Passages: Combined Operations - The Official Story of the Commandos (2)

First Action of Canadians Who Volunteered for Combined Operations

"Reconnaissance in Force: Dieppe" Pages 110 - 146

Photo as found in Combined Operations: The Official Story... Pages 12 - 13

Introduction:

This book under review takes us on a wide range of travels from small, pin-pint raids upon coastal installations in Norway and France to an invasion upon several shores of North Africa, i.e., Operation Torch, beginning November 8, 1942.  

However, before Operation Torch, Commandos were involved in a significant raid - with a reputation that is discussed heatedly to this day - that included a majority of troops from Canada, and sailors from Canada who were volunteers for Combined Operations Command involved in a military action (the first for most, manning landing crafts) that they would recall vividly for the rest of their lives.

Passages from the book that inform, enlighten and engage readers about the role of Commandos (and Canadian sailors who trained with and like Commandos) will follow. Questions or comments can be addressed to GH at gordh7700@gmail.com:

Reconnaissance in Force: Dieppe

The raid on Bruneval had been small,

short and sharp; its success had been complete.

The raid on St. Nazaire had been larger, longer and sharper;

its success, measured in terms of the Battle of the Atlantic, also complete.

It was time to plan the next stage.

What could be done was to raid Europe in force.

To mount a raid on a much larger scale than that which

had been carried out on St. Nazaire would not only harass the enemy,

which is, it cannot be too often repeated, the primary object of raiding;

it would also be a means of providing the Allied General Staffs

with very important and, indeed, essential information

concerning his defences in the West. 

His strength must be tested, his methods

examined at the point of the bayonet and the Bren gun,

if the military problem which the forces of the United Nations

will have to meet, should it be decided to launch an army of invasion

across the narrow seas, is to be solved.

The task was hazardous,

but then so is any operation of war,

and the end was imperative.

Planes, therefore, for a large-scale raid

against a point on the French coast,

were under discussion early in April, less than

three weeks after the raid on St. Nazaire.

It was decided that Dieppe was a suitable objective

for an operation of the size contemplated. It was chosen

from a number of French ports, all equally well defended,

as could be seen from the study of air photographs.

The Dieppe defences could therefore be taken

as a fair sample of what the attackers might have to

meet at whatever point an assault was launched

along the coast of Northern France.

Pages 110 - 111

In memoirs, my father (RCNVR, Combined Ops) - who lost his first mates during the Dieppe Raid - wrote the following:

Much has been written about Dieppe

so I will not enlarge upon it too much.

My opinion is - it was a senseless waste of blood.

The Germans were ready because we ran

into a German convoy in the channel. 

The element of surprise was lost.

The times of arrival at beaches were to be during

the night, but some turned out to land in full daylight

up against cliffs unable in any way to be scaled.

No softening up of defences

by bombing was ever carried out.

I will make it short and say I will remember it

as a complete, useless waste of good Canadian blood

and no one - even those who say we learned a valuable lesson there -

will ever change my mind. No mock raids were held,

as for St. Nazaire against home defences.

It was simply a mess.

I lost my first comrades at Dieppe. Others were wounded.

O/S Cavanaugh - killed. O/S Jack McKenna - killed.

A/B Lloyd Campbell, London, Ontario died of wounds

after his legs were nearly cut off by machine gun fire.

Imagine Higgins boats made of 3/4 inch plywood

going in on a beach like that.

"Dad, Well Done", pages 20 - 21

He felt military planners should have known the beach was treacherous because British citizens (perhaps his own relatives) would vacation on the coast of France at or near Dieppe.

Notes about the beaches follow from Combined Operations: The Official Story... :

Natural Obstacles and Coastal Defences

The planners were at once confronted with two difficulties,

the first provided by Nature, the second by man.

Not inaptly has that stretch of France's seaboard...

been called "The Iron Coast." Nearly all of it

is made up of high cliffs, mostly unscalable,

broken here and there by narrow clefts

or by the mouths of rivers. 

The chief of these is Arques, on which

the town and harbour of Dieppe was built.

Here the gap is something above a mile in width.

