Tragedy at Dieppe Read online

  Southam tried to impose order, walking to LCT5 and instructing everyone to give the wounded priority during the next evacuation attempt. Any “disobedience would be settled if necessary by pistols in the hands of officers,” he threatened. Southam was struck by how many unwounded men huddled alongside the wounded behind the LCT and nearby tanks. They seemed totally inactive, yet “there was no sign of fear or panic—they seemed to be stunned—and almost incapable of action (and in some cases conversation). I urged those about this area to get busy—look for, and deal with the Germans who were firing at us.”7

  Bennett, meanwhile, had seen things play out as he had expected. “There were some survivors, but there were a great many killed in the water and some wounded trying to get back in.” Bob Cornelsen, a thirty-year-old from Stettler, Alberta, squatted beside him. “Mr. Bennett, we’re going out to bring some of them in.” He and Trooper Anderson “went out and a few minutes later Archie came back and said, ‘Well, they got Bobby.’ ”8

  The orderly second flight Bennett had anticipated never developed. Each LCA was swarmed by men trying to escape. At times the wounded did get priority. But for the most part it was, in the words of Fusiliers’ Corporal Robert Berube, “everyone for himself.”9

  Rather than taking this tack, Berube joined Sergeant Pierre Dubuc in seeing to Lieutenant Colonel Joe Ménard’s safety. The Fusiliers commander had been partly sheltered by three tanks close together. Earlier, Ménard had collapsed from blood loss and then drifted in and out of consciousness. During conscious moments, the pain was almost unbearable. He endured by “praying, harder and harder.”10

  Ménard was conscious when several LCAs approached. Dubuc, still clad only in underwear, suggested he should be evacuated. “The colonel replied that he would not do so until all his men had been taken off.” Ménard passed out. Dubuc and Berube carried his stretcher to an LCA. Berube remained with Ménard while Dubuc helped another wounded man board before also getting on. The LCA got away safely, transferring its load of largely wounded Fusiliers to an LCF.11

  Regaining consciousness, Ménard accepted his rescue. German fighters and bombers were attacking the vessel, whose anti-aircraft guns fired back fiercely. Ménard was lying on cases of high-explosive shells. “One bullet would blow the whole works sky high but, by then, I didn’t give a damn. I thought, ‘What the hell, if they haven’t got me by this time they’re never going to get me.’ ” A naval rating gave him a slug of rum, then came back looking alarmed. “Pardon me, Sir, but have you got a stomach wound?” Ménard shook his head. “That’s good, Sir, because if you had I shouldn’t have given you that rum.”

  Ménard thought this “the funniest thing I’d ever heard. I began laughing and the only thing that stopped me was the pain burning my side. You see, I knew I’d been through it and I felt pretty damned good.”12

  Southam, meanwhile, was back at the scout car trying to hurry the withdrawal. At 1132 he signalled: “Want lots of support. Enemy engaging craft and they cannot get in. Much smoke and air support wanted.” Three minutes later, Southam pleaded, “Can we rush things? Things are getting heavy.” Then, at 1140, “Small boats have been sinking. I do not consider it possible to evacuate unless you get everything available in here.” This was followed at 1154 by, “Boats hit because no support. High ground to east and west of beaches must be bombed or shelled.”13

  Eight LCAs approaching Red Beach in line abreast came under murderous shell and mortar fire when the smoke thinned, denying them cover. Six were sunk or blown apart. Reaching the remaining two required the Essex Scottish to cross a fully exposed beach. Private J.H. Mizon chucked two smoke canisters over the seawall to blind snipers in the buildings. The beach “was covered with a cross fire and mortar fire. I noticed the tanks were still firing as I crawled behind one before hitting the water. I reached the [LCA] where I had to drop my rifle to climb up. After getting on... I noticed two of our boys hanging over the side so I pulled them up, one being hit in both legs. The [LCA] was taking in water by now and as a Navy power boat pulled up alongside I hopped onto that.”

  Corporal R. Carle thought it had been “hell on the beach, but it was worse on leaving. Men were dropping like flies.” Jumping on an LCA, Carle realized he was going to get home. “THANK GOD,” he wrote later.

