Tragedy at Dieppe Read online

  Once through the wire, Major Ross led his men across the main road to the buildings bordering it. Seeing the bridge, he advanced ‘A’ Company towards it by working through backyards. Ross kept outrunning his troops. Puzzled, he turned to see them carefully climbing fences, ensuring gates were closed after passing, trying not to damage vegetable gardens. What the hell? They were acting like men on a training scheme in England, where a claims officer would follow close behind to compensate civilians for damaged property. Ross yelled, “This is war, fellows. No claims officer here. Get going.” Men started ripping down fences and smashing anything that slowed their advance. As ‘A’ Company approached the bridge, Ross saw the corpses piled upon it and held up a halting hand. “We can’t get across there,” he told the company sergeant major. “If we’re going to get to that airfield, we’ve got to go up this side of the river.”11

  East of the river, the Sasks were embroiled in fierce firefights and making little progress. Lieutenant Colonel Cecil Merritt seemed everywhere at once. After the fourth bridge crossing, he went forward and caught up to the special force stuck in front of the pillbox dug in on the slope of the headland above the roadblock. With him were Sergeant Basil Smith and Private Ernest Clarke of ‘A’ Company. “We have got to get the bastards out of here,” Merritt shouted. Private L.R. Thrussell and some others “took all the smoke bombs we had and threw them between us and [the] pillbox and rushed immediately to dead ground between the pillbox and roadblock. We then crawled up nearer to the pillbox.” With Thrussell providing covering fire, Merritt, Smith, and Clarke ran forward and “threw four grenades in the box.”12

  This opened the way for ‘A’ Company to advance up the headland towards the radar station. Down the slope from the radar station, the Sasks controlled a grey house. Two large villas stood between this house and the station. Lieutenant C. Stiles and a small group that included Private Victor Story attempted to fight through to the radar station “but found it impossible” because of fire from the villas. Stiles decided to clear the Germans out of them. “As we approached the houses,” Story wrote, “Jerry opened fire on us with 81-millimetre mortar and we were very fortunate in getting away, having to withdraw and wait for reinforcements. Every now and then a few men would come up and finally we went back to the hedgerow near the grey house, and that’s as far as we were able to advance.”13

  Sergeant Jack Nissenthall recognized that his intelligence-gathering mission was no longer feasible. Although Captain Murray Osten had arrived with twenty-five more ‘A’ Company men, they were still unable to make any progress. Nissenthall decided to creep around the back of the radar station. Although getting inside to discover its secrets was clearly impossible, perhaps he could force the operators to unwittingly reveal them. Armed with two grenades, his special tool kit, and a pistol, Nissenthall somehow managed to elude detection. Approaching the station from the rear, he cut a hole through the perimeter wire and then crossed fifty yards of open ground to reach a telephone pole. Until recently, cryptographers in England had regularly intercepted coded wireless signals sent from the radar stations. But these had recently ceased, and Nissenthall saw that the stations were now using land lines. Cut these and for at least a short interval, this station would have to revert to wireless communication. Some secrets might be revealed. The pole was fifteen feet high, and when Nissenthall climbed to the crossbar supporting eight different wires, he was exposed to German and Canadian fire from all directions.

  Working fast, Nissenthall severed all eight lines, free-fell to the ground, and rolled downslope towards the Canadian position. Bullets spattered all around as he sprang to his feet and dashed to ‘A’ Company’s lines. Nissenthall’s efforts bore fruit. Moments after the lines were clipped, radar expert Ken Dearson, aboard HMS Prince Albert, picked up a radio message from the station. So did two operators in an intelligence listening station in Sussex. For several days the Germans failed to repair the lines, and a significant amount of intelligence on radar technology and procedures was gathered.14

  While ‘A’ Company made its abortive attempt to take the radar station, Merritt had recrossed the bridge to check his battalion headquarters. Out front and personally leading his men, Merritt consistently left his signaller—dogging along under the thirty-two-pound No. 18 set—far behind. This meant that Merritt was “often out of touch with [battalion headquarters],” leaving Major Jim McRae to direct the battalion’s overall operations.15 McRae “controlled the movements of reinforcements as the battle shifted and as much as reception of the [No.] 18 sets would allow... throughout the whole morning. He was outstanding in his indifference to the heavy bombardments,” one after-action report stated.16

