In the evening of June 12, Weygand ordered all the troops who were still struggling to make a brutal drop across the front and to retreat as far as possible towards the south in order to avoid what remained of the French army to undergo a total annihilation. The Germans did not take long to realise that the French were slipping away, and thus immediately threw all their units onto the path of the retreating troops in order to thwart what remained of their plans. What resulted was a chase in which on one side, men would sacrifice themselves for a cause already lost while the other men would fall for a cause already won. Contrary to what one might think, the fighting during the second half of June would be as hard as the previous weeks, and bloody clashes would occur on both sides, as much for the conquest of Cherbourg as for Champagne in Burgundy, or in the Alps or along the Swiss border as units of the Gruppe Guderian would lock in a gigantic trap all the armies of the East.

Recounted here is the story of these battles often misunderstood or unknown. This book retraces the history in over four hundred pages, and more than a thousand pictures, mostly unpublished. History has, it seems, only wanted to retain the last days of the campaign in defence of Saumur or the fighting of Voreppe, which, however, offers very little justice for men who fell on the Marne, on Saulx, at Montplonne, Saulieu, Saint-Seine-Abbey, at Maîche in Saint Hippolyte on the slopes of the Vosges or in the valley of the Moselle, to mention only a few places where the French soldier has paid honour to his flag all the way to the end.