Dieppe: Operation Jubilee - Channel Ports

by Tim Saunders

  In addition, concrete walls ‘8 ft high and 3-4 ft thick’ had been built across most of the roads from the Esplanade into the town. The few exits that remained only had easily-blocked gaps in the walls for light vehicles about eight feet wide. All of these obstacles were found to be covered with machine gun and anti-tank fire.

  Surrounding Festung Dieppe were no fewer than four major artillery batteries, mainly using captured French guns, which were either tasked to take on enemy shipping or were designed to engage a landing force, either on the beaches or on the landward approaches to the town. Two of these, as already mentioned, were flanking batteries located on the cliffs at Berneval and Varengeville, which are covered in detail at Chapters 4 and 5. A battery located near Arques-la-Bataille, inland from the town, housed four 150mm guns, which could engage targets virtually anywhere in the raid’s area, provided of course that there was an observer to give fire-direction orders. A fourth battery (four 150mm guns) was located at Mesnil-Val, west of le Treport, that was sited to provide the Berneval area with mutual support. The fire of these large-calibre guns was supplemented by smaller pieces, many of which were also captured and were mostly located within Dieppe’s barbed-wire perimeter. In addition, four lesser batteries, each of four 100mm guns, were deployed to the west and to the east of Dieppe, while covering the seafront were eight of the renowned but now obsolescent French 75mm guns. This gives a total of forty-five artillery pieces of various calibres, to which must be added the forty-five 81mm medium mortars of a coastal infantry regiment. This artillery total was certainly not consistent with the COHQ definition of ‘lightly held.’

  Other guns marked on the overprinted maps were the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe anti-aircraft guns defending the town and the St Aubin airfield. These were various calibres, from the light 20mm to the heavy 88mm. Again, the volume of fire that would face the Allied air forces’ fighter-bombers was under-estimated. Kriegsmarine gunners and some marines manned defensive positions in the immediate area of the port.

  Sandbag emplacements were still common place. This position was on the Dieppe Esplanade overlooking Red and White beaches.

  A newly built and well camouflaged casemate on the coast near Dieppe.

  Disposition and Reserves In 302nd Division’s Area

  571 Infanterie Regiment’s local reserve was provided by a part of its 1st infantry battalion, which was probably located at Bacqueville (over eleven miles from Dieppe), ready to deploy wherever it was required on the regimental front. For mobility, the Germans had some troop-carrying transport, but much of the immediate reserve relied on marching or bicycle, as the regiment was generally short of transport.

  Further away, General Kuntzen’s LXXXI Korps’s reserve of four infantry battalions, with some transport, was located thirty-five miles to the south-west of Dieppe, though it was unlikely that they could have concentrated significant combat power within eight hours. The final German reserve was 10th Panzer Division, which intelligence reported in early July to be occupying barracks in the area of Amiens, which was also only eight hours’ march away. Clearly, the landing force would be unable to deal with panzers, and their presence within striking distance of Dieppe is one of the factors that led to the raid being confined to a single tide. The withdrawal and re-embarkation was to start at 1100, six hours after the landing, which was a significant reduction from the fifteen hours ashore envisaged in the original Rutter plan.

  The picture postcard seaside resort village Pourville was held by a platoon from 8 Kompanie, 571 Infantarie Regiment.

  A twin MG 34 anti-aircraft mount in a coastal field position photographed in early 1942.

  Outside Festung Dieppe, all along the coast, gullies leading up from the beach were choked with rolls of concertina wire, laced with mines and shells triggered by trip wires. Across the few small beaches to east and west of Dieppe, anti-tank walls were built, and most of the gullies were covered by patrols; even battalion-sized beaches such as Pourville (Green Beach) had a permanent garrison of little more than a platoon (forty to fifty men). In this case, they were from 8 Kompanie 571 Infanterie Regiment, with the remainder of the company holding the Eastern Headland.