  Captain B.S. Wilson calmly reminded the men around him to help the wounded to boats. Corporal J. Donaldson started out with Private James Maier, “who was wounded in the stomach and I think a bullet in his neck. It was a very slow walk to the [LCAs] which were beaching about 500 yards to our left. There were still plenty of bullets around and the mortars were still at it. I was lucky and didn’t even get scratched. I managed to get Maier on... but was pushed down just after I got him on. They couldn’t close the door so we soon had about a foot and a half of water in the bottom of the boat.” Pinned on his stomach by the press of men, Donaldson fought to keep his head above the water until—drawing on all his strength—he managed to struggle to his feet. When another boat came alongside, the press of the mob around him pushed Donaldson into the other LCA.14

  Having passed out from loss of blood, Maier was thrown overboard along with the dead. Roused by the shock of hitting the water, he swam to another LCA.15

  Sergeant W.E. Hussey had moved to LCT3 at about 1130 hours. More than 250 men were gathered there. “We were under intense fire from the flanks. We set Bren guns up on either flank and returned their fire. [When] the first [LCAs] began to come in... we started to wade out in the water to meet them. It was at this time that the enemy took advantage of our inability to protect ourselves and there were extremely heavy casualties. Many men... drowned.”

  Hussey boarded an LCA. “We couldn’t get the landing door... closed because of the men hanging on to it. We finally did get it closed and we were ordered by one of the naval men to throw all the dead overboard and also all the blankets and equipment. We did all this and spent the rest of the time bailing water with our steel helmets. Quite a few of the personnel on board were wounded by machine-gun fire.”16

  Captain Donald MacRae, the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlander observer, saw the German fire destroy “so many [LCAs] that very few of the troops got off. I got away myself with a small party of wounded in a small wooden row boat and we were eventually picked up by a smoke-laying ship.”17 Just three Essex Scottish officers and forty-nine other ranks returned to England.18 Most of these, however, were aboard LCTs that had never landed. While no formal tally was ever compiled, MacRae is known to have been the only officer on Red Beach who got away. Of seventeen Essex Scottish men who provided accounts of the raid, only seven had landed.

  LCAs continued coming into White Beach. While the loading was still chaotic, there was some order. At LCT5, serving as the battalion’s RAP, Captain George Donald Skerritt had pointed to an LCA. “Every man, carry a man,” he shouted, and the unwounded complied. Private J. McQuade was uninjured. He noted they were so few in number that many of the wounded “were left on the beach.”19 Although badly overloaded, the LCA managed to withdraw. Skerritt, who had swum out several times to help more wounded aboard, did not try to escape. He returned to the wounded by the LCT.

  Private W. McNab also hesitated to leave the wounded. He asked medical officer Captain Wesley Clare “what I could do and was told that the men were all too badly wounded to move and that he was staying with them. I then proceeded to the boats.”20 Carrying a wounded man to an LCA, Padre John Foote was urged to board. “No, there are lots of chaplains back in England,” he replied. “I didn’t intend to go home because the action wasn’t over, my work wasn’t done.”21 He joined Clare and Skerritt.

  Having seen that the riflemen and wounded had either gotten away, were stranded, or had been killed, the Bren gun covering party at the casino started towards the water. Private J.H. Stuart backed down the beach, firing his Bren, while another man passed magazines to reload.22 Company Sergeant Major Jac
k Stewart was also there. He took cover behind a tank until an LCA came in. No sooner did he board the crowded craft than it sank twenty yards offshore. Standing on the edge of the beach, Stewart stripped off most of his clothes and then swam for it. Two and a half hours later, an LCA cruising for survivors scooped him up.23

  Deciding the time had come for his own departure, Labatt ordered all the wireless sets destroyed, save the one netted to brigade—he hoped to float that set out to an LCA. He, Major Dick McLaren, and Captain Herb Poag walked towards the water. They joined the Bren gunners wading out to sea and were squeezed aboard “a frightfully crowded” LCA. Labatt saw Major Harold Lazier already on board, along with wounded Rileys, Fusiliers, and Royal Marines. Suddenly, the smokescreen completely disappeared. Labatt saw about a dozen similarly loaded LCAs all nakedly exposed. “Every German weapon turned on them and hell let loose. What we had experienced before was nothing to the furious hurricane of fire. In no time the sea was littered with the wreckage of shattered [LCAs] and dotted with heads and waving arms. A shell burst inside the crowded boat next to us with ghastly results.