  Merritt had just crossed the bridge when he saw Captain Runcie of the Camerons come off the beach with about thirty men from ‘D’ Company and Captain R.M. Campbell’s remnant of ‘C’ Company that had landed on the eastern side. Runcie was disgruntled. Rather than his runner returning with all the Camerons east of the river, he had rounded up only these men. Runcie’s second-in-command, Lieutenant P. Jackson, reported that Captain Norman Young had advanced ‘B’ Company across the seawall and most of ‘D’ Company’s platoon commanders had followed.17

  Unable to raise anybody at battalion headquarters by wireless, Young had decided “we would carry on and do as much damage as possible,” Company Sergeant Major George Gouk later explained. About a mile inland, they encountered a cluster of houses on the eastern slope overlooking the road. Every house was alive with snipers and machine guns. “So we got busy... and were doing a fairly good job cleaning them out with rifles and grenades when all of a sudden they opened up on us with their mortars... it sure was hell. Our casualties... started mounting then, every corner you turned you seemed to run into mortar fire and they sure could place their shots. Well there was no stopping the boys then, they were seeing their pals for the first time being killed and wounded at their side and the only thought that seemed to be in everyone’s mind was to have revenge. It sure was great to see the boys with blood all over their faces and running from wounds in their arms and legs, not worrying about getting first aid but carrying on in a systematic manner, clearing out the ‘Nazis’ from the houses just the same way as they learned to do on the Isle of Wight,” Gouk said.18

  Young dashed about boldly, rallying his men and pointing out the enemy. Private Clarence Flemington confessed to being “kind of worried about all those bullets” flying around. The forty-one-year-old Young overheard and said the Germans “weren’t very good shots during the last war and that he didn’t think they had much practice since.” Flemington decided to take “his word for it and keep going.” Young was abruptly hit in the stomach by a machine-gun burst, and then mortar round shrapnel killed him. The advance sputtered out. The Camerons were down to little more than a dozen men.19

  Runcie, meanwhile, had intercepted Merritt and asked whether he should cross the bridge to rejoin his company and push inland as planned. Merritt instead said the element of Camerons with Runcie and Campbell should come under his command and reinforce the Sasks across the river. Managing to raise Major Andy Law by wireless, Runcie advised him that Gostling was dead. This meant Law now commanded the regiment and needed to decide if Runcie should conform to Merritt’s intention. Law immediately agreed he should. Campbell had suffered a severe facial wound on the beach that Runcie thought provided “ample justification for retiring to the RAP.” Despite suffering “further painful wounds,” Campbell doggedly refused. He remained “indefatigably active, setting a fine example to his men.”20

  Reinforced by these Camerons, Merritt returned to the fight across the river. Sergeant Pat McBride was among a group of Sasks pinned down by fire from a pillbox alongside the road that elements of ‘D’ Company had bypassed on their way to Quatre Vents Farm. Merritt arrived shouting, “We must get ahead lads. We need more men up front as quick as possible—who’s coming with me?”

  “We ar
e all going with you,” McBride growled.

  “Good lads,” Merritt said. “Let’s go.” The men ran up the road about forty yards and then went to ground again, until Merritt asked, “Are you ready again?”

  They all answered, “Okay, sir,” went right through to the pillbox, and silenced it.21 Merritt then led the group towards Quatre Vents Farm and soon picked up the remnant of Captain Young’s men. The strengthened force managed to eliminate a 120-millimetre mortar position. But Merritt realized that by now his force was too small to gain the farm and clear out the strong German positions there. The situation was rapidly deteriorating along the entire eastern flank. ‘A’ Company had stalled well short of the headland summit. It was over this summit that the battalions landed at Pourville were to advance through to Dieppe for withdrawal off the main beaches there. This route was unlikely to be forced open, and there was no sign of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry coming in from Dieppe to link up with them.

