Tragedy at Dieppe Read online

  Most of what was left of ‘A’ Company sought shelter beside the western cliff face where the stone steps led upward. But the pillbox firing from the eastern end of the wall still hit them. Although wire tangles blocked the stairs, Ellis clawed a way through. To one side of the stairs stood a silent pillbox that proved unmanned. Crossing over the wall, Ellis ascended the other stairs until he came to a “wire obstacle so thick that he could not shoot through it.”

  Moments later, Captain George Sinclair and his batman, who was armed with a Sten, arrived. Sinclair and Ellis crammed a bangalore torpedo into the wire, which created a decent hole when it exploded. As Sinclair began shouting for the men down on the beach by the cliff to join them, Ellis pushed past and headed up the stairs. Over his shoulder, he saw the second wave arriving.21

  This wave consisted of the two LCMs and four LCAs left in the wake by Lieutenant Commander Goulding’s increased flotilla speed. It grounded at 0535.22 “When we hit the beach,” Sergeant John Legate wrote, “the battle was really in shape... dead and wounded were lying all over the place. We just had to stay close to the wall... The crossfire coming at us made it impossible to move two feet from the wall... There was nobody around to look after the wounded and... it was impossible to get near them. The Germans... were getting the range with their mortars and the shells were dropping around us and... it was impossible to give orders... It turned out to be every man for himself.”

  Lieutenant John Woodhouse, the only officer left standing near Legate, kept shouting orders despite being “badly shot up.”23 Unable to rouse the men, Woodhouse charged the eastern pillbox while firing a Bren gun from the hip. Badly wounded by a machine-gun burst, he collapsed alongside the seawall.

  Twenty-seven-year-old Lieutenant William Wedd’s platoon had been shredded to about ten men by fire from a pillbox on top of the seawall—from there, the Germans were able to fire point-blank into Wedd’s platoon. Unable to flank the pillbox, Wedd used a bangalore to blow a hole in the wire and led the platoon in a charge straight into the teeth of the German fire. Although riddled by bullets, Wedd threw a grenade through the firing slit, killing the Germans before he collapsed dead in front of the pillbox.24

  The second wave’s arrival corresponded with the Germans suddenly bringing 81-millimetre mortars into play. “Every time a... mortar bomb landed on that stoney beach it accounted for a number of casualties.” As a smoke-laying boat spewed a thin screening cloak along the beach, thirty-four-year-old Sergeant Ewart Peaks and three men dashed to the water and dragged a 3-inch mortar onto the shingle. “They didn’t get many more than three bombs away when Heinie found them with his machinegun and they were cut to pieces,” Private M. Hamilton recalled.25

  Virtually every man in the LCA with Private J.E. Creer was struck down seconds after gaining the beach. Creer reached the seawall just as Lieutenant William Patterson tried unsuccessfully to shove a bangalore into the wire.26 Although bangalores were designed to be joined together so they could be pushed deeper into wire obstacles, when Patterson tried linking up two, the fitting mechanism proved to be fouled with grit. As he extracted the detonating fuse from one bangalore to clean the mechanism, Patterson was shot. The fuse ignited, setting his equipment and clothes on fire. He was immolated.27

  Creer turned from this grisly spectacle to see Private John Stevenson firing his Bren while lying in the open on the beach. Suddenly the man shouted, “Fight. Keep fighting.” Then “he was hit... and... died right on the beach. There was very heavy opposition there and there was a big house just back from the wall and there seemed to be a machinegun firing from every window.”28

  Corporal Fred Ruggles was aboard an LCM with one platoon from ‘C’ Company, a mortar detachment, the twenty-six-man 3rd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, stretcher-bearers of 11th Field Ambulance, the navy’s beach master and his party, and correspondent Ross Munro. It was standing room only; Ruggles was port side in the stern, with Bren gunner Private James Murphy beside him. As the LCM approached the beach, Ruggles and Murphy started shooting at the houses.29

  Looking at the house on the eastern flank of the seawall, Murphy “saw fire from this one and fired into each of the windows of the first floor. I think each floor had six windows. By the time I would get to the sixth window the first one would open up again. After I had fired six magazines, I ran down the craft to get to the beach.”30