  The Allies were still working on the April intelligence that predated Hitler’s change of heart on the defences of Dieppe and the other Channel ports. Lieutenant Colonel Lord Lovat, commanding 4 Commando wondered,

  ‘Did Ham Roberts know what he was up against before starting? I suggest the answer is no. [Lt Col] Merritt confirms that, prior to departure for the operation, he knew little about the Germans, or how their Commander was likely to react.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the General Roberts said during his briefing at HQ 2nd Canadian Division, ‘it will be a piece of cake.’

  State of Alert

  On 20 July, Oberstgeneral Curt Haase issued Fifteenth Army orders activating ‘the highest degree of watchfulness and readiness for action’ for three periods of what were assessed to be favourable tide and moon. They were 27 July to 3 August, 10 to 19 August, and 25 August to 1 September. This state of readiness required ‘all personnel to sleep fully clothed at or near their posts.’ This order was supplemented by an exhortation to his soldiers to ‘Be on guard! Eyes and ears alert! Kick the Anglo-American and his helpers in the snout’. On 10 August, as the latest period of high alert began, a special order of the day was issued. Oberstgeneral Haase again warned of an impending landing, and went on to describe the threat that LXXXI Korps faced:

  ‘The information in our hands makes it clear that the Anglo-Americans will be forced, in spite of themselves, by the wretched predicament of the Russians to undertake some operations in the West in the near future.

  The German defenders were regularly exercised and were able to respond quickly to any landing

  Soldiers, you must realise that it will be a very sticky business! Bombs and naval guns, sea weapons and commandos, assault craft and parachutists, airborne troops and hostile citizens, sabotage and murder will have to be coped with. Steady nerves will be required if we are not to go under.

  Fear does not exist! When the hail of fire pours down upon you, you must wipe your eyes and ears, clutch your weapons harder and defend yourselves as never before!

  THEM or US! That must be our watchword!

  The German Army has in the past received all kinds of tasks from the Führer and has always carried them out. The Army will carry out this task too. My soldiers, you won’t fail! I have looked into your eyes! You are German men!

  You will willingly and bravely do your duty!

  Do this and you will remain victorious!

  Long live our people and our Fatherland!

  Long live our Führer Adolf Hitler!’

  In response to Commander Fifteenth Army’s exhortations to fight to the last, Generalmajor Haase required all of his officers to parade at divisional headquarters to formally swear an oath to hold their position to death. With the oaths taken, Haase himself dramatically swore that he ‘would rather die than retreat or surrender’. Despite exhortations and oaths, Hauptman Lindner explained that, without a visible threat, it was difficult to maintain a high state of alert.

  ‘It was very quiet, day after day nothing. We had difficulty with the sentries guarding the coast; the poor man walking with his rifle along the cliffs. Nothing happened but the waves coming and going. Sometimes they slept. Yes, we had a problem keeping them awake.’

  No doubt mindful of the need not to keep his troops on a high state of alert for longer than was strictly necessary, and the decreasing return from doing so, Commander Fifteenth Army reduced the state of readiness on 18 August. However, Generalmajor Haase decided that 302nd Infanterie Division would remain on Red Alert for another night before standing down after dawn on the fateful day of 19 August 1942. His divisional order read

  ‘The night 18/19th can be regarded as suitable for enemy raiding operations. Commanders of coastal defences are to maintain troops at the Threatened Danger Alert.’

  Life for the
German defenders of France’s northern coast was far from uncomfortable but dull. These soldiers relax on the terrace of the Old Château, Dieppe.

  CHAPTER THREE

  EMBARKATION AND ENCOUNTER AT SEA

  The decision to launch the raid was kept from 2nd Canadian Division and the rest of the raiding force until the last moment. On 10 August, the Calgary Regiment were required to waterproof their Churchill tanks in preparation for what they were told was yet another Combined Operations demonstration. Meanwhile, General Robert’s staff issued orders for his soldiers to prepare for Exercise Ford I, II and III; a series of innocent-sounding convoy exercises, starting on 15 August 1942.

