Tragedy at Dieppe

by Mark Zuehlke

  Private Herb Prince realized “the German sniper is a real specialist. They are wonderful shots and go for the officers and NCOs. We found that they are mostly all planted on roofs or in very high buildings... The Germans seemed able to lay down mortar bombs where they damn well pleased.” Having only just gained the wall, his ‘C’ Company platoon had its officer wounded and all NCOs killed. Company commander Major C.G. Pirie crawled over to Prince “and told us to stay put.”21

  ‘D’ Company was shredded. The company was to have consolidated next to some houses at the western headland’s base, and it was towards those that Lieutenant Lou Counsell had led No. 18 Platoon. Counsell saw two wide gaps in the wire obstacle ahead. Unaware that none of the beach was mined, he warned his men to keep clear of the gaps and instead began opening a path with wire cutters. Corporal Percy Haines joined Counsell.22 While they were cutting, Haines heard Counsell yell to him. “I went over... and found he was wounded. I put a dressing on the wound. While I was doing that he got another in the hip, so I told him we would have to move. I helped him back to the water’s edge. On the way back he got hit a third time. I then got dressings on all wounds and told him to lie quiet, while I went for a stretcher... On the way I received a shrapnel wound in the shoulder and before I could get back to Lieutenant Counsell I was all battered up myself.”23

  Captain Jimmy Brown, meanwhile, had been knocked down by a bullet in the side when he tried to reach the gap Counsell had started. Private Alf Collingdon tumbled behind a low shingle ridge nearby and looked around to see his two fellow signallers from ‘D’ Company—Private Stanley Chadwick and Corporal Clarence Foster—lying dead. Also dead was ‘D’ Company commander Captain Bud Bowery. Company Sergeant Major H.E. Bell, face slashed by shrapnel, crouched close to Collingdon. Private Tod Sullivan simply sat down, dazed, blood streaming from a head wound. ‘D’ Company was effectively finished.

  To the left of ‘D’ Company, ‘B’ Company had charged straight for the casino. Slipping and sliding in the loose rock, Captain George Matchett got halfway there before a machine-gun burst killed him.24

  Lieutenant Jack Halladay and Major Frederick Wilkinson, the battalion’s second-in-command, reached a shale ridge facing the casino and began shooting at a nearby pillbox. Wilkinson was shot in the shoulder and fell wounded. Halladay crawled ahead to the seawall and hunkered with some ‘B’ Company men. Germans in the casino chucked grenades at them. Private Harvey Dicus was killed, and several men, including Halladay and Lieutenant Johnny Webster, were wounded. After having his arm and leg wounds bandaged, Halladay crawled along the seawall to find ‘B’ Company’s commander. Halladay saw Major Norry Waldron—he of the Groucho Marx moustache, who had been the bane of all Rileys during training—walking calmly along, about twenty yards away. Suddenly, a sniper’s bullet struck and killed Waldron. Spotting the sniper in a casino window, Halladay fired a Sten burst that sent the man sprawling out of sight.

  Spotting some ‘B’ Company Rileys trying to knock out a machine gun firing from the top corner of the tobacco factory, Halladay went down to the tide line, where a 3-inch mortar crew was set up. He pointed out the target, but each time the mortar fired, its base slipped in the loose rock and the round was thrown astray. After several failed shots, the crew abandoned the mortar and crawled towards the seawall. On the way, the mortar team leader, Sergeant William Joseph Bennett, and two men were killed by fire from a hidden machine gun to their left. Lieutenant John Counsell of ‘C’ Company’s No. 14 Platoon was wounded. Shrapnel wounded Halladay again in the arm and leg, rendering him incapable of crawling up the sloping beach. He instead found cover behind a low hump of tide-piled rocks.25

  Lieutenant Colonel Labatt, meanwhile, saw a “terrific fight” developing in front of the casino and “scrambled towards it. To stand up on that beach meant instant death. Halfway through the wire I stuck, the strands above me thrumming like banjo strings as they were hit. This wire was on the crest of a roll on the beach and while very exposed, it commanded an excellent view. From a hollow just ahead a section was firing like mad at the pillbox [fifteen yards] ahead [and on the casino’s northeast corner]. Then I noticed one lone man worming his way through the jungle of wire surrounding the emplacement. He reached it, then having pulled the pin from a grenade, he stood up and shoved it through a loophole. Without waiting he rushed around to the back and seconds later I saw his helmet being jerked up and down on the end of his bayonet as a sign of victory.” Private Hugh McCourt was quickly joined by his platoon section and led them into the casino. Within a few minutes, however, the twenty-one-year-old from Eganville, Ontario, was killed.26