At the foot of the cliffs lie stony and inhospitable beaches,

the haunt of picnic parties and bathers in peacetime

during the summer months. To land at low water

on these beaches is very difficult and dangerous

because of the rocks in the sea's bed and the angle of the

shore itself, which make the task of beaching a landing craft

and taking it away a matter of the greatest skill and judgment.

The clefts behind the beaches are not numerous and those

which exist are, for the most part, narrow and very easily defended.

Men moving up to them to the attack are at the mercy of the

defenders in position at their top, who can destroy the attackers

with the greatest ease as they clamber laboriously upwards.

To the natural obstacles of such a coast, the Germans

have added defences disposed so as to cover, with a

formidable fire of all arms from 5.9 coast-defence guns to rifles,

every likely landing place, especially the main beach

running parallel to the Dieppe promenade.

Not only this, but many of the defences

have been designed to prevent ships from coming

close to shore and certainly from remaining there.

The planners, therefore, came to the conclusion

that naval support to the land forces attacking Dieppe

- an indispensable adjunct of success - could only be provided

if two heavy coast-defence batteries, one at Berneval on the east and the

other at Varengeville-sur-Mer on the west of Dieppe, were first subdued. 

Their fire would do too much damage to ships

to make a daylight attack a feasible proposition...

Pages 111 - 112

Another short passage, from page 113, contained a brief note that related to training exercises in preparation for the Dieppe Raid. If I am correct, then a helpful link follows re those official exercises:

Two Full-Dress Rehearsals

While the troops, still in complete ignorance

of the real object of their exercises, were engaged

in practising climbing up steep places, street fighting, negotiating wire,

attacking pillboxes, advancing with tanks, handling weapons of all kinds

- they carried out two full-dress rehearsals - and while the staffs

were perfecting the plans and drafting the orders for their execution,

large quantities of stores, ranging from ammunition for the 6-pounder guns

in the tanks to the self-heated containers of food to be carried

in the landing craft, were being collected in secret.

H11177. A landing craft containing a Valentine tank being launched down the
slipway of a landing ship during combined operations training on Loch Fyne
in Scotland, 27 June 1941. Photo - Major W.G. Horton, War Office, IWM.

Please click here to read about Exercise Schuyt 1 and 2

Much has been written concerning the Dieppe Raid and some fine passages and stories are found on this site. Follow the A - Z Directory, right hand margin, and email GH for specific links to one Canadian sailor's eye-witness account if you cannot locate Al Kirby's memoirs. gordh7700@gmail.com

The Prime Minister, Speaking in the House

[The expedition returned to the ports from which it sailed, some of the ships not berthing until past midnight (i.e., August 20, 1942)]

In the words of the Prime Minister, speaking in the House of Commons on the 8th September, 1942,

"The Dieppe Raid must be

considered a reconnaissance in force.

It was a hard, savage clash, such as is likely

to become increasingly numerous as the war deepens.

We had to get all the information necessary

before landing operations on a much larger scale.

This raid, apart from its reconnaissance value,

brought about an extremely satisfactory air battle in the west,

which Fighter Command wish they could repeat every week."

These results were

purchased at a high cost in casualties.

The Canadians suffered particularly heavily.

It was announced in Ottawa after the operation

that of 5,000 Canadian troops engaged a total of

3,350 were killed, wounded or missing.

Subsequent announcements raised the total to 3, 372.

This included 593 officers and other ranks killed or died of wounds,

1,901 who were prisoners of war or otherwise detained on the Continent,

and 287 missing; while 591 returned wounded to England.

Text from Combined Operations: The Official Story..., pg. 144 and 145

...Where that larger landing would take place, and when,

they did not know, but German political warfare, which from

the beginning of the war had taken and maintained the offensive,

began on the day of Dieppe to turn to the defensive.

The enemy's apprehension

concerning a major assault was well founded.

Eighty days later the occupation of French North Africa began.

Readers can peruse newspaper clippings related to the Dieppe Raid, and numerous casualty lists, at the following link - Research: Post-Dieppe, August 26 - 31, 1942 (Parts 1 - 5)

Lieut. Jake Koyl (RCNVR, Combined Operations) was my father's commanding

officer, highly regarded. From The Winnipeg Tribune, August 31, 1942. Pg. 11

Please click here to read other significant passages from Combined Operations - The Official Story of the Commandos

Unattributed Photos GH