  Ruggles tried to follow, climbing “over many wounded men. Before I reached the unloading platform the boat was on its way out and I was unable to get off... As we were backing out I had one brief glimpse of men crouched against the cliff or wall and many others lying on the beach and some in the water.” Murphy was also caught still on board when the LCM withdrew. Only later would the two frustrated young men realize the lucky hand chance had dealt by placing them at the LCM’s back.31

  Munro had fully witnessed the LCMs’ landing effort. As the craft approached the beach, the faces of the men around him were tense and grim. Hands tightly gripped weapons. When the ramp fell, the leading troops “plunged into about two feet of water and machine-gun bullets laced into them. Bodies piled up on the ramp. Some staggered to the beach and fell. Bullets were splattering into the boat... wounding and killing.

  “I was near the stern and to one side. Looking out the open bow over the bodies... I saw the slope leading a short way up to a stone wall littered with Royal casualties. There must have been sixty or seventy of them, lying sprawled... A dozen Canadians were running along the edge of the cliff towards the stone wall. They carried their weapons and some were firing as they ran. But some had no helmets, some were already wounded, their uniforms torn and bloody. One by one they were cut down and rolled down the slope to the sea... On no other front have I witnessed such a carnage. It was brutal and terrible and shocked you almost to insensibility to see the piles of dead and feel the hopelessness of the attack at this point.”

  One young soldier kept trying to get off the LCM, only to be driven back by fire. Despite a wounded arm, he again “lunged forward and a streak of red-white tracer slashed through his stomach. I’ll never forget his anguished cry as he collapsed on the blood-soaked deck: ‘Christ, we gotta beat them; we gotta beat them!’ He was dead in a few minutes.” Captain Jack Anderson was right next to Munro when he was hit in the head and fell across the correspondent’s leg, bleeding heavily. A naval rating lay dying with “a sickening gash in his throat.”32

  When the LCM door had dropped, Private S.T. Bertram was stunned, as “the most terrific machine-gun fire poured into our craft from five large pillboxes... At the same time heavy fire came in at us from the left flank from a large house and the same from the right of us. Men started falling before they ever took a step and the rest that did reach shore were laying still on the beach. It seemed to me that only four or five men from our craft reached the wall, a distance of 40 yards. I opened fire on the house on the left to try and stop the crossfire.” The LCM drifted out, and a stretcher-bearer shouted for the men in the boat to help wounded get aboard. Bertram dropped his rifle and managed to pull Private H. Seaton, shot in the ankle, into the boat. He then shifted several wounded back to the stern to make room for more to board.33

  A ‘D’ Company platoon approached the beach in one of the second-wave LCAs. Seeing the machine-gun fire raking the beach, Private N.E.H. Blair and his compatriots planned their moves. All three platoon sections would dash for the seawall and then move along it to attack and silence the pillbox on the western flank. Blair was to cover the others with his Bren gun as they unloaded. A sensible plan, it unravelled the moment the ramp dropped. Blair burned off magazines until the last man left, then turned to follow and stopped dead just off the ramp, “as my platoon was getting cut down before me from fire from the pillboxes. Everyone before me was dead or wounded. A few of the fellows made the wall but were cut down by machine-gun fire from the house on the left of the pillboxes. I continued to fire at the pillboxes a
nd then they started mortar at us. A naval officer shouted to get back in the [LCA]. But I continued firing. So then he said it was an order for me to get aboard. I realized he was right; it was impossible to make the wall.” As he turned towards the LCA, Blair heard a call for help. He and a naval rating dashed to where two badly wounded men were half-drowning in the water. They dragged the two men aboard and the LCA withdrew.34

  A rare exception, Corporal Leslie Ellis crossed the seawall. After pushing past Captain George Sinclair by the steps ascending the western cliff, Ellis crawled a short distance before again being blocked by wire. Using cutters, he opened a hole and worked his way up to the house overlooking the beach. Slipping around back, Ellis opened a door and threw a grenade down the length of the room within. On the heels of the explosion, Ellis ran to the next room. It was empty, but warm cartridges were scattered near the windows facing the beach. Pulling a grenade’s pin, Ellis started up the stairs. He was halfway to the second floor when a naval vessel’s 20-millimetre Oerlikon ripped into the building. Pitching the grenade aside, Ellis fled downstairs and jumped out a back window.

