Tragedy at Dieppe Read online

  The Royal Regiment also “landed two miles to the west of their proposed landing beach.” Thundering ashore, the lead companies overran a group of British soldiers completely bewildered by the sudden appearance of men on their beach. “Didn’t you know we were coming?” Lieutenant Sterling Ryerson demanded. “No, we didn’t know anything,” a man answered. Ryerson was in high dudgeon, determined to rectify this lack of defensive vigilance. Somebody summoned the British company’s sergeant from where he had been sleeping soundly. “What would you have done if we’d been Germans?” Ryerson exclaimed and then roundly berated the man. “Are you going to report me, Sir?” the sergeant asked. “No,” Ryerson replied. “But, for Christ’s sake man, wake up. We could have been Germans.”

  The Royals were still at least two miles from their correct beach. “We’ll have to double... to the correct landing place,” Ryerson told his platoon. Private John “Jack” Abernathy Poolton and the rest of the men never hesitated. “There wasn’t a guy,” he recalled, “who would say the hell with that. I’m not gonna double no Goddamn three miles. This is how dedicated we were. We doubled the three miles because we wanted to be good soldiers. We wanted to be trained. We wanted to be fit. We wanted to do as we were told and that’s why we did it. I was carrying the two-inch mortar.”13

  When it sputtered to a close, Yukon was unanimously declared a fiasco. A post-mortem convened on June 14 back on the Isle of Wight in a Newport drill hall. Roberts presided. When it was suggested that the troops had been overburdened by ammunition loads and other stores, he countered that it was “in the best interests” of all to carry as much as possible so long as it did not interfere “with the fighting power of the men and the loading of ships.”

  Someone asked whether “plans could be made to ensure landing of craft on right beaches.” Roberts replied that “this could not be done and there may be a repetition of craft landing on the wrong beaches such as in Yukon at any time.”

  Roberts was more concerned about the bunching up that had occurred in front of the single gap leading off the main beach where tanks, Essex Scottish, and Rileys had landed. “This should be avoided,” he cautioned, “as it tends to make a very vulnerable target for machine guns.” It was also noted that far too many infantry landing craft had stayed on the beach. Once the troops were off-loaded, the craft should move a short distance offshore until it was time for re-embarkation.14

  None of the three force commanders, including Roberts, were sufficiently discouraged by Yukon to suggest that the Dieppe raid—still scheduled for the week commencing June 21—be postponed. Mountbatten, however, had missed Yukon because he was en route from the United States. After studying the reports and talking to various sources, he decided it was “necessary to postpone the operation... until a further exercise could be held.”

  This decision did not sit well with Lieutenant General McNaughton’s First Canadian Army headquarters’ delegate, Lieutenant Colonel G.P. Henderson. He noted in a memo to McNaughton that Mountbatten—having not witnessed the exercise—“felt he could not... assess the responsibility for the errors.” This prompted Mountbatten’s desire to have the entire force stage another Yukon-scale exercise under his personal watch. Henderson feared that delaying the raid raised “considerable risk of loss of security.” Also, “the men were trained up to a high pitch and there was danger of them going stale.” Mountbatten was not swayed, insisting that “further rehearsals were essential.” After meeting with Roberts and securing his agreement, Mountbatten proposed pushing the Dieppe raid back to early July.

  The following afternoon, Mountbatten, Montgomery, and the three Dieppe force commanders met at Combined Operations Headquarters in London. They agreed that “a second full scale exercise should be held on June 22–23,” with the raid following “on the first favourable date between 3–4 July and 8–9 July.” This second exercise was code-named Yukon II.15

  Mountbatten had further cause to delay Operation Rutter. His foray to Washington had absented him from the meeting that cancelled the pre-raid air bombardment. Although the force commanders and Montgomery had agreed to this on June 5, Roberts and Baillie-Grohman had since had second thoughts. Roberts’s only option would have been to demand some equivalent alternative support or withdraw the Canadians from the operation. He had no intention of doing either. Even had he done so, Crerar would likely have just replaced him with another more amenable Canadian general.