  “I could feel our craft being hit, but was not conscious of anything being amiss until I saw the naval crew jump overboard and found that I was standing in water up to my knees. I told the men to inflate their Mae Wests and either to swim out to meet incoming boats or to go ashore and wait for them there. They could do as they chose.” Labatt asked Poag if he was coming. “I still don’t like water and I am going ashore, if it’s okay by you,” Poag replied. As Poag swam shoreward Labatt stripped to underpants and shirt. The LCA had drifted in and beached in about six feet of water. “Well goodbye, Bob,” someone called. Labatt turned to find McLaren leaning against a bulkhead with left hand extended. “He... had just been hit in the right arm and figured his number was up. I examined the wound and found it was nasty but not serious. I assured him that the boat would not sink and that his best chance was to sit tight right where he was. Several others also remained in the boat.”

  Labatt swam towards an LCT a half mile distant. When he was only two hundred yards away, the LCT suffered two direct artillery hits and sank. Labatt was very cold and tired. The only ships he saw seemed miles away. His only choice was to swim back to shore. Landing close to LCT5, he ran to it. “The fire had increased if anything and I was horrified by the number of dead washing upon the beach.” Between 150 and 200 men from every possible unit were sheltered there now. Most were wounded and “in shocking condition.” Southam, limping from a slight leg wound, was trying to organize Bren gun parties to provide covering fire. Labatt thought it futile. Many men had previously tried to reach the LCAs and lost their weapons. So there was “practically nothing with which to fight.”24

  Southam and Labatt were talking when Poag approached. A machine-gun burst ripped into his stomach and he fell mortally wounded.25 Southam headed back to the scout car. Finding the chert “hell on bare feet,” Labatt donned the overalls and boots of a dead tanker. Shaking with cold, he layered on a naval rating’s duffle coat. The tide was coming in, threatening to drown the wounded by the water’s edge and beside the LCT. He got two Riley officers, Major C.G. Pirie and Captain Tony Hill, to organize parties to move wounded away from the approaching tide. “The behaviour of the wounded... was wonderful. The injuries were appalling and many could neither be shifted nor properly tended, but I never heard any complaining—and if one cried out or groaned, he tried to apologize for it.” Labatt walked along the beach with a stretcher-bearer, pulling wounded above the high-water mark. Someone called from a wrecked LCA that had washed in. Labatt saw it was McLaren and helped him to the LCT. Poag lay there, looking “very pale,” and said he was “going out on a long journey.” Other than putting him on a stretcher, there was nothing Labatt could do for him.

  In fact, there was little Labatt could do, period. Water lapped the LCT. No LCAs were to be seen. German infantry along the promenade were only about a hundred yards away, their fire increasingly accurate. There were few able men to offer resistance and “even fewer weapons.” If Labatt continued to resist, “we might kill a few more Germans, but while doing so hundreds of our wounded would be drowned.”

  Labatt looked at Captain Ed Bennett, who was blinded, his face burned practically away. “He must have been in agony yet his spirit was magnificent. I heard him say, ‘Remember boys, if it comes, give only your name, rank, and number.’

  “I quickly made the most unpleasant decision of my life. I warned the nearby tanks to cease fire and sent [a captured German airman] out with a white towel... Firing died down, mortar shells ceased to fall, thirty to forty Germans leaped up on the seawall and covered us.”26

  At 1130 hours, Captain John Hughes-Hallett ordered Brocklesby “to close and give what support she was able” to the troops on White and Red Beaches. Steering through the smokescreen, the destroyer emerged just five hundred yards from shore, opening fire on the headlands and buildings along the promenade while enduring a barrage in return. “Feeling that his fire was ineffective,” Lieutenant Commander Nigel Pumphrey “decided to retire behind the smoke.” As the ship turned, “both... engines were put out of action by shore fire and the ship grounded by the stern. Repairs were effected in three minutes and still firing at shore targets... Brocklesby retired behind the smoke.”27

  The few wireless signals from the beach reported a rapidly deteriorating situation. One at 1211 reported, “Very few personnel have been evacuated.”28

  A Calgary Tank wireless operator monitoring the regimental net intermittently intercepted traffic between Major Rolfe; Major Allen Glenn, who was still manning his tank; and Major Brian McCool, the principal military beach officer. At 1210, McCool advised that it was “getting pretty hot here.” This was followed moments later by one of the three—the operator was unable to determine who— saying, “We better get these fellows back. Just a minute, are these guys dead or not? They don’t move, so they must be dead.” At 1220, Rolfe asked if Glenn could see him. The operator heard the two, “as if they were playing a game of hide and seek, and nothing more serious, chat back and forth trying to decide whether they can see each other.” Glenn announced, “I can see you now. Can you see me?” Rolfe replied, “Yes, I can see you too.” It was 1225, and Glenn’s last message was, “Unload crews from tanks.” The wireless link ceased.29