  After following a trail to woods on the headland, Ellis realized he could do nothing useful alone and should return to the beach. En route he encountered Sinclair’s batman and sent him back to bring up the captain and more troops. Returning to the headland, Ellis discovered another abandoned pillbox and then three empty weapon pits.

  Across the gully leading to Puys, Ellis saw the pillbox camouflaged as a summer cottage. Bullets were chipping away at the concrete, but no fire seemed to be coming from the pillbox. Instead, Ellis saw tracers streaming from a bush next to the pillbox’s beach side. A closer look revealed a gleam of white that Ellis assumed was the machine gunner’s face. Trained as a sniper, Ellis set his rifle sights for 650 yards and fired—seeing “the stream of tracer bullets change direction from the beach up into the air, as though the gunner had been struck and had fallen back with his finger still on the trigger. No more fire came from the bush.”

  When Ellis sniped other German positions in the buildings of Puys, he drew return fire. A bullet creased his helmet, convincing him to again return to the beach. Crawling past the house he had earlier explored, Ellis came upon a Royals officer he didn’t know. Ellis warned him that the house was drawing naval fire. Ignoring Ellis, the man went inside just as a salvo of 4-inch shells from HMS Garth tore through it. Ellis decided against investigating the man’s fate.

  Instead, seeing that an LCA was taking on troops, he scrambled down the slope towards the beach. Happening upon a soldier paralyzed by a bullet, Ellis half dragged and half carried him to the wire obstacle. Climbing through the hole, he saw a wire that looked like telephone cable. Ellis had earlier cut such cables and gave it a hard pull, only to trigger an explosive booby trap. The paralyzed man was killed, and Ellis’s face, right hand, and left foot were all gashed open by shrapnel. His eardrum was also punctured. Crawling to the wire topping the seawall, Ellis discovered he had lost the cutters. So he “jumped right over it and landed on the beach” atop another wire tangle.35

  All along the beach, a growing sense of panic was building. Suddenly, Private J.E. Creer heard an officer shout that “it was hopeless. If you can get back in the boats do so.” Creer “took the chance and just as I got to water’s edge the boat pulled out.” Plunging into the sea, Creer started swimming. He was eventually rescued by a destroyer.36

  Sergeant John Legate joined a rush towards the second wave’s last LCA to depart the beach. This was LCA209, commanded by Royal Navy lieutenant N.E.B. Ramsay.37 About fifty men gained the boat. Legate managed to join the clutch aboard. Others clung to its sides. The combined weight proved too much for the boat’s engine and it grounded.38 Private Ed Simpson also joined “the terrible scramble.” The men were completely exposed to fire, and “the slaughter was awful.”39 Corporal Ellis ran up as Ramsay shouted for the men to get out and shove the LCA free. Ellis organized some of the men into making a concerted effort. Then, as the boat slipped free, he helped several badly wounded men get aboard. Captain Jack Catto, the battalion commander’s brother, was one. He “appeared to be in bad shape,” with one eye shot out.40

  Shortly before the mad rush, Private H.E. Wright had been knocked unconscious when a shrapnel sliver from a mortar round pierced his helmet. He awoke unhurt save for a splitting headache and blood gushing down his face from a flesh wound. Wright realized “we were practically wiped out and [there was] no hope of gaining the cliff to clear the opposition.” So he headed for the boat and came upon his chum Private Norman Orpen, who “was lying with a bullet through the leg and one hand practically blown off. I managed to drag him to the [LCA] and heaved him aboard.”

  With men pushing and Wright and Sergeant Morris Greenberg pulling on it from seaward, the LCA finally floated free.41 Ellis remained on shore, watching as the naval ratings forced men to let go of the badly overloaded boat by hitting their hands with boat hooks.42 So many dead and wounded lay on the ramp that Ramsay was unable to close it, and water gushed in. Fifty yards out the LCA capsized, and many men—including Ramsay—drowned. “She turned over, about ten of us got away and had to swim for it,” Legate wrote.43 Wright saw Greenberg, now badly injured, assist several wounded men to swim to the boat and climb up on the hull. “The last I saw of him,” Wright said, “he was sinking through exhaustion.” Greenberg’s body later washed ashore.