  Baillie-Grohman, however, knew of one possible substitute for the lost bombers. If he could get a capital ship—either an 8-inch cruiser or a battleship—detailed to the raid, it would be possible to provide devastating and precise bombardment from the sea. When the rear admiral put the request to Admiral Sir William James, Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, he was sharply rebuffed. James made clear he had no intention of risking a capital ship in the Channel during daytime.16 Fresh in mind was the disaster that had befallen two British capital ships on December 10, 1941, off the east coast of Malaya. During that one day, the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the 15-inch gun battle cruiser HMS Repulse had been attacked by swarms of Japanese bombers and torpedo planes. In barely more than an hour, both ships were sunk, with great loss of life. James feared the same fate would befall any capital ship exposing itself to attack by the Luftwaffe in the Channel.

  Despite the possible risks, Mountbatten also wanted a capital ship. Hoping to bypass James, he met with the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound. The Prince of Wales and Repulse had lacked air cover, their only protection being evasive manoeuvring and naval anti-aircraft fire. Any capital ship standing off Dieppe could be provided with dense air cover by RAF fighters. Pound was unsympathetic. He countered that fire from a battleship or cruiser would “merely increase the debris which the army wished to avoid.” Mountbatten wrote later that Pound closed his argument by saying: “Battleships by daylight off the French coast! You must be mad, Dickie.” Mountbatten reported that his parting volley was, “Sir, when the actual invasion comes all your available battleships and cruisers will be used.”17 Disappointed by the rebuff, Mountbatten was still no readier than his force commanders to see Operation Rutter cancelled, so he accepted the loss of capital ship support.

  Exercise Yukon II, running from June 22 to 24, was launched against the same terrain as before. Mountbatten, Paget, McNaughton, Montgomery, Crerar, and Hughes-Hallett—restored to his proper authority—observed the troops landing at dawn on June 23. Although the Essex Scottish’s landing craft lost direction, they still managed to land on the right beach—though badly behind schedule.18 The Camerons were put ashore a thousand yards east of their beach. Caustically, the regiment’s war diarist noted that even as the navy became lost, “every Private could tell we were headed for the wrong beach!”19 The Royals fared better. Their war diarist recorded that “on this occasion the landing was effected at the proper beach, and all went smoothly and according to plan.”20

  Canadian Press correspondent Ross Munro was with the Essex Scottish as their vessels wandered six miles off in the wrong direction. The resulting delay in landing was such that the Calgary Tanks went ashore ahead of the infantry. Had this been the real thing, Munro realized, such an error would have been disastrous. Seeing McNaughton standing with other senior officers on the beach, Munro walked over. McNaughton “looked extremely worried.” Turning to Munro, he said, “These are anxious days. There is great peril when the Navy does not land our men on the right beaches at the right time.”21

  Paget, Montgomery, and Hughes-Hallett had been standing on the beach when suddenly “a Canadian soldier took careful aim and fired a smoke rocket at us. Monty took cover with great agility,” Hughes-Hallett wrote, “but I made the mistake of supposing it would be easy to step aside as the rocket approached. Unfortunately these rockets weave in their flight, and this one secured a direct hit on my chin, fortunately without breaking the bone. Nevertheless it was extremely painful and I was grateful t
o accept the offer of a lift back to London in General Paget’s personal train.”

  Montgomery was also aboard and took the opportunity to offer Hughes-Hallett some advice on directing “a great battle, such... as will take place at Dieppe.” A battle commander, Montgomery said, “feels very lonely and gets a deep conviction that defeat is inevitable. That is the time when great strength of mind is needed. All you must do... is to trust the plan and let the battle win itself. The strength of mind required is simply to do nothing and refrain from dithering.”22

  7. What a Blow!

  Although Yukon II was more successful than its predecessor, both Paget and McNaughton believed the naval errors must be rectified. In a June 23 memo, McNaughton expressed concern that there had been a “lack of precision in place and time in bringing the landing craft to the particular beaches to which they had been directed in the plans.” Also, smoke cover had been insufficient. Clearly it was up to the navy to rectify these problems, he said. McNaughton asked Montgomery to ensure they did. His closing signature was “Senior Combatant Officer, Canadian Army in the United Kingdom.”

