Retreat roads, French liaison, and the age of participants

Ian English recalls a battalion ordered to withdraw under pressure but unable to disengage for several hours. Successive moves took it back through new defensive positions and then onto roads packed with military vehicles and refugees. News that a French Algerian division was hard pressed on the canal sent him to a French headquarters where many officers crowded around maps and spoke at once. The scene captures both the physical congestion of retreat and the difficulty of coalition liaison during a collapsing campaign. The final reflection is unsettling: many people making such decisions were younger than the historian reading about them is now.