At dawn the first position of the 'Weygand Line' has been pierced from end to end, and the situation will deteriorate hourly throughout the day.

On the right of the sector held by the 3rd Group of Armies, Touchon's 6th Army has fallen back behind the Aisne, though it still holds the crossing at Attichy. Frère's 7th Army has fallen back to Davenescourt-Moreuil stretch of the Avre. The 19th Division, which had been subjected to the onslaught of the panzer divisions south of Péronne, is gone. The battle is raging all along the front.

The situation grows rapidly worse in the 10th Army sector, which is on the left wing of the Allied line. The army's second position is broken at Poix before any counterattack can be launched. A breach some 15 miles wide has opened in the French lines between Hornoy and Conty. A huge mass of German armor pours through it, heading for Formerie and Forges-les-Eaux. The armor ias Hoth's Panzer Corps, comprising the 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions.

The French High Command seeks to stem their advance by filling in the breach. 'And then,' writes Col de Bardies, 'came disaster. The 17th Infantry Division was being brought up in lorries, to reinforce the front; but owing to an error in the tranmission of orders the vehicles were unloading too far north. Suddenly the German armor was upon the line of lorries that covered the road, twenty men to a lorry. Chaos. Panic. The riflemen hurriedly got into line, soldiers were running in all directions, the battered, overturned lorries were in flames. No deployment was possible. Infantry and artillery alike scattered and faded in the countryside. Half the infantry and nearly all the artillery fell into German hands...'

Rommel dashes off this note to his wife:

Your birthday has been a day of real victory. We have well and truly bestirred ourselves. The enemy is showing more and more frequent signs of disintegration. We are all very well. I have been sleeping like a log.

By midnight the aromored vehicles of the 7th Panzer Division, which has covered some 25 miles during the day, are within 22 miles of Rouen. Forges-les-Eaux and Neufchâtel-sur-Béthune lie behind them.

Gen Besson, commander of the 3rd Group of Armies, has by now flung all his reserves into the battle. Seeing the enemy's exploitative maneuver toward the Lowere Seine take shape, he comes to the conclusion that the position is extremely serious. This sudden thrust in the direction of Rouen and Les Andelys continues to be a grave threat to the left wing of the Allied armies. There is every danger of its jeopardizing the re-establishment of Besson's forces along this cross-valley, if the Germans were to smash through the defensive shields hastily formed by the Seine bridges.

Late in the day the French air force reports that a large column of enemy tanks is moving southwestward along the Amiens-Poix road and that considerable infantry and artillery forces are advancing on Molliens-Vidame.

By evening Altmayer's 10th Army has been split in two. During the night of June 7th-8th the Command orders withdrawal to the Seine and the fortified area around Paris. The battle of the Lower Somme is lost.

To strengthen the Lower Seine line and the Paris advanced posts, two further divisions are transferred to the 3rd Group of Armies. The 57th Division, taken from Laure's 8th Army, is moved to the rear of Frère's 7th Army, covering the Paris position. The 48th Division, from Africa, is placed in the hands of Gen Héring, Governor of Paris, for the defense of the Seine around Meulan and the Oise around Pontoise.

The 100,000 or so men who had been evacuated from Dunkirk, via England, have been conveyed during the past few days to the area between Caen and the Seine. Units from 17 different divisions are hopelessly intermingled. The troops are in terrible shape. None of them is armed (everything having been abandoned at Dunkirk to make more room on the ships) and many of them are only half-clad.

The situation, however, is too serious for the High Command not to try to make use of them. Gen Georges gives orders for them to be regrouped: an army corps of four divisions is to be drawn from them. This is a large task, involving time as well as hard work. Now, units of the German 4th Army are already beginning to line the Seine southeast of Rouen. They are less thean 60 miles away, and within 3 days the van of the 5th Panzer Division will be bearing down upon Le mans and Laval...

In an attempt to slow down the German advance, if not to halt it, the officers and men of the French light mechanized divisions, brought back from Dunkirk via Southampton and Brest, are hastily regrouped in the Rambouillet area. They receive new equipment, straight from the factory; and thus two small-scale divisions are formed.