  On July 1, Montgomery reported to McNaughton that he had gone to the Isle of Wight the previous day and spent it discussing issues of concern with the force commanders. He was satisfied that steps had been taken to resolve the problems. These included provision of three special radar vessels to act as guides and also the detailing to the force of two officers who knew the Dieppe area well and could “lead the flank parties in.” Montgomery was “satisfied that the operation as planned is a possible one and has good prospects of success, given:—(a) Favourable weather. (b) Average luck. (c) That the Navy put us ashore roughly in the right places, and the right times.” The truly essential ingredient for success, he emphasized, was “confidence... I am now satisfied that... the Force Commanders, Staffs, and Regimental Officers have confidence in the combined plan and in the successful outcome of the operation. I say, ‘now,’ because there was a moment when certain senior officers began to waver about lack of confidence on the part of the troops—which statements were quite untrue. They really lacked confidence in themselves.”1

  Montgomery had identified this lack of confidence from reports arising out of a June 27 meeting in Osborne House’s ballroom. About three hundred officers were present, descending in rank from Roberts to the infantry and tank commanders. Major Norman Ross of the Camerons, the Rileys’ Captain Denis Whitaker, and the Sasks’ Lieutenant John Edmondson were all present. Ross had gathered with others around a large sand table model that showed “the beaches, the river, the hills, the town, and the buildings. Everything was there,” exactly to scale. “It showed all the [German] slit trenches, their wire fortifications, the barbed wire tangles. They were all outlined and traced in.” Ross considered the degree of intelligence work “well done.”2

  Roberts opened the meeting. “We have waited over two years to go into battle against the Germans. The time has now come. We are going in.”3 The air in the large room was stifling, wreathed with cigarette smoke. All windows had been blacked out, and armed sentries guarded the entrances. Ross Munro listened, as Roberts stood behind “the big plaster model of a stretch of coastline and port.” Roberts “launched right into his talk without preliminaries and in short, clipped sentences, told them how the force would raid this target, and he specified the tasks of each battalion and unit.”4 Other than saying the port was French, Roberts carefully avoided identifying it. But suddenly someone gasped, “Good God! It’s Dieppe!” Furious at this security breach, Roberts warned everyone that no word of this was to go beyond the briefing room. He neither confirmed nor denied it was Dieppe.5 Lieutenant Colonel Church Mann interrupted to warn the officers that “other ranks are not to be informed [of the operation or its objective] until on board ship.”6

  The entire operation would be completed over a “two tide” duration, ending within twelve to fifteen hours of first landings. The general mood, Whitaker noted, was enthusiastic.7 “None of us felt that we wanted anything more than we were getting. We had everything, in my opinion, necessary to do the job as assigned to us and do it successfully,” Ross said. “We were in full confidence and without any apprehension whatsoever.”8 Such was the prevailing optimism that it was hard to credit Montgomery’s concerns. Far the opposite seemed on show.

  Not everyone, however, was swept up by the prevailing mood, and at least a couple of officers expressed serious reservations. An Essex Scottish officer, Lieutenant Art Hueston, remembered his days of training at Camp Borden after being called up for service. One of the “first principles of war” taught was that “you never go into a defile, which is a valley. So the first thing we are doing is we are going into a defile if I ever saw one and I thought this is crazy. But that’s the way it was and you don’t get a chance to debate.”9 So Hueston kept silent.

