[alex_revell]

Pete,
Yes, it's difficult to know if the German casualties were the total at the 3 June, or if they were added to/amended later. I'm no authority on WW2 but from what I've read I very much doubt many of the extra casualties were inflicted by the French. They seem to have lost the will to fight - witness the large numbers of their troops taken off at Dunkirk - and if the attitude of their airforce is anything to go by, then they were probably quite willing to call it a day. But it's surprising how little known facts can shed a different light on things. Until I read For Your Freedom and Ours, I had no idea that the Poles had any troops in France.
I quite agree with your comments about the fighting qualities of the Italian soldiers. I think this is due to the wartime propaganda, which I remember well, of portraying them as ice cream sellers and not much else. A friend who fought them in the desert and in Italy itself, put me straight on that a long time ago. According to him, they were pretty good fighters. The same chap was driving his Captain in a jeep towards Rome when they were stopped by an American General - by my memory it was Clarke - and asked where the hell they thought they were going. The Captain replied that they were going to Rome. The General told them in no uncertain terms that the hell they were, informing them that the American forces were to be the first into the city, backing it up by a hand on his automatic. I would have told him where to get off, but then I always was a bolshie individual!
Yes, the British soldier had to put up with some pretty bad conditions - poor pay, low status etc - but the French troops, especially in the WW1, were considerably worse off. You must remember that in those days, in England, the average working man in the forces was a victim of the class thing. He wasn't thought to be of much importance, anything was good enough for him, and if the incompetence of his leaders led to high casualty rates, then what did it matter. He was only one of the great unwashed, his loss was of no consequence. Cannon fodder.
Saw a documentary recently about the D Day landings. I was amazed at the planners giving the Americans the beaches they did. Omaha, for instance, was shown in the doc. to not only have high cliffs for the troops to climb - bad enough with machine guns at the top - but was crescent shaped, so that they were also enfiladed. On top of this the German defenses seemed to have had no attention from the off shore naval guns and there was no supporting air power. Amazing.
To go back to generalities. I remember my uncle, who landed on D Day2 and fought as an infantryman right through to the end of the war, being very scathing about the US troops. He often told me how, as he put it, 'we had to go and get them out of the shit time and time again'. From what little reading I've done on WW2, I know he must have been wrong, but why did he think that? He certainly wasn't anti-American - who was in those days - his big hero was James Cagney. Another thing he said was that the Yanks wouldn't move without air cover - rightly so, in my opinion - and that the real boys were the pilots flying Tiffies. They always called them up, when they were stuck in a small town or village, and last stand troops needed to be winkled out. He was also full of admiration for the German soldier. He told me many times they were the finest troops in the world. So much so that he often wondered how the allies ever won!
Neil,
I think you've hit the nail right on the head, and fairly. Peter Hart, in his latest book, 1918, has summed it up very well. How the lessons of the previous three years had at last been learnt, leading to what he calls 'an all arms battle' ie the technique of using all types of arms co-ordinated in an attack - artillery, tanks, aircraft etc. rather than sheer man power.
Regards to you both
Alex