When survivors of Dieppe became its liberators

The name Dieppe is seared into Canada’s national memory. It was 75 years ago today, on Aug. 19, 1942, that 6,000 soldiers — 5,000 of them Canadian — attempted the first Allied landing against Hitler’s so-called “Fortress Europe,” the stretch of anti-tank walls, concrete shelters, anti-aerial guns, landmines, barbed wires, and machine-gun nests that extended along the shores of Northwest Europe. The horrendous casualties of the nine Canadian and two British commando regiments during the Dieppe Raid revived the term “cannon fodder,” and reminded many Canadians of the seemingly calloused way British commanders sent Canada’s troops to die in the trench warfare of the First World War.

So as the Canadian Army’s 2nd Division neared Dieppe in late August 1944, very few of those soldiers were veterans of that original raid two years earlier. Every Canadian unit that landed in 1942 had been virtually wiped out; for example, 502 of the 553 members of the Essex Scottish were left as casualties on the beach. Each regiment had to be painstakingly rebuilt, and none had been available for the D-Day landings three months earlier, on June 6, 1944. For the return engagement, each of the nine regiments included merely 25 or so survivors of the 1942 raid.

D-Day succeeded with far fewer casualties than its planners anticipated, in large part due to the bloody lessons learned at Dieppe, Allied commanders said. Cold comfort to Canadian soldiers. But the nine regiments were as determined to return to Dieppe as they had been eager to undertake the original raid.

They’d get their chance. After the Battle of Normandy was officially won on Aug. 25, 1944, and the Germans forced to retreat, the task assigned to the Canadian Army was to seize key ports along the Channel to allow for easier transfers of manpower and matériel essential for the massive Allied advance to Berlin.

An aerial bombardment with offshore shelling from battleships was planned for early September, to soften German defences at Dieppe prior to the 2nd Division’s entry. These preliminaries were eerily similar to the plans that proved to be utterly inadequate for the 1942 attack. Now, in a cruel twist of irony, they were unnecessary. After overcoming heavy resistance during its inexorable slog along the Channel, the 2nd Division’s last 70 km to Dieppe seemed a romp. It met only sporadic sniping, as the once-invincible Wehrmacht — accepting the inevitable — hastily withdrew to defend Germany’s Rhine frontier. Thus, the 1944 taking of Dieppe became almost a formality, yet nonetheless a highly symbolic one: a tonic to a war-weary nation and much more so for the regiments seeking some atonement for the carnage wreaked upon on the bloody beaches.

A halt was ordered outside city limits on the eve of Aug. 31, 1944. When the 2nd Division entered the next morning at 10:30, it was for a “spit-and-polish” parade: cold-water shaves, shined boots, freshly-pressed uniforms from the quartermaster. The tumultuous greeting this time was purely vocal, from overjoyed citizens several ranks deep lining the parade route where they’d once crouched in cellars, puzzled as to what had unleashed that hellish artillery fire pouring from their cliffs, unaware that Canadians were attempting a futile landing on their beach. The soldiers who’d fought in the Aug. 19, 1942 raid were the first to enter Dieppe, its buildings still pockmarked by bullets. To reporter Ross Monroe, who was accompanying the 2nd Division, this was “the most impressive and meaningful Canadian parade of the war.”

The initial orderliness eventually disintegrated, not from withering enemy fire but from effusive, longrepressed citizenry pressing forward offering flowers, wine and embraces. Parade marshals — likely aware of casualties in battles to come — allowed their “lads” to be swept away by the crowd. None paid café bills this day; many were treated to homecooked meals.