  Lieutenant Johnny Webster and Corporal C.W. Cox managed to blow a gap in the wire that enabled a handful of men through. One of these, Corporal P. Sandy of No. 12 Platoon, saw a pillbox full of Germans about ten feet away. The platoon sergeant and Corporal T. Wilkinson “were closest to the pillbox and they each dropped 36 grenades which temporarily stopped the fire from this point. Just beyond the pillboxes, against the Casino, near the corner, was a round barricade... of sandbags. There was no roof over it. By this time at least seven of the boys were either dead or dying. I made a dive into the sandbag position where Lieutenant Webster, Privates Wheeler and Addis and about six men were. Lieutenant Webster’s legs were pretty badly shot up from shrapnel. Private Wheeler had got the fingers of his left hand shot off while aiming a Bren. Private Addis had a wound near the left eye. Private [Harry] Minnett had a wound on the left side of his mouth.” The men regrouped and snuck along the seaward wall until they ducked into the casino. They found it jammed with remnants of the entire battalion.27

  ‘B’ Company had been blocked by a pillbox containing a machine gun that “practically wiped out No. 11 Platoon,” Corporal T. Wilkinson recalled. “It was quite impossible to get near the casino as long as this pillbox was in operation as it was [able] to sweep the beach with fire. We therefore put smoke over a low wall behind which we were taking cover. Private [Harry] Wichtacz went over the wall, around the back of the pillbox and placed in it a bangalore torpedo, destroying the pillbox and its crew of 14 Germans. This brave and hazardous operation opened up the way for the advance on the... casino.” Wichtacz “was hit by a burst of machine-gun fire which later necessitated the amputation of his leg.” He would be awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal for bravery.28

  Captain Tony Hill and Company Sergeant Major Jack Stewart had been pinned down with about fourteen ‘B’ Company men in a hollow of shingle. “We had better get out of here,” Hill shouted, and led a dash to the casino. Going straight through the front door, they were surprised to meet no resistance.29

  Captain Dennis Whitaker’s platoon had reached the casino just ahead of Hill’s group. They faced two or three dozen Germans. Most of these men threw up their hands in surrender. A short firefight ensued between the Rileys and a few Germans who chose to fight. Although most of these were quickly killed, a few managed to escape out a back door and fled into the town. Whitaker led his men through a main salon—absent any furniture and partially torn down—to the building’s east side. Looking out a window, Whitaker saw below it a long slit trench held by German infantry. Quickly positioning a Bren gunner and a Boys anti-tank rifle manned by Private Tommy Graham at windows, “we took them by surprise and cleared up this position,” Whitaker wrote.30 Spotting a machine-gun post in the hotel next door, Graham “let more shots go... and there was a flash from it and it was never heard from again.” Running downstairs, Graham charged into the slit trench without considering that the cumbersome anti-tank rifle was his only weapon. The trench was filled with dead Germans. Creeping forward, Graham peered around a bend and saw two who were unscathed. Quickly loosing a .55-calibre round from the anti-tank rifle, Graham killed one of the men and wounded the other.31

  For more than an hour, the Rileys battled for control of the casino.32 Corporal George McDermott glanced into a room and “saw three enemy, one of
them had his rifle pointed my way. I left and worked my way close enough to throw a grenade. They didn’t seem afraid, and threw one back, hitting me on the right foot. I ran about 25 feet before it went off, knocking the rifle from my hand. I came back and threw another grenade. When I moved ahead this time, they had gone, leaving a pool of blood, a rifle, three grenades and two bayonets.”

