Tragedy at Dieppe Read online

  When Ross ordered ‘A’ Company’s withdrawal, a man rushed over and pleaded with him to first send a platoon to where his friend lay well out front and badly wounded. “Can’t sacrifice a company to save one wounded man,” Ross replied. That sort of risk was the heroic stuff of old films and dime novels. To get as many men home as you could, an officer had to make hard choices.

  Realizing a withdrawal was under way, the Germans were starting to press hard. “Tremendous disorder set in as we tried to fold the battalion back to a position from which it was not to have been evacuated. There had been no provision for a retreat in the planning,” Ross remembered.

  To Regimental Sergeant Major J.W. Dumma, the “withdrawal was the toughest job we had, but even the best the enemy had to throw at us did not for a minute unnerve the boys.”37 Private Hutton ended up on one side of a gully swept by machine-gun fire and “had to run the gauntlet.” Reaching the other side, he and his sergeant turned to provide covering fire that enabled the others to get across. Then the group “proceeded along the edge of the gully... through to a large copse of trees at the edge of a field of grain. We had to stop now and again to give covering fire to the rest of our boys and they in turn... for us.”38

  ‘A’ Company’s Corporal A. Eastman felt he was fleeing through “overwhelming opposition. It seemed... that the positions of the enemy were all prearranged and though they were in isolated areas [they had] an inexhaustible supply of ammo and men. The machineguns were constantly firing on fixed lines and were ranged on all gaps and places where we were forced to cross. Their tactics seemed to be to pin us down with heavy machine-gun and rifle fire and then to range on us with their mortars, which [were] the most dangerous weapon we encountered. Also, I noticed as the enemy moved in on our right flank and tried to cut our retirement off, that they moved very quickly and had some trucks and motorcycles with them.” The Germans were “either very young men or very old. There seemed to be a complete lack of men of middle age. The positions of enemy machine-guns were difficult to pinpoint and well camouflaged. The enemy, once we closed with them, were very easily overcome, but were dangerous at long range and their weapons were very accurate.”39

  Germans dogging their heels, the Camerons “re-entered Pourville with about 80 percent of their strength intact, at 0956 hours.” Law had expected to hit the beach running with the evacuation beginning in mere minutes, but there was no sign seaward of landing craft. He rushed to the Saskatchewan headquarters and learned from Merritt that the evacuation had been pushed back to 1100 hours. In turn, Law warned Merritt that the Germans were closing in strength from the south, and he would send two Cameron companies to hold the west side of the bridgehead to prevent their breaking into the village.40

  At about the same time, the Sasks on the western headland also reported enemy closing from the south. The 302nd Infantry Division’s Generalleutnant Konrad Haase had earlier decided Pourville represented the “greatest danger in the divisional sector.” Consequently, just twenty minutes after the Camerons had begun landing, 571st Regiment’s 1st Battalion was ordered to advance on Pourville from the southwest. It was this battalion, along with the regiment’s anti-tank company and infantry gun platoon, the Camerons had encountered.41

  Closest to the approaching enemy were ‘C’ Company’s No. 14 Platoon under Lieutenant Leonard Kempton. About 0945 hours, Sergeant M. Lehman saw “the enemy moving out of the trees and a section started down the road in our direction, followed shortly afterwards by larger bodies of troops. We allowed them to get into range and opened fire with all we had, taking our toll of them before they had a chance to get cover on the sides of the road. They moved back to the cover of the trees again and proceeded to pull a pincer on us.”

  Kempton informed Major Claude Orme that he was in trouble and then prepared to meet the attack. “We are in a hell of a fix,” he told Lehman, “as our flanks are unprotected except for what fire we can produce ourselves. I hate to keep the boys [here], but we have to stick it out until they get in on top of us and then make the best of getting out.” Everyone in Pourville was “relying on us.”

