Tragedy at Dieppe Page 32

  LCT2 had also landed near the west mole, immediately drawing heavy artillery, mortar, and machine-gun fire. Captain A.L. MacLaurin commanded a Black Watch mortar platoon consisting of four mortar teams totalling twenty-two men. A Royal Navy beach party, thirty No. 11 Canadian Field Company engineers, and thirty Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal assigned to help unload the heavy explosives and equipment were also aboard. The engineers were commanded by Major Bert Sucharov. As soon as the ramp dropped, machine-gun and rifle fire showered in, and men began falling in droves.

  MacLaurin thought the tanks of No. 13 Troop were taking forever to get off, possibly because each paused upon gaining the beach to set off the explosive charges that would blast the waterproofing clear of the hull. The explosions stalled the tank engine, which then had to be restarted. The mortar team was to be last off. As the men waited impatiently, they unloaded mortar rounds from ammunition boxes and readied them for carrying ashore. There were 640 rounds, and MacLaurin estimated that each man would have to make four trips between the LCT and a firing position by the seawall, which was three hundred yards away.

  LCT2 was absorbing a lot of damage from artillery and mortar strikes. The gunners manning its 2-pounder guns were killed or wounded. Both magazine lockers were hit, but the ammunition inside failed to detonate. A shell punching through the stern penetrated the engine room and opened a hole in the hull through which water poured in. Another shell knocked out one engine. As the last tank with its scout car in trail exited, the LCT captain backed four hundred yards offshore.8

  Major Sucharov approved, certain his engineers would have been slaughtered trying to unload at that part of the beach. He was just asking the captain to shift 450 yards west for another landing attempt when a shell cut the cable and chains that raised and lowered the ramp, which now hung open.9

  MacLaurin was frantically trying to get instructions from 4th Brigade headquarters by wireless. His mortars were to have gone into action at 0520 hours by hammering the eastern headland with smoke and high explosive until 0558. It was well past that time, and LCT2 drifted helplessly seaward as the crew tried to stem the water flowing through the hole in the hull before attempting a second landing.10

  It soon became evident that the LCT was too severely damaged, and its captain ordered her to withdraw. Sucharov, developer of many techniques for assisting tanks in surmounting the seawall, stared helplessly towards a beach he would never reach.11 So too did MacLaurin.

  Ashore, no. 13 Troop had successfully reached the seawall, with Cougar unfurling its chespaling and lumbering up it to gain the promenade. Cat followed suit, but Cheetah’s driver, Trooper Fred Hilsabeck, felt his tank beginning to bog down in the rocks. To avoid clogging the bogey wheels with stones, he turned head on to the seawall and climbed straight up it. This exposed the lightly armoured underside, which was immediately struck by a shell. The floor turned “red hot at my feet, so it came mighty close to coming through,” Hilsabeck recalled. “It blew all the fuses in the tank, so we rolled back down in behind the wall. I got all the fuses changed and then we went up over the wall... Once we were on the promenade we were like a bunch of rats in a treadmill. We didn’t know where to go or just what to do.”12

  Despite having its turret jammed by a 75-millimetre shell strike, Cougar fired several shells into the tobacco factory before a buildup of rocks between the tread and bogey wheel broke the left track. Lieutenant T.R. Cornett kept Cougar fighting until a shell smashed the other track, rendering the tank helpless. Cornett ordered his crew out. Trooper G.M. Ross was last out, setting off an incendiary sticky bomb that gutted the tank’s interior.13

  The rocks that broke Cougar’s track exposed another grave intelligence error. No analysis had been performed of Dieppe’s beach stones. It was simply assumed they mirrored the cobble of Sussex beaches. Calgary Tank trooper Stan Kanik [a geological engineer after the war] later determined and reported that Dieppe’s stones were chert—“an exceedingly hard rock... allied to flint.” Beach erosion shaped it “into rounded and oblong stones... that resist cracking or breaking... The entire beach [was] composed of chert stones, boulders and rubble... many metres in depth... When a tracked or wheeled vehicle tries to climb up this slope, it immediately digs itself down; when the tracks are turned to either side the stones roll in between the drive sprocket and track and the object that first gives way is the pins holding the track links—end of locomotion!”14

