1000 Men, 1000 Stories : Articles: Dieppe Raid 1942

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Articles: Dieppe Raid 1942 - Operation JUBILEE (1).

August 19, 1942: Some News From Europe About Dieppe Raid.

Important. Incomplete. In Part - Inaccurate.

[Photo: As found in The Winnipeg Tribune, day of the raid. ]

Introduction:

I would say that, likely, thanks to the Atlantic Cable, stretching from western Europe to points on the east coast of North America, newspapers received stories related to the Dieppe Raid on the actual day of the attack.

How would readers receive such news at the - unbeknownst to them - approximate midpoint of the Second World War?

With surprise, amazement, happiness, regret, relief, hopefulness, sadness? I wish I knew. And, with some measure of respect to modern sensibilities, I say now that I would not even hazard a guess.

That being said, after some measure of success finding good news articles and stories that represent the times, I would also say that news sources, though they shared important news, did not have the whole store on that day. Not even close.

One hint, that there was some amount of scrambling to get a meaningful (though incomplete) part of the story out to anxious readers, can be seen in the front page photo of The Tribune (top of page) and its accompanying caption: "The landing operation at dawn early today must have appeared similar to the landing practice pictured above." (Italics mine).

In other words, it is a borrowed photograph.

Oh, I'm very sure that I have seen the same shot before. And if my memory serves me well, I'll say here it was taken a year earlier in Inveraray, Scotland, about two miles north of HMS Quebec, the Number 1 Combined Operations Training Centre. The Combined Ops base was home to the first drafts of Canadians to volunteer for Combined Operations (including my father, and later 250,000 other sailors and troops over the course of WWII) as early as April, 1942.

Because the news from Dieppe on the 19th was just the beginning of what the world would eventually learn about that tragic day and results of the raid, the articles and stories will feel incomplete or inadequate (some stores are about practice landings or training exercises). Some sentences in the items do not ring true at all.

But much more will follow (e.g., reports, casualty lists, opinions), so stay tuned.

Please link to the August 19, 1942 issue of The Winnipeg Tribune here.

* * * * * *

The lead story follows, by Alan Randal:

Already some readers will sense a more positive note than history would support, except for the German accounts.

From the Allies we hear about a "German radio location station... destroyed"; from the Germans we hear about the large numbers of POWs:

Editor's Note: The Combined Operations Headquarters communique, mentioned three paragraphs above, is presented farther below in this entry (after 6 photographs of training exercises), with the headline Communique.

Editor's Note: The lengthy report by Alan Randal covers a lot of ground.

Importantly, at one point it informs us that Canadian War Correspondent Ross Munro accompanied "the Canadian forces across the Channel" and that "he has not been in touch with his office." Munro fortunately survived the tragic raid and his informative report will appear in the next offering of news reports on this site, i.e., Articles: Part 5.

As well, the following two paragraphs are quite revealing:

Randal's report is significantly one of the few pieces that mentions the first, earlier attempt to raid Dieppe, known as Operation RUTTER. It was launched and cancelled almost within the same hour on July 7, about 5 - 6 weeks earlier.

He also mentions the earlier "combined operations manoeuvres" that were highlighted in a recent post on this site. Six grainy photographs of the training exercises (Yukon I and Yukon II, June 22 - 23) can be seen below accompanying an article entitled "When Canadian Commandos Trained For Today's Raid."

Editor's Note: The above photographs are of very poor quality. However, I am pretty sure I have displayed the originals for two of them in earlier posts related to Context: Dieppe Raid 1942. (Happy Hunting!)

I was able to locate another article by Canadian Press Staff writer Alan Randal that is attributed to The Hamilton Spectator. It was published on August 19, 1942 but my discovery, unfortunately, ends abruptly, which means more could be found - but I don't have it at this time.