  Captain John Currie, sent by Labatt with reinforcements, joined McDermott in searching rooms towards the building’s western end. They were soon driven back by artillery and mortar fire hammering down on the casino from positions on the western headland. Entire sections of the building were shattered, their ceilings and walls collapsing, as Rileys dashed through the warren of rooms.33

  Labatt, meanwhile, had established his headquarters against the headland’s cliff face so that he was sheltered from the positions above. Deafened by a shell blast, Labatt shouted into the wireless handset, “Get Johnny Forward, get Johnny forward.” “Johnny” was the call sign of Calgary Tank Regiment’s Lieutenant Colonel Johnny Andrews. (Regiments and brigades were identified by the first names of their commanders.) Labatt knew that the Rileys had to get tank support now, or the assault would run out of steam—if it had not already done so.34

  The Essex Scottish had been caught in an even more desperate situation. Captain Dennis Guest’s ‘A’ Company set down immediately left of the most easterly Rileys and became entangled in a wire obstacle at the tide line. Raked by machine guns, only thirty-five men followed Guest in jumping the wire. The other seventy-five lay dead or wounded on the wire or in the surf. At the seawall, the survivors faced another wire obstacle that was three feet high and fifteen feet wide. As all the company’s mortars and bangalore torpedoes had been lost, they could not get past the wall or return the heavy fire coming from the headlands.35

  “The first blast of heavy fire” striking No. 9 Platoon “stunned us for a moment,” Private Eugene Cousineau wrote. “But we soon recovered and when we reached the protection of the wall most of our section was present. We could not see the fire of the Germans who were hidden in the buildings along the water front, but the machine-gun and mortar fire was very intense, the [81-millimetre] mortar being very effective and apparently laid along a very definite pattern. The beach being all shale made the fire of the mortars and artillery extremely damaging.”

  Guest led the men along the seawall to a position facing the tobacco factory. Here a concrete support projected from the wall, and nearby was a breakwater. ‘A’ Company tucked in between these two structures and gained a little flank cover. “At this time the morale of the men was very high,” Cousineau noted, “despite the heavy fire and continual casualties. The men were all smoking and laughing.”

  The seawall “was covered by a large amount of heavy wire, and beyond that lay about 100 yards of open ground, and then the first row of buildings, which were full of machine-gun posts and snipers. We set up two or three Brens on the wall and fired [at] the windows from one end to the other and I believe inflicted considerable damage as we silenced the fire of several machineguns and snipers.” Private Robert Kearns “tried to cut through the wire, but was killed almost instantly.”36

  Private Stanley Carley’s platoon was tasked with protecting Lieutenant Colonel Fred Jasperson’s battalion headquarters. They found cover behind a small embankment of stones pushed against the first wire barrier by the tide. “There were a lot of men killed going from the boats to the barbed wire. Then everyone took cover for a minute as the machine-gun fire was terrific.” Carley watched as one company crossed the wire and “a lot of men dropped.” Carley’s commander, Lieutenant Jack Kent, led the platoon seventy-five yards to the left. After chucking smoke grenades over the wire, the men crossed and used the covering smoke to gain the seawall and take cover in a large hole fronting it. The hole was already crowded with men from ‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies. An officer yelled that Jasperson’s orders were for everyone to stay put.37

  Coming off an LCA, ‘C’ Company’s Lieutenant Peter Ambery had been struck in the right side by shrapnel. Waving his men onto the seawall, he slapped on a shell dressing to stem the blood flow and then ran to join them. Carefully raising one eye over the edge of the seawall, Ambery saw two pillboxes on the esplanade.38 A French tank protected by a concrete surround was near the base of the west mole, and a pillbox on the mole itself held an anti-tank gun that fired along the seawall’s length.39

  Ambery’s men thrust bangalore torpedoes deep into the wire but failed to blast open a path. Bodies dangling from the wire testified to the fate awaiting anyone foolish enough to try crawling over it. Ambery realized they were trapped.40

  By 0545 hours, Captain Donald MacRae, an attached Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlander officer, estimated the Essex Scottish had suffered 40 per cent either killed or wounded. Yet men continued to fight. “The 3-inch mortars were set up but almost instantly were destroyed by bomb or shell fire. Smoke cover was put over by the 2-inch mortars and the crossing of the seawall was attempted [but] met with intensive gun and mortar fire as well as LMG fire and almost all... the assaulting troops were killed or badly wounded.” A second attempt under smoke cover from the 2-inch mortars “suffered [a] similar fate to the first. By this time the wireless sets were largely destroyed; there being only the [No.] 18 set in ‘C’ Company still functioning. A third attempt on a reduced scale... to cross the wall... was met by a hail of fire causing most of the personnel to become casualties.”41

  Joined by Captain Walter McGregor, Ambery, meanwhile, had crept along the seawall to Jasperson’s headquarters. They found the situation there a shambles. Everyone hugged the wall, and Jasperson reported having no wireless contact with either his companies or Calpe. Only tanks could break the impasse.42

  19. A Death Trap

  All along the fire-wracked beach, men looked seaward through billowing smoke clouds for the three LCTs bearing nine tanks that were to have landed with the infantry.

