Thursday, October 20, 2022

Research: Post-Dieppe, Sept. 1 - 7, 1942 (Part 5)

End of the Line? Is Dieppe Fading From View? And if so...

What Will be the Next Stage of WWII to Fill the Papers?

News from Stalingrad will surely last for many more days - weeks
Peruse future issues of The Winnipeg Tribune at your leisure 

Introduction:

The Dieppe Raid took place over the period of two days, i.e., launching from the southern shores of England (e.g., from Southampton and New Haven) on the evening of August 18, 1942, and then landing in various places along the shores in and near Dieppe beginning in the early hours of the 19th, with the survivors, the weary, the wounded and some of the dead returning hours later. Newspapers around the world began sharing news of the fateful event shortly thereafter.

On these pages (or entries) readers will find but a small portion of the interviews, stories, articles and numerous casualty lists related to the raid, from the day of to Saturday, September 5, 1942 (Monday, Sept. 7 to soon follow). They will notice casualty lists in great number (the Canadian Defence Dept.'s 22nd list appears below), poignant interviews and eye-witness news, including descriptions about what happened on the beaches of Dieppe by trusted Canadian war correspondent Ross Munro. Details from one of his presentations to a grateful audience also appear below.

Readers will also notice - when these pages are all considered from August 20 to September 7 - that the war goes on, news from other fronts is growing more and more, items about Dieppe are less and less... as is to be expected. 

So, where do we go from here? One article is shared below re a 'second front' and - according to my father's WWII memoirs - it seems to be a natural fit for one of my future plans.

But first, news of the day:


The following headline is but half of it!


"I bought this copy new - a rare move (!). Worth the money? Yes!"
'Fateful siege' is correct. Hitler would not admit defeat, and his
army's overall strength - so pivotal - was greatly depleted. GH

Churchill made mistakes and miscalculations as well. Related to Dieppe? Quite possibly. (My father, a Canadian sailor who missed Dieppe by one day and lost mates there, would say, "For certain.") But the PM did many things right as well:


The Allied position in North Africa will get stronger and may prove pivotal in its own way. More opinions to follow:


RCAF gets an honourable mention:



Canadian war correspondent Ross Munro wrote the news while in Dieppe and later made the news upon his return to Canada:

More news about Ross Munro - and his eye-witness account re
the fateful Dieppe raid - will appear below!


I think the 'Axis Fear' is well-founded. Operation Jubilee (the raid on Dieppe) took place on August 19, 1942. Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa - on three expansive fronts - only about 5 weeks (beginning November 8, 1942) after this article appeared: 


Canadians in Combined Operations were sprinkled among British landing craft
crews as part of the Centre and Eastern Task Forces. GH has inserted the map
between sections of the headline for this informative article. 


A second insert from Editor GH. Five weeks after the above article appeared, U.S. troops landed east of Oran - as part of Operation Torch -  with an assist from British landing crafts, some manned by Canadian sailors. I will likely 'beef up' my Operation Torch material after this 'Post-Dieppe' series is finished. One reason is offered below:

Editor's caption: A Canadian sailor (my father, Doug Harrison, RCNVR (V8809))
assists U.S. troops disembarking from a British 'Landing Craft, Assault' (LCA)
IWM caption: Troops and ammunition for light guns being brought ashore from a
landing craft assault (ramped) (LCA 428) on Arzeau beach, Algeria, North Africa,
whilst another LCA (LCA 287) approaches the beach. Photo - Lt. F. A. Hudson*,
RN Photographer at Operation 'Torch,' Nov. 1942. Imperial War Museum (IWM) 

*Hudson snaps a photo of Harrison. Did he snap a few more? Were words exchanged? Does IWM have anything else on file re that particular day? I should try to find out!

Occasionally, when losses are listed, the term "Butcher's Bill" is used. It seems the cost is always high:


About the following I say, "Mere lemonade, eh!"


This is likely not the last casualty list but I think it's near the end:


Related good news:


This may seem an odd article - about a burst boiler - to add to a collection of WWII pieces but my eye was drawn to the writer's name. Dick Sanburn's tag is attached to many excellent WWII articles connected to Canadian's in Combined Operations, particularly during the invasion of Italy beginning in early September, 1943, when he was with The Ottawa Citizen:


Just a reminder that WWII was a world war:


I'm dating myself by including this wee article that includes references to a man - originally of radio fame - I saw a few times on the Ed Sullivan Show (on TV Sunday nights at 8:00) and a woman who rode on a horse called 'Buttermilk' while she and her hubby (Roy Rogers, riding on 'Trigger' (now stuffed and likely in a museum somewhere in Texas)) chased after the bad guys. And as I recall, Dale and Roy were married in real life too: 


From the days when comic books were a dime! Photo - my comic shop



If the following provides final details re the Dieppe raid (in this particular series) then I could not ask for a better-prepared or authoritative eye-witnesses, including Ross Munro and Col. Dollard Menard:



From the days when "favourite recipes" included KLIK in a Kan:



Somewhere on this blog re '1,000 Men, 1,000 Stories' is a story that is very, very closely related to the one that follows, about dangerous work done by members of RCNVR. As you read it you might just imagine how tempting it may have been for a fisherman - finding a large, heavy, mysterious, bulbous item in his nets - to look closer to see if it was "a molasses puncheon" or something of value. Believe me, it could (and did) happen. And somewhere, a few years ago, I found the first edition of a story like this, featuring a fisherman who called for help because he had caught a mine - as was encouraged by the Navy - but got tired of waiting. What he did while waiting is revealed in the last paragraph. 


If I find the original tale, re the lucky fisherman - he didn't blow up - I'll tuck it in here.

News follow from The Tribune London Bureau:


Though not a good "photographic reproduction" of a secret paper - "printed, published and read at the risk of the lives of editors and readers" - the story is clear:


Men and women risked their lives everyday in a variety of ways, including by being a member of an underground movement. One patriot's diary ended abruptly...


More news clips to follow.

Please click here to view the last entry in this series, Research: Post-Dieppe, Sept. 1 - 7, 1942 (Part 4)

Unattributed Photos GH

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