  Six months earlier, the German port commander had staged a mock tank attack on the beach. “Within a short time the tank was stuck so firmly that it could no longer be moved. The tracks had to be removed and cleaned.” In his report, the port commander concluded, “Now we know that the British cannot land here with tanks.”15

  Only the driving skill of the Canadians allowed so many tanks to cross the beach and gain the promenade. Roaming freely along its length, they were able to engage German positions. Cat silenced the 75-millimetre gun at the base of the eastern headland and then joined Cheetah in firing up German positions inside the buildings and slit trenches behind the Boulevard de Verdun.16 Cat also engaged the French tank entrenched by the western mole, scoring a direct hit that caused its turret “to explode into the air.”17

  Overhead, German and Allied fighters were tangled in a massive dogfight through which Junkers 87 (Stuka) dive-bombers swooped down to try attacking the tanks. A bomb punched into Cat’s engine compartment, the explosion’s flash temporarily blinding loader/operator Trooper G.L. Blair and burning the gunner, Trooper Lloyd McLellan. Cheetah hovered protectively as the crew bailed out. No sooner had they dropped behind the cover of the seawall than the same Stuka dropped a bomb on Cheetah’s engine deck. “The motor went wild, there was no clutch or steering and the radio was out,” Hilsabeck remembered. Everyone bailed out and took cover beside the tank.18

  LCT3, the last of the first flight to reach the beach, carried three tanks each mounting an experimental flame-throwing device. Also aboard were the primary naval and Calgary Regiment beach parties. Captain Dick Eldred, Captain A. Turney, and four other ranks comprised the tank beach party. Their job was to guide the tanks of the later flights to predetermined positions, direct medical and ammunition parties, and coordinate the tank regiment’s actions with those of the more experienced naval beach parties to ensure that the beach did not become overly congested. There was also an engineering party with a bulldozer and other road-building equipment.

  In Bull, the lead tank, Captain Douglas Gordon Purdy grumbled to Trooper Percy W. Aide, the loader/operator, “We are running behind time.” Suddenly, the LCT’s ramp dropped. Assuming they were on the beach, Purdy ordered Bull to charge. In fact, the LCT was still a hundred yards from landing, and the weight of the tank on the floating ramp severed the left chain, causing a sideways sag. Bull “nosed right down” into the water, which started pouring in “from a thousand different sources.” The tank struck bottom in ten feet of water, and the crew swam clear. Despite Aide’s attempts to help him, Purdy—a non-swimmer—drowned. Trooper William Steward also drowned, trying to swim to the LCT, which had pulled away the moment the tank fell clear of the ramp. The three survivors swam to shore. Aide would be one of only two tankers landed at Dieppe to return to England.19

  During LCT3’s second run in, a shell killed its captain, Sub-Lieutenant W.H. Cooke, and wounded everyone else on the bridge. Lieutenant Peter Ross of the naval beach party managed to stop the engines just as the LCT grounded with such momentum that the ramp folded back on itself, high-ending the front of the craft ten feet into the air.20 The LCT lay at an angle to the beach, about thirty yards west of the tobacco factory.

  The commander of Boar ordered it off, even though this meant hurtling off the ramp. The tank crashed so heavily onto the rocks that its flame-thrower fuel tank flew free. Trundling over to the casino, Boar gained the promenade and supported the Rileys. Beetle, meanwhile, was unable to get moving at all. Realizing a chock holdin
g the tank in place had not been removed, Lieutenant Gordon Drysdale ordered his driver to reverse free of it. Two wounded men lying behind the tank were crushed. After plunging off the LCT, Beetle lost a track to the chert. Although immobilized, the tank acted as a vital pillbox and sheltering point set precisely at the juncture of White and Red Beaches.21

  In the few minutes required for Beetle to unload, most of the soldiers and naval personnel aboard LCT3 were killed or wounded. Eldred estimated that of sixty men, 80 per cent were casualties. Only four engineers managed to land, dashing for the seawall through intense machine-gun fire. The Calgary beach party stayed aboard, assisting the wounded. Half-beached, LCT3 was “littered with dead and wounded” and continuously battered by machine-gun and mortar fire.22

  The first LCT flight’s late landing meant it had gained the beach only minutes before the second flight. LCT4 landed just east of the tobacco factory with ‘B’ Squadron’s headquarters troop. Squadron commander Major Charles Page led off in Burns. With Bolster and Backer following, the tanks cleared in less than three minutes. As the LCT began backing away, it was sunk by artillery fire.