  The Germans started shooting the men off the exposed hull. Wright and several others “swam out to sea but mortar bombs and snipers picked us off till there were only five or six of us. After getting fairly well out of range I stripped off my uniform and boots and hat.” Encountering Legate, Wright swam with him for a couple of hours, the sergeant finally towing the exhausted Wright by having him cling to a strip of tape on Legate’s Mae West. It was “a respite that enabled me to keep going,” Wright said.44 Legate tried repeatedly to attract the attention of passing boats, but none responded to his waving and shouting. Eventually he came upon an abandoned rowboat that contained two Stens and a Bren gun. He guessed some other Royals had escaped the beach in it and been rescued. After helping Wright aboard, Legate discovered a paddle and then saw three men swimming nearby. When he paddled over to them, Legate recognized Sergeant Ernest Thirgood. All three men were wounded. He had just got them on board when a naval vessel came to the rescue. While a medical officer began treating the other wounded men, a sailor stripped Legate’s uniform off and put him to bed with “six blankets, two hot water bottles and a big shot of rum.”45

  While those on Blue Beach were trying to escape it, the commanders of Edwards Force were considering whether to reinforce it. Canadian naval reservist Lieutenant Jack Koyl commanded Duke of Wellington’s landing craft flotilla. Most of his crews were also Canadian. The flotilla had cast off from Wellington at 0334 hours and closed slowly on Blue Beach in order to land behind the other waves. It was now 0525, and the five landing craft, loaded with Black Watch infantrymen and 4th Field Regiment artillerymen, drifted about a mile offshore. Koyl and Edwards Force’s commander, Captain Raymond Hicks, waited in vain for a wireless signal that the beach was secure. Nor could they raise anyone on the beach. Checking in with Calpe, they learned there had been no wireless contact with the Royals since an initial signal reporting the second wave touching down.

  Nobody offshore knew the chaos that had descended on Blue Beach. The beach master and his party had never landed. The Royals had carried ashore only a single No. 18 wireless that was disabled when it became soaked in seawater. Only FOO Captain George Browne’s No. 66 wireless set remained, but it was netted to Garth so he could direct the fire of the destroyer’s guns. Although Browne was regularly sending Garth messages for forwarding to Calpe, these were being passed on well after receipt, and often the contents were badly garbled.46

  In the absence of news, Hicks and Koyl agreed to close upon the beach and decide at the last moment whether or not to
land. Drawing closer, they saw bodies strewn everywhere and most of those Royals still alive huddled at the western end of the seawall where some rocks provided a little cover. Koyl ordered his LCA’s Lewis gunner to open fire on Germans moving around on the western headland above the Royals. Although agreeing the situation looked dire, Koyl and Hicks decided to land Edwards Force under the headland on a narrow strip of beach west of the seawall. The men would then reinforce the Royals. At 0545 hours, Edwards Force duly landed a hundred yards west of the seawall.47

  Barely getting boots wet, the men dashed through fire across a fifty-yard-wide rocky shelf to the cliff face. Lieutenant Mark Mather “was right beside [Lieutenant] Jack Colson when he got his—a burst of machine gun (fire) right through the eyes and head... Except for poor Jack, the [Black Watch] didn’t lose a man!”

  They did suffer wounded. Ahead of Private Reg Hall, three men were cut down immediately. Hall could see German machine guns on top of the horseshoe-shaped headland. “There were German snipers on the top throwing potato mashers and sniping at us. That’s where the majority of the casualties came from, the grenades. The fire was so heavy we couldn’t do anything except take shelter.”48 Mortars quickly transformed the beach shingle into deadly shrapnel. Edwards Force was trapped in a vise from which escape was impossible. The angle of the cliff prevented their even seeing the Royals on Blue Beach, and moving along the fire-swept shelf to reach them would be suicide. “There was no point in creating further havoc for our wounded comrades, so we stopped firing. There was nothing we could do, we didn’t have a chance.”49