  Measures to maintain security and to keep the land component of the force from speculating about what was going on were comprehensive. COHQ records that ‘One battalion arrived to take part... with empty ammunition boxes, being under the impression that it was to take part in yet another exercise and being anxious to save weight.’ Their real ammunition, stacked on the quay side, was handed over to a puzzled quartermaster on arrival at the port.

  The first occasion that any one at unit level knew of the raid’s revival was when Major General Roberts summoned all senior battalion HQ officers to an equally innocent-sounding lecture at a village near Chichester. The Jubilee plan was essentially the same as that for Operation Rutter, including some changes already made, such as the restriction to one tide, and replacing airborne troops with two Army commando units. There was also a new chain of command: Lieutenant General Montgomery, to whom much of the detailed planning had been delegated, was promoted to command the Eighth Army in Egypt. Now the chain of command led from Admiral Mountbatten to Canadian Generals McNaughton, Crerar and Roberts, who, under huge political, national and military pressure, had little choice but to agree to go ahead with the plan.

  The early version of 2nd Canadian Division’s badge featured a yellow ‘C II’ woven on a blue background

  Major Glenn of the Calgary Regiment was in a staff car following the tank transporters taking his Churchills to Gosport for the ‘demonstration’ when,

  ‘All of a sudden, the bloody column comes to a halt and we are called to a conference in a little air-raid shelter by the side of the road, no lights or anything. We were shown some aerial photographs, taken that afternoon over Dieppe. It was on again…’

  Especially as most of the troops committed to such a large-scale raid had been briefed previously for Rutter, the decision had been taken that for the sake of security they should have minimum notice. This lack of notice had also influenced the substitution of paratroopers by commandos, as Commander Airborne Forces had insisted that his troops would need four days’ notice. One problem for the Canadians was that in the six weeks since the cancellation of Rutter there had been the usual turnover in manpower of about five percent, and the new replacements were not trained to the same standards as the remainder of the Division.

  The 2nd Canadian Division deployed on ‘Exercise Ford I’ as planned, heading for Portsmouth and Southampton, while the commandos of the Special Service Brigade assembled at Newhaven. Here the landing craft were hidden under a large canvas sheet, and the landing ships to be used by Number 4 Commando had been disguised to look like merchantmen. Canvas screens created extra bulkheads, and additional dummy funnels had been erected to alter their shape totally, as seen by the twelve Luftwaffe observation or air-photograph sorties that the Germans tasked over Newhaven on 18 August.

  Lord Louis Mountbatten at his best – inspiring the men before battle. In this case addressing commandos at Newhaven on the eve of Jubilee.

  Canadian soldiers awaiting orders to embark on their landing ships at Portsmouth.

  Naval Commando John Mellor wrote:

  ‘No. 3 Commando had to queue outside the docks in the streets for half an hour before they could board their boats. The civilians left their houses, and sensing the importance of the occasion, watched in silence from the curb side.’

  Infantry boarding shipping on the afternoon of 18 August 1942.

  Further west along the coast, reporter Ross Munro described his embarkation with the Essex Scottish at Portsmouth on the evening of 18 August:

  ‘The port at 6 P.M. was a busy spot. The last truckload of Canadians and their ammunition and equipment were arriving. It caused no particular stir and the workers paid scant attention to the troops, whom they had seen many times before, going and coming on manoeuvres.

  ‘By 7 P.M., I was aboard the Queen Emma, another peacetime Channel vessel turned into an infantry assault ship for combined operations. The Emma carried the headquarters of the Royal Regiment as well as several hundred assault troops, mortar crews and miscellaneous detachments.

  ‘There were sealed envelopes distributed to us all there - the same maps of Dieppe and the same photographs and plans we had hopefully learned to know in every detail in July.

