
afforded splendid cover for the French batteries. Bomb-proof shelters
were dotted about the fields, and for miles away, as far as the Belgian
frontier, were lines of trenches and barbed-wire entanglements. To
the eye of a man not skilled in military science all these signs of a
strong defence were comforting. And yet I think they were known to
be valueless if the enemy broke through along the road to Dunkirk.
A cheerful priest whom I met across an iron bridge told me the secret
of Dunkirk's real defences.
"We have just to turn on a tap or two," he said, laughing at the
simplicity of the operation, "and all those fields for miles will be
flooded within an hour or two. Look, that low-lying land is under water
already. The enemy's guns would sink in it."
He pointed away to the south-west, and I saw that many of the fields
were all moist and marshy, as though after torrential rain.
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