24/04/2026
Something a little different...
Lieutenant General Sir Harold Franklyn was the commander of the VIII Corps (which was responsible for the Home Defenses of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Bristol) from July 1940 until May 1941. He presided over the majority of the construction work at our site (built between June and September 1940).
Before he was put in charge of the VIII Corps, he played a key role in the evacuation of Dunkirk in May/June 1940. The article below is well worth a read!
On 18 May 1940, Erwin Rommel noted his orders for the day: "Next direction: Le Cateau-Arras. Fill up. Stand at ready." He was driving his panzers 50 kilometres ahead of his nearest resupply. He expected nothing from the British.
Three days later, Major-General Harold Franklyn proved him wrong.
On 21 May, Franklyn launched a counter-attack from Arras with 2,000 infantry and 88 tanks. The formation was named Frankforce after its commander. It struck Rommel's 7th Panzer Division, the 5th Panzer Division, and the SS Totenkopf together.
The standard German anti-tank guns could not pe*****te the frontal armour of the Matilda II tanks. Rommel's infantry began to break. He documented in The Rommel Papers that he believed he had been struck by five full infantry and armoured divisions. Frankforce was one depleted ad-hoc brigade.
Rommel took personal command of his static artillery and ordered his anti-aircraft batteries to lower their elevation and fire at the British tanks. When a gunner protested that his unit carried no anti-tank ammunition, Rommel replied: "The Tommies will not know the difference. Open fire."
The 7th Panzer Division war diary recorded 378 men killed or wounded, 173 missing, and 9 medium tanks destroyed. Reports reached Berlin. The German High Command issued Halt Order No. 3, stopping the panzer advance on the Channel ports.
The German advance stopped for 24 hours.
In that window, the BEF consolidated the Dunkirk perimeter. British planning had projected the rescue of 35,000 men. The number evacuated was 338,000.
The official British history, written by Major Lionel Ellis in 1953, focuses on the 60 tanks Frankforce lost from its 88 deployed and describes the attack as an operation planned on First World War methods.
Franklyn never received another field command. Montgomery and Miles Dempsey, who served alongside him in France in 1940, went on to command major armies across North Africa, Italy, and North-West Europe. Franklyn spent the remainder of the war on coastal defence duties in Devon and Cornwall, then garrison command in Northern Ireland.
He made no documented complaint.
As Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces from November 1943, he directed the implementation of Battle Drill, a training doctrine built on decentralised infantry tactics and combined-arms response. It shaped the formations that crossed to Normandy in June 1944. The doctrine remains in use. His name is not attached to it.
He is buried at St. Mary the Virgin Churchyard in Speen, Berkshire. In German military analyses of the Blitzkrieg's operational vulnerabilities, the formation he commanded is named on every map. On those maps, dated 21 May 1940, it is called Frankforce.