  Tearing through a wire obstacle, Burns ground to the top of the ridge behind which the deep cavern formed a natural tank trap that the Germans had been deepening with a mechanical digger, abandoned nearby.23 “I gave the orders to turn to the right and that’s when I was hit,” Page said. “The right track was blown off. The left one went on for a few seconds and kind of pulled me into the trench.” This left Burns with guns pointing downward. Armed with Brens and Stens, the crew ran to the seawall. Corporal G.M. Mowat was soon wounded, and a little later Trooper Thomas Gorman was killed.

  A shell jammed Backer’s turret, and seeing that Burns was disabled, Lieutenant Dick Wallace headed towards it to surrender his tank to Page. About ten yards short of the other tank, the left track broke, and the tank slewed to a halt with its 2-pounder pointing uselessly along the length of the beach. Trooper Jack Chapman crawled out and attached a heavy cable to the gun turret. Then the driver, Trooper E.M. Snider, reversed the still functioning track. The tank slewed so its gun pointed towards the promenade. Soon, after its ammunition was expended, Wallace had the tank interior burned by a sticky bomb after the crew evacuated. Everyone belly-crawled to a nearby hole, which proved too shallow for Trooper Charles Lyman Provis, whose nickname was “Heavy.” Unable to get his head below the rim, Provis was shot between the eyes by a sniper. Bolster, meanwhile, had lost both tracks to the chert.24

  ‘B’ Squadron’s No. 9 Troop landed from LCT5 east of the casino. Lashed by machine-gun and mortar fire, the LCT began backing off the moment the tanks cleared, without waiting for the soldiers aboard to exit. At first, Provost Corps’s Corporal Bob Prouse tried “to hug the side of the craft” for cover but quickly “tired of being a sitting duck.” Stepping over bodies, he ran forward and jumped off the ramp. “I was up to my thighs in water and still don’t know how I got ashore without being hit. I threw my body on the coarse gravel beach and squirmed... towards the concrete seawall. I had to get through a mess of barbed wire already strewn with bodies and finally pushed myself up to the wall where a soldier lay dead, draped over the barbed wire that ran along the top. I made my way to a burning scout car which afforded some protection. I flopped down behind it and found three or four men from our company. There was a blinding explosion as a mortar shell hit the scout car. All I could feel was a numbing sensation in my legs as shrapnel entered my flesh.”25

  Engine room and bridge destroyed, LCT5 had meanwhile grounded on the beach directly in front of the casino. The few surviving crew and soldiers aboard abandoned her. Detonating ammunition and explosives set the craft ablaze.26

  No. 9 Troop’s Sergeant J.D. Morrison managed to get the lead tank, Buttercup, over the seawall by deploying the chespaling. The tank alternated its fire between targets on the western headland and the buildings east of the casino. In Blossom, Lieutenant Marcel Lambert had tried to follow Morrison. “We were doing a turn to get lined up with the wall... when our right track broke... we had never run into that kind of stuff before... once we had broken our track we were pretty much sheltered by the casino.” Lambert’s gunner fired at a 37-millimetre gun in a pillbox beside the casino, but the 6-pounder’s armour-piercing shells were ineffective. It was “just like chipping away with a handpick... or spitting at it; we were terribly under-gunned,” Lambert said. Blossom lay at such an angle to the pillbox that the German gun could not retaliate.

  Towing a scout car, Bluebell became bogged down in the loose chert. Able to move no more than a couple of feet in either direction, the tank fired at gun flashes coming from buildings across the promenade. Spotting a sniper on the casino roof, the gunner killed him with a 6-pounder shell. Trooper G. Volk, meanwhile, had slithered out of the tank, only to be wounded while scooping rocks away from the track. Volk would be the second and last tanker evacuated from the beach to England.

