Lord Gort had won the Vicory Cross as a regimantal officer in Word War 1 when he had command his battalion of the Grenadier Guards. In 1937 he was promoted by Hore-Belisha over hundreds of more senior officers to be Chief of the Imperial General Staff and in 1939 went to France in command of the Britisch Expeditionary Force. His preparation for the battle of France was unimaginative, since he allowed himself to be concerned with detail rather tham principle during the phony war, but his handling of the BEF in Battle was far-sighted and courageous.
Despite pressure from the Cabinet to hang on, he recognized at the right moment that the battle was lost and took the decisions which allowed the Army to be evacuated from Dunkrik in the nick of time. Positeve through his actions were, the essentaily negatieve achievement of Dunkirk determined that he should move aside, and spent the rest of the war in secondairy posts, first as Governor of Malta where he sustaind the siege with great resolution, and then as High Commissioner in Palestine.