  Merritt decided that a last effort to break through via the headland must be made. He therefore ordered the men with him to withdraw and join ‘A’ Company. He also sent a runner to ‘D’ Company’s headquarters at the pub alongside the bridge with instructions for Lieutenant John Edmondson to contact Major Mac MacTavish and order their attack on the farm broken off. Everyone was to concentrate on ‘A’ Company’s position.

  ‘D’ Company was by now stuck on a slope leading up to the farm. “The interlocking line of German defences with wire, machine gun nests, snipers, mortar and artillery was too strong,” Lieutenant John Edmondson learned. MacTavish was somewhere at the head of the company, and Edmondson had no wireless contact with him. Edmondson sent runners to pass him the word, but none of them ever returned. So Edmondson had no idea if MacTavish received the break-off order or not. Pourville, meanwhile, was now being hammered by increasingly heavy and accurate shellfire.

  Edmondson, desperately wanting to hit back with fire of his own, asked artillery FOO Captain H.B. Carswell to have Albrighton fire its 4-inch guns on likely German gun positions. Carswell “refused because I could not pinpoint exactly where the forward line was. We had quite a heated argument. I said it could not matter less where the forward troops are because I know they are not within the danger area of the objective I want you to have shelled. But to no avail, the forward troops were to have no fire support.”22

  Although Edmondson was unaware of it, Carswell had been attempting to support the forward troops but was unable to accurately spot any artillery or heavy mortar positions against which to direct Albrighton’s guns. Carswell thought most of the fire plaguing ‘A’ and ‘D’ Companies came from a point on the headland close to the coast and midway between Dieppe and Pourville. Three times Carswell arranged for Albrighton to hit this area with indirect fire but was unable to see any effect. “He also indicated targets on the cliff between Dieppe and Green Beach for direct bombardment,” the destroyer’s captain later reported, “and I think [the] ship silenced the fire of one light gun position. The ship could not remain stationary long as the enemy gunners soon started getting close.”

  Carswell was also plagued by German retaliatory fire. Whenever his wireless went live to direct fire, the FOO was targeted by extremely accurate mortar fire that forced him to shut down and run for a new position. It was during one such relocation that Carswell and Edmondson argued. The simple fact was that the raiding plan contained a basic flaw that Carswell could not rectify. No provision for land-based artillery or any other kind of heavy support had been made for the battalions landing on the flanks at either Green or Blue Beach. “The only artillery available to support the troops ashore was that of the destroyers,” the Canadian Army historian later wrote, “and in these circumstances it could not be effective.”23 Carswell also had no ability to call in air support, nor was anybody else ashore able to directly request that the RAF carry out bombing or strafing runs against specific targets. All calls for such support had to be routed through Calpe or Fernie for transmission to Uxbridge for action—resulting in delays that, even when the support was given, often came too late to be of assistance.

  The “very heavy fire, chiefly from mortars,” striking Pourville shocked the Camerons. “This fire,” Major Law noted, “was extremely accurate and it was necessary to move wireless sets after sending one or two messages, as they always became targets.” Yet “while the blast effect of the German mortar-bombs was considerable, the splinter effect [spray of shrapnel] was much less, and bombs burst close to some of our men without injuring them.”24

  When Major Ross arrived at the headquarters, he quickly briefed Law on the impossibility of advancing inland through Quatre Vents Farm and proposed advancing ‘A’ Company up the right side of the river to Petit Appeville and forcing a crossing over the bridges there to attack the airfield. Law said he would follow with the battalion headquarters and every other Cameron he could round up. Once across the river, they could push on to the Bois des Vertus.25 This was a small wood next to the airfield, where they were supposed to link up at about 0630 hours with a Calgary regiment squadron of tanks coming from Dieppe. The combined force would then overrun the airfield and push on to the suspected German headquarters at Arques-la-Bataille.26

  Law had no idea whether the tanks had reached the woods on schedule or would wait for the badly delayed Camerons. The battalion set off at 0700 hours, with ‘A’ Company on point.27 Ross moved while Law was still rushing to get more Camerons following. Having passed Captain Runcie’s group to Merritt’s command, he scrounged up only Nos. 10 and 11 Platoons from ‘B’ Company, under command of Captain E.R. “Tommy” Thompson; most of three ‘C’ Company platoons; and his battalion headquarters group. As the Camerons’ 3-inch mortars had all been destroyed by shellfire, there were no heavy weapons.28