  During each of three attempts to land, the sailor manning LCT6’s helm was killed. The fourth attempt succeeded only because the captain grounded her behind the cover of the sinking LCT1. No. 6 Troop’s Bob, Bert, and Bill quickly unloaded. As Bert’s waterproofing was blown off, it failed to clear and jammed the turret traverse. Climbing out, Trooper T.A. Dunsmore hacked the waterproofing away with a machete. All three tanks surmounted the seawall just west of the casino. Proceeding around back of the large building, they fired at strongpoints near the castle. When Lieutenant Lambert warned them by wireless of the 37-millimetre gun position, Lieutenant Jack Dunlap moved Bob “into position and we fired into an opening at the rear of the bunker. We also fired the turret Besa [machine gun] but it... jammed.” Leaving Bert to finish the job, Dunlap moved “to fire the 6-pounder at a sandbagged gun emplacement at the side of a building facing the promenade. We destroyed it.”

  Dunlap kept seeking an exit into the town, but large concrete roadblocks plugged every street. The three tanks joined the others motoring along the promenade and Boulevard de Verdun, firing at the headlands and into the seaside buildings.27

  As the first tanks had gained the promenade, an intrepid group of unlikely Essex Scottish succeeded in surmounting the seawall. Company Sergeant Major Cornelius Stapleton’s platoon of cooks and drivers were to safeguard battalion headquarters and carry out special assignments. Stapleton had reached the seawall with only ten of his men still following. The rest had been killed or wounded crossing the beach. Unable to locate Lieutenant Colonel Jasperson’s headquarters, Stapleton assumed it would be in the buildings fronting Boulevard de Verdun. Seeing several gaps in the wire created by German mortar fire, Stapleton led his men through one and out onto the promenade. Pausing next to a tank for cover, Stapleton waited until the mortar fire eased for a moment and then led his men in “one mad dash” across the wide, grassy strip separating the promenade from Boulevard de Verdun. Private Charlie Hoskin fell wounded, but the rest got through unscathed.28

  Not so a second party. Seeing Stapleton’s men making their move, Private J.T. Fleming, Corporal C.H. Grondin, and seven other men tried following. Having missed Stapleton’s men, the Germans were ready. Everyone but Fleming and Grondin was killed. The two survivors found refuge by plunging through a hotel’s open front door.29

  Stapleton “had been expecting to find the buildings facing the promenade destroyed by the pre-landing fire support and was disappointed” that they were largely undamaged. Finding the door to the hotel in front of him locked, Stapleton chucked a grenade through a window. The blast blew out the glass.30 As the men climbed through the opening, the tobacco factory next door erupted in flames, because of either tank fire or Essex Scottish firing incendiary grenades.31

  Inside the hotel, Stapleton surprised and killed two German snipers. All the gunfire coming from the surrounding buildings seemed to be German, and Stapleton realized he had been mistaken. The Essex Scottish headquarters must be back on the beach. Deciding tha
t since he was here, he might as well cause some mischief, Stapleton cautiously led the men through the hotel and into the street beyond.32

  Meanwhile, Fleming and Grondin had become separated. Chancing upon two men from Stapleton’s group, Corporal C.E. Stevenson and Private T.E. Hood, Fleming joined them in clearing snipers from the front row of buildings. They killed four or five with Bren and Thompson submachine-gun fire but lost sight of Stevenson. Encountering Stapleton, the two men joined his group. Grondin also turned up. Passing through several buildings, the men entered “a sort of courtyard” and then moved south in short rushes along a narrow street towards the inner harbour. Along the way, they engaged and killed several more snipers. Private R.I. Richards was hit in the eye by a ricocheting bullet, and Stapleton ordered him back to the beach. The others soon came to a row of houses on Quai du Hable directly facing the narrow passage between the port mouth and outer harbour. Suddenly, a sniper, firing from the eastern headland, shot Fleming in the right arm. Stapleton sent Fleming back.

  On his return, Fleming entered a hotel that served as a German billet and discovered a company-sized store of grenades and ammunition, which he blew up with a grenade. As he ran towards the seawall, Fleming was shot again—this time in the left arm. Diving into a small anti-aircraft position on the promenade, Fleming found Richards hiding there.33