  Roberts insisted the operation would go smoothly. From somewhere in the room a voice offered that it would prove “a piece of cake.” Whitaker was sure Roberts said this, the moment frozen in his mind because his good friend Essex Scottish Lieutenant Jack Prince leaned over and whispered, “A funny fucking piece of cake!”10 Munro, who had been thinking that the operation “looked like a good thing,” had no idea who offered the “piece of cake” comment. He thought instead about the expected estimate of Canadian casualties—five hundred killed, wounded, or missing at the raid’s end. “Everyone left that room with a feeling of high elation. Here was the big job at last; all this training was now to be put to use as the real thing of a daring operation.”11

  Although some leaders were mildly wavering over the wisdom of Dieppe, the most serious expression of concern came from Prime Minister Churchill. On June 30, Churchill convened a conference in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. Five men joined the prime minister. They were Mountbatten; Hughes-Hallett; General Alan Brooke; Churchill’s Chief of Staff, General Hastings Ismay; and Secretary to the Chiefs of Staff, Major General L.C. Hollis. Mrs. Churchill hovered in the background throughout the meeting, busily arranging flowers. Churchill was in one of his “black dog” moods, and for good reason. On June 21, Tobruk had fallen to the Germans, and 25,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers had been taken prisoner. This disaster in Africa had prompted a parliamentary censure of Churchill’s war management. It was against this dark background that Churchill asked for “one final review of the outlook for the Dieppe raid and [to] decide whether... it was prudent to go on with it.”

  During the discussion, Churchill suddenly turned to Hughes-Hallett. “Can you guarantee success?” he snapped. Before the startled naval captain could respond, Brooke interrupted and told him not to reply. “If he, or anyone else, could guarantee success,” Brooke said, “there would indeed be no object in doing the operation. It is just because no one has the slightest idea what the outcome will be that the operation is necessary.”

  Churchill growled “that this was not a moment that he wanted to be taught by adversity.”

  “In that case,” Brooke replied hotly, “you must abandon the idea of invading France because no responsible general will be associated with any planning for invasion until we have an operation at least the size of the Dieppe raid behind us to study and base our plan upon.”

  Chastened, Churchill said that if this was Brooke’s considered view, then the raid “must go forward.”12 Still, he fretted. Would the Canadians fight well? Did he have to worry about another calamity like Tobruk and thousands more men lost as prisoners? Turning on the charm, Mountbatten asked Hughes-Hallett to share his experiences as a “private” with the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders. As Hughes-Hallett spun his tale, Churchill smiled delightedly. The men he had served so briefly with, Hughes-Hallett concluded, would “fight like hell.”13

  Lieutenant General Harry Crerar never doubted his Canadians were keen to advance towards the sound of the guns. Learning of Montgomery’s concerns, Crerar had immediately rushed to the Isle of Wight o
n July 2. The following day, he submitted a report to McNaughton. “I spent yesterday with Roberts. He and his Brigadiers expressed full confidence in being able to carry out their tasks—given a break in luck. There was previously some doubt as to the ability of the Navy to touch them down on the right beaches. That has now pretty well disappeared, although I told Roberts that 100% accuracy should never be expected in any human endeavour, and that some error might be expected, and should be then solved by rapid thinking and decision. I agree that the plan is sound, and most carefully worked out. I should have no hesitation in tackling it, if in Roberts’ place.”

  But Crerar was concerned that, once launched, “the operation can only be influenced by Air Power.” For this reason, Montgomery, Mountbatten, and RAF Air Vice-Marshal Leigh-Mallory would all be “together” at 11 Fighter Group HQ in Uxbridge in order to jointly decide on alterations to the air plan.14 Crerar agreed with this scheme. But ever quick to defend Canadian independence, he considered that either he or McNaughton “should have been included in this group.”

  McNaughton agreed and immediately telephoned Chief of the General Staff, British Home Forces Command, Lieutenant General J.G. des R. Swayne to press the case for “the presence of a Canadian officer at Fighter Group HQ.” He followed up with a letter to Swayne’s superior, General Bernard Paget. “It is my view that, having regard to the particular Canadian responsibility in this matter to maintain the proper channel of command to the Canadian units involved... Crerar should be with the group of Senior Officers of the three services at Fighter Group who appear to be charged with the exercise of command in this operation.”