  Although Hughes-Hallett “could not see what was happening on the beaches, it was possible to form an opinion of the progress of the withdrawal by watching the diminishing stream of LCA proceeding past Calpe on their way seaward. A number of them came alongside and gave us news, and at the same time transferred the more seriously wounded men to the ship.”30

  Unaware that the boat pool officer, Commander H.V.P. McClintock, had long left for England with many LCAs, Hughes-Hallett still believed significant numbers of landing craft operated somewhere in the smoke. In reality, by 1230 hours, Calpe and two LCAs alongside were “the only craft left close inshore.”31

  At 1243, Rolfe signalled, “White Beach not good, Red Beach not so bad because of fewer people there.”32 Seven minutes later, Hughes-Hallett ordered Calpe “to close the beach... for a final personal inspection.” With an LCA on either side, Calpe made for the eastern end of Red Beach.33 “Since the radio equipment seemed by now to be of secondary importance,” Hughes-Hallett freed the 4-inch guns to fire. If they saw men ashore, the LCAs would be sent in. “As soon as we were through the smoke several things happened at once. Calpe came under very heavy fire from guns whose projectiles threw up vicious little water spouts all round the ship... The sound of Calpe’s 4-inch guns firing back cheered up all on board... The ship... stopped slightly under a mile from the beaches, but no Canadian troops could be made out.” Then a fighter, mistakenly identified as a Spitfire, swept in and its “wing appeared to turn blue and become incandescent. A stream of cannon shell followed and we all dived for cover... Most of the officers and men on... Calpe’s overcrowded br
idge received superficial wounds, and as we stood up again we presented a gory sight.”34

  “The concussion rang in my ears and the machine guns and cannon roared,” Quentin Reynolds wrote, “and then the sharp clang of bullets hitting and ricocheting from one steel object to another added to the sound... I was dazed, lying there. Then I bit on something and spit out a gold inlay. I picked it up and put it in my pocket...I got up shakily... Two men who had been standing on either side of me lay there on the deck. They were dead. A sailor helped Air Commodore Cole... His face was covered with blood.”35 Cole’s wounds proved severe.36

  Calpe “altered course to gain the cover of smoke, and it appeared certain that any further attempt to take off troops would be unlikely to succeed.” Still, Hughes-Hallett and Major General Roberts were loath to give up. Calpe closed on Locust, Hughes-Hallett thinking Commander Ryder might have been closer to the beach and have more information.37

  It was 1300 hours, and as Hughes-Hallett and Ryder exchanged semaphore signals, a series of messages from Rolfe were forwarded from Fernie to Roberts. The first, at 1301, pleaded, “Bombard buildings and pillboxes along promenade. Enemy closing in.” At 1305: “Give us quick support, enemy closing in on beach. Hurry it up please.” Then, at 1307, “We are evacuating.” A minute later, Rolfe’s last message reported: “There seems to be a mass surrender of our troops to the Germans on the beach. Our people here have surrendered.”38

  Hughes-Hallett was still digesting this news when a mighty explosion rocked the nearby destroyer Berkeley, its back broken by a direct bomb hit. Once the crew abandoned ship, Albrighton sunk her with a torpedo.39

  “Slowly we turned seaward,” Hughes-Hallett wrote, “and shaped course for Newhaven at the best speed of the crippled landing craft, which was under four knots. The mass of small landing craft were formed into an amorphous bunch surrounded by the larger craft armed with Oerlikons or better, while outside them there was a circle of destroyers... enemy aircraft seemed reluctant to press home attacks in the face of what added up to a formidable volume of anti-aircraft fire. Up to this point... Calpe had not been seriously damaged, although casualties to personnel had been heavy [25 per cent] and her upper deck was choked with seriously wounded soldiers.” A young naval officer asked Hughes-Hallett if he “believed the history books when they spoke of the ‘scuppers’ running with blood. ‘If not, lean over the bridge and take a look along the ship’s side.’ I did so and as the ship rolled very gently in a long, lazy swell you could see little red rivulets running down out of each scupper.”40