  Tragically, the LCTs had been led too far westward when the guide ship commander provided incorrect navigational fixes—an error not realized until 0502 hours. Although hurried course corrections were made, the LCTs were still two miles from Dieppe at 0515 and did not enter the offshore smokescreen until 0530. Five minutes later, they began landing.1 “In any opposed landing,” the Canadian Army historian observed, “the first minute or two after the craft touch down are of critical importance; and it may be said that during that minute or two the Dieppe battle, on the main beaches, was lost. The impetus of the attack ebbed quickly away, and by the time the tanks arrived the psychological moment was past.”2

  In addition to the tanks, the LCTs carried parties of Essex Scottish and Rileys; most of the engineers, support personnel, and medical teams; and a collection of scout cars, Bren carriers, and beach buggies. When the large front doors dropped, the men aboard looked upon a scene from hell. Through the thick, drifting smoke clouds, bodies, parts of bodies, and wounded men could be seen strewn across the beach. Most of the still living hunkered along the seawall. Exploding shells and mortar bombs sprayed shards of rock in every direction. Tracer rounds flickered back and forth.

  LCT1 grounded on the eastern end of Red Beach, close to the mole. Aboard was ‘C’ Squadron’s headquarters troop, consisting of three tanks: Chief, Company, and Calgary. The tanks exited fast, with Chief leading. Calgary, towing a scout car, brought up the rear.3 Also aboard was Captain D.A. Deziel’s Essex Scottish platoon. As the leading men stepped on the ramp, an 81-millimetre mortar round struck it, and shrapnel wounded Deziel in the stomach and chest. “He dropped immediately, and wiggled back into the ship where a stretcher bearer took charge of him,” Private R.A.M. Baker recalled. “Let’s go, boys,” Lieutenant Bill Scott shouted, and the men piled out behind him.4 As LCT1 backed away, several artillery shells holed and sunk her.

  Chief’s commander, Major Allen Glenn, deployed the chespaling roll to enable the tank to cl
aw a path up a steep, stony ridge. Gaining the crest, Glenn looked into a seven-foot cavern created by tidal action and German stone-mining operations. Backing downslope to a hull-down position that exposed only the main gun in the turret, Glenn decided this “was a logical place to set up a command post to observe all action and give support.”

  Captain G.T. Valentine’s Company had been following Chief when a shell broke a track pin on the left front drive wheel and immobilized the tank. Company was soon targeted by mortars. Although the explosions filled the tank with smoke, they caused the men inside no injury. Yet the tankers could do little but endure the fiery rain.5

  Lieutenant Scott’s Essex party initially found cover behind Company before sprinting for the seawall. A bangalore torpedo shoved into the wire exploded and “[Private] Morris St. Louis had both his legs crushed when a great bunch of the wall toppled over on him.” Attempts to use the gap created by this collapse to gain the promenade were driven back by machine-gun fire.6

  Having seen the other two tanks head for the steep slope, Lieutenant Brice G. Douglas in Calgary had moved out to the right flank. When he released the scout car fifteen feet from the LCT, tracers slashed into the fifty-pound bags of explosives strapped to the hood. The scout car exploded, reduced to a flaming wreck. Calgary was paralleling the seawall, seeking a way to gain the promenade, when a shell shattered its left track about midway across White Beach. Douglas began shelling the tobacco factory and casino with its 6-pounder gun. Trooper Dennis G. Scott wrote later that when they “observed horses pulling mortars or guns along the top of the [west] cliff, [Trooper Ken] Smethurst hesitated because he really did not want to shoot the horses. Meanwhile, we were attracting a lot of gunfire. We took some direct hits on the turret, hard enough that the paint was melting and running down on the inside. The heat inside, along with the smell of the smoke and cordite, was almost unbearable, so much so that Sergeant ‘Al’ Wagstaff, who was down in the co-driver’s seat was put out of action.” Calgary kept firing until it ran out of ammunition but likely to little effect. Although the 6-pounder was the most powerful Churchill gun, its only ammunition was armour-piercing, at a time when high-explosive shell would have had more effect.7