Last two RHLI survivors stand tall amid memories
Fred Engelbrecht and Ken Curry honoured at Dieppe ceremony in Hamilton
It’s been 75 years but the memories are still raw for Ken Curry, one of only two surviving members of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry who landed on the beach at Dieppe on Aug. 19, 1942.
“I used to have nightmares,” said Curry, now 95 years old. “I can remember like it was yesterday and I will never forget it.
“I lost my friends, I lost my buddies, I lost an awful lot of good guys who shouldn’t have gone.”
Curry and 97-year-old Fred Engelbrecht, the other living RHLI Dieppe survivor, sat side by side in the front row as guests of honour Saturday morning during the 75th anniversary commemoration of the horrific raid on a French beach during the Second World War.
The ceremony at the Dieppe Veterans Memorial Park on Beach Boulevard honoured the memory of those who fought in the disastrous raid that took nearly a thousand Canadian lives.
Nearly 600 of the 5,000 Canadian soldiers who took part in the raid were from the RHLI and nearly 200 RHLI soldiers died on the beach in what has been described as a tragic waste of lives.
“I was only 20 when I was laying on the beach dodging bullets,” Curry recalled. “I can remember the guys screaming who were wounded and I’m thinking ‘Boy, I wish I was someplace else.’”
Curry made the trip across the English Channel to Dieppe the day after he returned from his honeymoon. He said he and the other soldiers weren’t prepared for what awaited them on the beach.
“We were going in to fight a battalion of Germans resting from the Russian front,” said Curry, who grew up in Stoney Creek but now lives just north of Victoria, B.C.
“They didn’t say anything about the SS men and the tank corps that were there too, plus the airplanes above plus artillery on our left, pillboxes on our right and, dead ahead, lots of machine guns.
“Luckily, I’m still here,” he added. “I guess someone up there loves me.”
Curry managed to get one of his wounded friends into a boat heading back to England. The sad irony, he said, was that his friend eventually returned to action and two years later was killed during the Allied landing at Normandy.
Curry ended up in the water and the tide pushed him past the cliffs at Dieppe. He had shed most of his clothes and his revolver when he was taken prisoner by a German soldier.
“I guess I was a sorry looking sight,” Curry said. “I was standing there with my hands up and I guess I looked like a young guy who didn’t know nothing from nothing.”
Curry spent nearly three years as a prisoner in Stalag VIIIB in southwest Poland. His wife received a telegram telling her he had been killed in action. “She didn’t learn the truth for two months,” he said.
Engelbrecht, too, said memories of that fateful day stay with him.
“Today is very emotional for me,” Engelbrecht said. “I’m at a loss for words.
“I remember things that happened there 75 years ago.
“What happened yesterday, I haven’t a clue,” he added with a chuckle.
Retired Lt.-Col. Bryan Robertson, a former RHLI commanding officer and now an ordained minister, asked the crowd on behalf of the veterans to pray for peace.
“Let us honour them by pledging ourselves to the continuance of their struggle, a struggle for true peace, peace that does not come with victory or defeat but with justice throughout the world,” said Robertson.
“Let us honour them and not forget those who made the supreme sacrifice for the sake of true peace.”
About 400 people attended the ceremony just a stone’s throw from the Lake Ontario shore.