  No. 14 Platoon was caught in the vice as a nasty firefight erupted. But the men had good cover and kept the Germans back. Knowing the situation could not hold, Kempton started slowly leapfrogging men back, while a single Bren gun team covered each move. As the gun team followed after one backward hop, one man was hit crossing the road. Lehman grabbed Kempton’s arm as he started to go to the man’s aid. “You’re needed worse than I am,” Lehman said. “Give me covering fire and I’ll get him.” Kempton nodded and ordered smoke grenades thrown. Through fire, Lehman dashed to the fallen man. Discovering he suffered only a light leg wound, Lehman helped him reach the platoon’s new position. Going along the road, Lehman saw Kempton lying dead by the roadside.42 He had been shot between the eyes.43

  When Major Orme had received Kempton’s signal, he ordered Lieutenant Ross MacIlveen to go to assist No. 14 Platoon with No. 15 Platoon. MacIlveen had barely started moving when Kempton’s men fell back upon his. Orme ordered MacIlveen to cover the battered platoon’s withdrawal into the village and then to also fall back. No way could ‘C’ Company stand on the headland against the Germans coming at it. MacIlveen remained in position, “inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy,” until about 1000 hours, when the Germans started firing machine guns from the headland’s crest into his right flank. Under this heavy fire, MacIlveen pulled back towards Pourville.44

  Major Jim McRae had been apprised of ‘C’ Company’s situation at the outset and approved the withdrawal to the edge of the village. He also dispatched a small party of Camerons to support the company. At 1000 hours, he reported to HMS Calpe that an enemy battalion was “looming up to counterattack.”45

  Forced to surrender the western headland, the Canadians were powerless to prevent the Germans setting up machine guns and mortars on it. Beach and village were soon raked by fire from both headlands, meaning the evacuation would be more costly. Still, the Sasks and Camerons remained organized and held the lower slopes of the eastern headland. Wounded were gathered by the seawall or buildings across the promenade.

  Merritt and Captain Runcie prepared to defend the village perimeter. The village’s westernmost sector was covered mostly by Camerons—sections of ‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies and the battalion headquarters.46 On the eastern flank, Lieutenant John Edmondson led a covering force consisting primarily of Saskatchewan Regiment troops. He had two ten-man sections. One group under Corporal E. Hart held the north side of the road near the intersection at the base of the headland. Corporal R. Jackson’s group was with Edmondson in the second storey of the pub by the bridge. When the troops still fighting on the eastern headland withdrew past these positions to the beach, Edmondson’s men would provide a rearguard and then try to escape at the last moment.

  Major Norman Ross took charge of organizing the Camerons who were to evacuate first. Realizing all the companies were intermingled and also mixed up with Sasks hoping to get away, Ross designated areas along the promenade where various houses offered some cover. Ross grabbed officers and sergeants as they appeared. “That’s your area over there. Get your men into it,” he said. “There wasn’t any great panic. It was a case of what do we do now?”47

  Also preparing for the evacuation was the naval beach master, Lieutenant Commander Redvers Prior. He had realized at about 0900 hours that evacuating from Dieppe was unlikely to happen for the troops who had landed at Pourville. Already a large number of wounded were by the seawall, and he sought to get them taken off. Unable to establish wireless contact with the ships offshore, Prior had jumped onto a pillbox and, under fire, waved semaphore flags to get their attention. Invicta’s LCA521 approached at 0930 hours, only to be driven off by enemy fire. At 1000 hours, LCA315 made an attempt, its captain seeing only Prior’s beach party “taking cover under the wall, being held there by fire from light machine-gun posts on th
e West Cliff and by heavy calibre fire from the East Cliff which covered their line of retreat. One man was seen to attempt to reach the boat but was instantly killed. The boat was then forced to retire.”48

  Although several times wounded, Prior calmly imposed order on chaos. He thrust wire cutters at Private William Haggard “and told him to cut passages through the wire to facilitate passage to the beach.” Inspired by the “fine job” Prior was doing, Haggard zealously attacked the task and completed it just as the beach was smothered by mortar fire that drove him to cover.49

  It was about 1030 hours. Men huddled against the seawall or in the buildings. Correspondent Wallace Reyburn stood in a doorway of the hotel the Sasks were using for headquarters and RAP. He watched stretcher-bearers carry wounded across the promenade under fire. Merritt and several officers discussed the fate of their many prisoners. “It looked as though we were going to have a tough enough job getting our dead and wounded and ourselves off the beach without the trouble of taking Germans along. So it was decided that when we left we’d just leave them there.”

