D'Este called Dempsey "excessively harsh" and that once the town had been abandoned the Brigade group withdrawal was inevitable. Other historians suggest that Bucknall threw away the chance swiftly to capture Caen. Montgomery had been a patron of Bucknall and wrote that his protégé "could not manage a Corps once the battle became mobile". Buckley wrote that Bucknall was unprepared to support the attack once problems developed and that Erskine was not suited to the task. Wilmot agreed with Dempsey that Bucknall, not the Germans, was to blame for the 7th Armoured Division withdrawal. He further wrote that Bucknall refused to reinforce the division, because he had already decided that its lines of communication were endangered