  Ross started up a road bordering the river, only to immediately come under machine-gun fire from Quatre Vents Farm, and the mortars pummelling Pourville quickly shifted to the Camerons. Having anticipated this would happen, Ross kept to the road only as long as it took to reach the woods behind the village. Slipping into the cover of the trees, he advanced along a rough road leading to Brenouvelle Farm. Lieutenant W.S.M. Lang’s No. 7 Platoon was on ‘A’ Company’s point, and in short order the Camerons had covered about four thousand yards to close on the farm. Lang’s platoon had already passed by when two Germans burst out from one of the buildings, and the trailing No. 8 Platoon fired so rapidly that Ross figured “every man could claim a hit.” Hooking left onto a track that led a thousand yards to the Petit Appeville crossing, ‘A’ Company kept moving quickly. There were two bridges here, one for the road and the other the railway.29

  Coming out of the wood, Ross saw the two bridges and deployed his men on a height of ground to the right. With ‘A’ Company covering, the elements of ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies descended through a draw towards the hamlet and bridges. Law set the battalion headquarters on ground closely overlooking the bridges. A few hundred yards east of the river lay Bois des Vertus, and Law saw no sign of tanks there. All he could see were Germans, particularly a bicycle platoon heading towards the coast. It was 0900 hours. Law decided he could forget about getting tank support. His Camerons were too few to fight through to the airfield, but they might be able to cross the river and strike Quatre Vents Farm from the rear. Eliminate this strongpoint, and the Camerons could link up with the men fighting alongside Merritt. All together they might be able to fight through to Dieppe for the withdrawal.30

  Law’s battalion headquarters group and its support platoon opened fire on the bicyclists. Two snipers, Private A. Huppe and Private E. Herbert, quickly shot about fifteen men off their bicycles before the others scattered for cover.31

  ‘A’ Company had, meanwhile, started descending the slope towards the bridges when suddenly a horse-drawn 81-millimetre mortar detachment appeared on the road immediately below them. The leading platoon shot down the mortar crew and then rushed fo
rward and “wrecked the mortar.” One prisoner was taken and put to work carrying the heavy and so far useless Boys anti-tank rifle the battalion was packing.32 One of the two horses was dead, but Private H.P.L. Hutton saw that the other was lying wounded in its traces. He cut it free, but another man declared the horse doomed and shot it.33

  While ‘A’ Company had been eliminating the mortar detachment, more Germans were flooding into the area. A detachment of three horse-drawn light artillery guns came up the road immediately west of the river and crossed one bridge to set up a blocking position on the eastern side. The rate of machine-gun and sniper fire from the eastern heights overlooking the bridges also ramped up. The Camerons had nothing capable of engaging either the artillery or the heights.34

  It was now about 0930 hours, and Law recognized that crossing the bridges was no longer possible. He had no wireless contact with 6th Brigade or with Merritt. The Camerons were effectively in the blue—nothing for it but to withdraw back to Pourville. About a mile and a half inland, theirs was the deepest penetration that would be achieved during Jubilee. Law’s signaller reported intercepting a 6th Brigade signal to the Sasks. The message read: “Vanquish from Green Beach at 1000 hours, get in touch with the Camerons.” Law’s signaller managed to reach the Sasks and told them the Camerons were heading back to Green Beach.35

  Ross considered the withdrawal a bitter pill but one that must be swallowed. A single tank would have saved the situation. He remembered the insistent intelligence briefings claiming that it was impracticable to land tanks at Pourville instead of Dieppe. The bridges over the Scie would surely be rigged with demolition charges and blown before the tanks could cross. But none of the bridges had been wired, and the Germans defending Pourville lacked anti-tank guns. Their mortars and artillery would have had little effect on tanks, which could have overrun them with virtual impunity. But the plans could not be undone, so the Camerons must now extricate themselves from an increasingly dangerous situation.36