"he hates Britain's love of turning retreats — Corunna, Dunkirk, Mons — into moral victories" - your reviewers opinion?

Corunna 1809 - Sir John Moore's fighting retreat over 250 miles in appalling weather from Sahagun to the port of Corunna saved the only army that Great Britain had. Hopelessly outnumbered it managed to escape mauling the French vanguard under Soult's command on a number of occasions. It diverted Napoleon's attention from Madrid which allowed three Spanish Armies to escape to fight another day. It also allowed the British Army to return to Portugal under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley - the rest they say is history.

Mons 1914 - BEF 80,000 strong held off, delayed and inflicted damage on an enemy that outnumbered them by two, sometimes three, to one. Three things from the side of the "Entente Powers" contributed to the failure of the Germans plans for the conquest of Belgium and France:

1: Initial Belgian resistance delayed the German advance for days

2: When the Germans hit the British at Mons the fight that ensued was a fighting retreat of fire and manoeuvre and the British Army of 1914 was better at that than any other army in the world bar none, and although heavily outnumbered in terms of men and artillery the Germans were further delayed, and at the end of 1914 the BEF still existed as a fighting formation when all the odds would have predicted that it would have been wiped out completely.

3: The Germans pursuit of the British opened up their flank leaving it exposed to a massed French attack. With the resulting French and British victory on the Marne in 1914 the Schlieffen Plan died a death - the German plan for conquest in the west had been thwarted.

Dunkirk By the close of the German Blitzkrieg through the Netherlands, Belgium and France in 1940 the British Army should have been wiped out. What evacuation plans that were hastily cobbled together by Admiral Ramsay in the days he was given to make them put the largest number of men they thought could be rescued at 30,000 maximum - by the time it was over 338,226 soldiers had been rescued. Britain's Army lived to fight another day.

None of them were victories, yet all of them were significant and each had an immense bearing on what happened afterwards.

"the old saw of lions led by donkeys" - Ehmmm Jom there was no such old saw - Alan Clark, ex-Tory Cabinet Minister and flawed Historian admitted that he made that up. Oh and just to correct another of your great misunderstandings Clark's book "Donkeys" was about Sir John French NOT Sir Douglas Haig.

As for the "Dodgy" Battalions at Ypres three times the Germans made concerted attempts to take the place and on each and every occasion the British Army stood firm. That is yet another one of those well researched facts that you are so keen on Jom.

Keep flinging up your poorly researched myths, misrepresentations and unsubstantiated crap - I'll continue to knock them flat.