  ‘The officers and men had been told by now that they were going to Dieppe tonight, and there were hurried conferences aboard the ship, refresher briefings and eleventh-hour preparations. Few of the Royals seemed to be in as confident a mood as I had known them in “practice Dieppe.” The rush to the port, and the mass of detail which had to be crammed again in a few hours, left everyone rather ragged.

  ‘Even before we put to sea, some had an ominous feeling about what was ahead of them on the other side of the Channel. Nobody said anything but many were wondering how the security had been in the time since July 7. . . They were puzzled, too, why the raid had been decided upon so suddenly. They would have liked more time to adjust themselves. I shared most of their mental discomfort.’

  The British Sten gun – cheap and mass produced.

  One point that is made in virtually all infantry accounts is that the crudely manufactured Sten guns, issued to many Canadians in lieu of their rifles on the Isle of Wight, had been withdrawn on the cancellation of Operation Rutter. Now, on the dockside, brand new weapons were being issued to the troops. The Canadians were not happy. They had tuned their ‘Rutter Stens’ extensively to make the cheaply engineered and hastily manufactured weapons anything like reliable. Corporal Red Sudds of the South Saskatchewan Regiment, boarding HMS Princess Beatrix at Southampton explained the problem:

  ‘They’re a goddamn crude gun to begin with. Mass produced so quickly that rivets are left sticking out, and they can jam. But when you have your own Sten, you file these bits down and polish out the roughness. These goddamn guns were raw, still in the grease they were packed in at the factory. Twenty rounds out of these buggers and they’d jam. That’s why I tried to file down what I could. And a lot of other guys were doing the same thing.’

  As darkness fell, the force sailed, and assembled off the South Coast as planned. Captain Denis Whitaker aboard the landing ship HMS Glengyle, sailing at 2120 hours from Southampton, with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, recorded that:

  ‘As we sailed out of Southampton harbour that evening, there was absolute silence except for the swishing sound the Glengyle made as she slid through an almost perfectly calm English Channel. We spent the time we had left cleaning weapons, priming grenades, distributing maps and escape kits, and briefing the troops on their tasks. We did our best to prepare them, but the feeling of optimism many of us had shared before Rutter was now being replaced by apprehension.’

  An example of the LCP(L) and its naval crew in Newhaven.

  A diagram from the CH HQ report showing the electronic fit of the two HQ ships Calpe and Fenie.

  Not all the raiders had the ‘luxury’ of being able to try to get a little sleep and a hot breakfast in a substantial Landing Ships Infantry (LSI). The Fusiliers Mont-Royal, the Brigade reserve for the main assault on Dieppe, were embarked in R-Craft and Landing Craft Personnel. Crammed in the diminutive craft, a Warrant Officer recalled that ‘despite the soporific throb of our own engines, it was difficult for the men sitting upright to get much sleep.’

  Aboard HMS Calpe, one of the Hunt Class destroyers, conver
ted mainly by adding extra communications equipment to act as Force HQ ship, Major General Roberts and his staff were joined by Air Commodore Cole, who represented the RAF. Also onboard was the Commander of the Naval element of the force, Captain Hughes Hallett, who as part of Combined Ops had done much of the original Rutter planning. Remaining off Dieppe, the force commanders would use Calpe’s high power radios to transmit back to RAF Uxbridge, where Admiral Mountbatten and General Crerar had joined Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory to monitor the action at his headquarters.

  Several thousand miles away in Cairo, Churchill and Field Marshal Alanbrooke were waiting for news, and as usual, Churchill’s mood was swinging from exaltation at the prospect of action to the depths of despair. Tension mounted as the reported weather conditions in the Channel hung in the balance. The Prime Minister had made commitments to both the Russians and the Americans, and he needed a military success for the sake of morale at home. Earlier, when questioned about the risks of such an ambitious raid and its place in the war’s strategy, Field Marshal Alanbrooke told Churchill that