  Reyburn “looked out to sea, and there was still no sign of the boats. The German troops behind us were getting closer now. We knew that, because their bullets were now splattering on the upper storey of the house.”50

  17. Such a Carnage

  Whitewashed villas clustered on a narrow gully’s slopes directly overlooked the Royal Regiment of Canada’s Blue Beach. The holiday villas of Puys were modestly opulent, but the village’s overall situation was unappealing. The beach was barely 250 yards long and fifty feet wide at high tide. Headlands jutting up sharply on either flank created a sense of confinement. A seawall stretching from one headland to the other added to the oppressive air. Depending on how deeply the sharp, fist-sized rocks washed up against the seawall, its height varied from eight to twelve feet.

  Headlands, villas, seawall, and tightly confined beach all served as natural defences, and the Germans had capitalized on these to prepare for staving off any amphibious landing. Triple coils of concertina wire now topped the seawall.1 Landward, four to five feet of open ground lay between the wall and more “bundled” wire.2 On the gully’s east side, the front garden of a brick house contained a concrete pillbox disguised as a summer cottage. Its firing slits commanded the seawall and beach from very short range. Another pillbox was sited at the western end of the seawall and was flanked by two stone stairways that ascended the cliff. These were blocked by more wire. Three more pillboxes stared down from the gully and enjoyed excellent fields of fire.3 “All in all,” the Royal Regiment’s historian wrote, “it would have been difficult to discover, anywhere on the coast of Europe, a less favourable area for an assault landing.”4

  Yet it was here the Royals must land—their mission of securing the eastern headland that stood between Puys and Dieppe was considered essential to overall success. Bismarck, the four-gun coastal battery on this headland, dominated Dieppe’s waterfront. Therefore, the Royals must destroy Bismarck and several nearby heavy and light anti-aircraft batteries. Once this task was complete, they would drive through to Dieppe for evacuation.

  Poised to land with the Royals were artillery detachments from the 3rd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment and 4th Field Regiment. The anti-aircraft personnel would assist in capturing headland guns and “use them against ground and air targets.” They were also to purloin two new German gunsights for analysis. After aiding in Bismarck’s capture, the artillery detachment would turn its guns on Goering—the inland coastal battery south of Dieppe—and other targets of opportunity. ‘C’ Company of the Black Watch, less its company headquarters, was also assigned to the Royals. Designated “Edwards Force,” the Black Watch was aboard the LSI Duke of Wellington and under command of the Royals’ Captain Raymond Hicks. The artillerymen were on Queen Emma with one component of the Royals, and Princess Astrid carried the majority of the battalion.5 There were 554 Royals in all, 26 officers and 528 other ranks. Four officers and 107 other ranks had been added from the Black Watch. Two officers and 24 other ranks comprised the 4th Field Detachment, whereas the anti-aircraft group consisted of 2 officers and 24 other ranks drawn from the regiment’s 16th Field Battery. Also in the group were artillery forward observation officer Captain George Browne, his signaller, Canadian Press journalist Ross Munro, and a small naval beach party. In all, about 750 men were to land on Blue Beach.6

  The landing flotilla lowered from the LSIs on schedule at 0300 hours. So that the assaulting wave was hidden by darkness, the landing was scheduled for 0450. For the Royals to overwhelm the Blue Beach’s heavy defences, surprise was considered essential. Royal Navy’s Lieutenant Commander Harold Goulding, aboard MGB316, was to guide the flotilla in.

  The approach plan ran into trouble as soon as the flotilla cast free of the LSIs at 0310 hours. Five LCAs mistook the passing MGB315 for Goulding’s boat and followed it. Goulding spent a frantic fifteen minutes shepherding them back on course. Anxious to get back on schedule, Goulding increased speed to 6.5 knots. This was too fast for the two LCMs, which each carried a hundred vital men. The LCMs, with four LCAs astern, fell back in a straggling line that Goulding lost all sight of at 0350. They kept on course only by trailing MGB315’s wake.

  Goulding lost faith in his ability to find Blue Beach by dead reckoning and arbitrarily decided to home first on the easily recognizable Dieppe harbour. Once he had it in sight, Goulding would have to lead the flotilla in a dogleg along the coast to Puys.7

  Seated aboard one of the struggling LCMs, Ross Munro could see over the gunwale the eastward Dieppe mole “in the light of flak and the bomb bursts and searchlights” erupting as the main attack got under way. Darkness was fast fading. “The Royals were very late. They should have been on the beach before dawn but it was grey light of morning by now,” he wrote.8

  The battalion was to land in three successive waves. The first consisted of ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and ‘C’ Companies, with ‘C’ landing on the right, ‘A’ in the centre, and ‘B’ to the left. Second-in-command Major George Schofield’s advance headquarters and the navy beach party would land with this wave. Lieutenant Colonel Doug Catto’s headquarters would come ashore ten minutes later with the second-wave ‘D’ Company. Edwards Force, comprising the third wave, would follow in another ten minutes.9

  With formation lost, this phased landing plan was shot. Instead, landing craft headed shoreward in a loose gaggle that shook out into two separate intermixed waves. Edwards Force had not yet even launched from Duke of Wellington.

  The first LCAs were about a hundred yards offshore, still somewhat hidden in semi-darkness, when Private H.E. Wright of the headquarters company’s No. 3 Platoon heard directly overhead the roar of waves of RAF fighters headed inland. Streams of anti-aircraft fire from the headlands streaked skyward.10 “A huge white flare [suddenly] lit up the whole sky.”11 Private J. Brooks knew “right then that the Jerry was expecting us.”12

  German light machine guns on the sloping gully opened fire. It was 0507 hours and seventeen critical minutes too late. Dawn was breaking as more flares burst and stole the last protective cloak of darkness. The fire from the gully was at such an angle that it punched into the interior of some LCAs. Major George Schofield suffered a slight wound just before his LCA touched down. Schofield, the senior commander in this wave, piled out at the head of his men.13

  As the ramps dropped, the Royals were met by a deluge of fire. “Jerry fired straight into the boats,” Private J.E. Creer recalled.14 It was the same for Private R.G. Jones of the battalion’s support platoon. “Bullets flew into and surrounded” everyone on his LCA. Jones wrestled a 3-inch mortar mounted on a dolly, together weighing about four hundred pounds, off the ramp and plunged into water over his head. Unable to “budge the dolly under water,” he abandoned it. Up on the beach, other men were dragging another mortar dolly towards the seawall. “All the men around the mortar in front of me were getting hit. Most of the m
en ran for the base of the cliff for protection... which wasn’t very good.”15

  Corporal W. Duggan, however, refused to abandon this 3-inch mortar. “I found myself alone trying to pull it onto the beach and set the mortar up. Sergeant [Johnny] Carroll came to my assistance and he was standing beside me when he was shot. He disappeared and I knew then that I could never hope to get the mortar to the beach, so I opened fire on a machine-gun post with my rifle and after firing around 30 to 40 rounds my rifle jammed with sand and a rusty cartridge.”16

  One man saw Sergeant Carroll down on the beach, his hands holding his entrails. He ran to Carroll and dragged him into an LCA full of other wounded men. The LCA pulled away and ran for safety.17

  The first fifteen men exiting the LCA ahead of Private M. Hamilton were cut down, and the survivors could “only... take cover against the wall and fire back the best we could. The enemy had us in between crossfire from houses on our left and right flank on the cliff top. It was hard to find targets to fire back at.”18

  Peering over an LCA’s ramp, Corporal Leslie Ellis had watched uneasily as things “formerly only vaguely distinguishable [became] clearly visible” in the growing light. The boat hit the beach, and its ramp jammed when partly open. Ellis jumped onto it but could not jog it loose, so he leapt ashore. Getting only his feet wet, Ellis ran to the seawall “and crouched against it waiting for the other men to join him. Looking back, he saw these men being cut down, chiefly by machine-gun fire... sweeping the beach.” Those not hit crowded up against the seawall, but fire from the pillbox disguised as a summer cottage “was able to enfilade the wall effectively and caused very heavy casualties.”19

  Corporal H. Hoxie had to swim thirty feet before being able to touch bottom. “Most of our company was wiped out on the beach before they could reach the wall... It seemed the fire was on fixed lines. You couldn’t see Jerry at all. There were quite a few snipers evidently to pick off our officers and NCOs... The NCOs had been issued with Sten guns but for the position we had to take they were useless as far as I could see.” Having lost his rifle swimming in, Hoxie saw that “quite a few [other] fellows lost their rifles and were defenceless.”20