One Day in August

by David O'Keefe

  Here, on the main beach, only two small parties, including Howard Large’s group, crossed the promenade at full gallop while under heavy fire and reached the boulevard de Verdun, with the survivors disappearing into the buildings nearby that separated the beach from the port. The first party, led by the company sergeant major, Cornelius Stapleton, reached their objective: the structures overlooking the trawlers where the inner channel met the Quai Henri IV. The party that included Howard Large found itself trapped in a cellar somewhere between the beach and the harbour. But having suffered more than 75 percent casualties in little over an hour, the remnants of Lieutenant Colonel Fred Jasperson’s 500-strong battalion were unable to continue organized fighting. Although they were but a stone’s throw from the trawlers and less than a hundred yards from the Hôtel Moderne, they could go no farther. Without tank support, they did not possess the size, strength or firepower to achieve their objectives unless they received significant reinforcements.

  When the Locust finally made it across the Channel to Dieppe, she was twenty minutes behind schedule and too late to contribute effectively to the Essex Scottish attack on the main beach. Given what transpired, though, it is doubtful that her four-inch guns would have made any difference. According to Jock Hughes-Hallett, not only was her lack of speed a factor but also, in the darkness, Red Ryder and her captain John Stride had her formed up behind the wrong landing group. Apparently “this mistake was not noticed until 0510hrs when she closed Red and White beaches at full speed arriving there about 0530hrs.”38

  When the smokescreen cleared, the entire Dieppe panorama came into view. To Douglas Bevan, the scene presented a paradox he never forgot: “It was a lovely day when we arrived there, early in the morning, beautiful blue sky. All Hell had been turned loose.”39 Indeed, the men on board saw smoke rising from the beachfront and the headlands, aircraft twisting and turning above to avoid German flak, the whole tableau accompanied by the constant sound of explosions in the distance. Meanwhile, the Royal Marines of Tiger Force remained on the upper deck, bodies pressed prone to avoid any stray bullets or shell fragments that might be flying around, preparing for their baptism of fire.

  Due to the thick smokescreen and fires raging on the beach and in the town, Ian Fleming, located not far offshore on HMS Fernie, was able to see little of the actual fighting on the beaches. He could, however, hear the battle raging. The noise level provided hope that things would eventually proceed as planned, although the sight of returning landing craft, some shot up and already carrying wounded, suggested otherwise. For Red Ryder and his Cutting Out Force, the clock was now ticking. From the moment the first shot was fired, the chances for a successful pinch lessened with each passing minute. Despite the prevalent notion that the German defenders’ “occidental attitude” of self-preservation would rule the day, they could still attempt to destroy the Top Secret signals material in their possession if they had enough time to recover from the initial shock.

  As far as the records indicate, Ryder did not wait for the pre-arranged signal from the Essex Scottish, who in any event had bigger issues to worry about just then; at 0545 hours, he decided it was time for the Locust to play her part. Ordering Captain Stride to steer for the harbour entrance, Ryder recorded later that they made three headlong attempts to breach the mole. On each occasion, heavy fire rained down on the gunboat from the east headland—which, according to the plan, was supposed to be in the hands of the Royal Regiment of Canada. Instead, the Royals remained pinned down on Blue Beach at Puys, out of radio contact.

  On the first attempt, neither Ryder nor Stride could locate the outstretched arms of the Dieppe jetties in the intense smoke, and after two near misses from large-calibre shells, Ryder ordered a quick about-face to prepare for another run. Sailing only eight feet above the waterline on the low-slung river gunboat’s deck, Bevan recalled that, when the Locust unexpectedly turned hard following Ryder’s command, the ship listed at such an angle that the men on the port side could scoop up the Channel water in their hands.40 Below deck, Seaman John Parsons had little idea of what was happening above; all he knew was that the guns of Locust were blazing away, given the demands shouted down for a continuous stream of ammunition for the Chicago Piano and the other guns on deck.41

  The second attempt met the same fate: the German guns were still active on the east headland, and those on the west headland were now reaching out for them too. This time Ryder asked Stride to reverse hard, backing away from the mole with all guns firing at whatever crevice tucked into Pollet Cliff belched fire and smoke at regular intervals. Undaunted, Ryder ordered yet another go at the harbour, hoping that in the intervening minutes the situation on the east headland had changed. However, in Ryder’s words, “On the third occasion we were hit on the back of the bridge and two men were killed. We in the forward half of the bridge being saved by Stride’s railway sleepers.”42

  Ernest Coleman, who had been designated to take the pinched material out of Dieppe on the motor launch, recalled:

  We came under heavy fire from a huge gun emplacement directly on the entrance to the harbour and by other shore batteries … the top deck of Locust was hit twice in quick succession … two were killed instantly and many more injured. I remember lying on the deck with no cover whatsoever, the speed of the shells coming over my head seemed to be parting my hair, they were that close. I saw one of the lads some short distance away from me mumbling something or possibly praying, a few seconds later I looked again, he was no longer with us.43

  For Paul McGrath, the two hits on the Locust proved a pivotal moment in his young life. “I was lying on the top deck … belly pressed hard against the steel, rifle clutched in my right hand, my pulse at the double and waiting with others of 10 platoon … for the moment to leap on the quay side and go about our business.”44 Lifting his head for a brief moment before the German shells hit home, he could see

  on the right, were the cliffs overlooking the shingle beaches and prominent waterfront. To the left were the lower escarpments dominating the harbour and the crooked channel leading to the inner harbour about a quarter of a mile from the entrance. Both heights were stiff with guns whose crews, relatively safe in their concrete bunkers, kept up a savage bombardment. They were having a field day.45

  McGrath noticed his good friend “Ginger” Northern “some fifteen feet away, not deigning to lie down” despite the obvious danger while others lay prone beside him on the deck “adrenalin pumping and primed for action.”46 Within seconds, another shell hit the Locust just yards away from Coleman and McGrath. “The noise of the explosion was gigantic,” recalled McGrath.

  The shock of it blew all the fuses of my nervous system. I was petrified with such a terror it stunned my mind. I lay on the deck with a sort of premature rigor mortis, immobilized by the awful thought of an immediate and terrible death. The game of war, which I had been enjoying up to that point, had suddenly turned deadly serious. Of course, I had been aware that the game had its perils but getting killed was something that happened to other chaps. Now, for the first time, it burst like a thunderbolt upon my consciousness that my life, too, was in danger of being abruptly snuffed out. The sods were actually trying to kill ME!47

  The air “thick with the smell of burnt explosives,” McGrath noticed Sergeant John Kruthoffer, lying motionless on the deck.

  He was covered with small debris thrown up by the explosion and at first glance I thought he had been hit, but he grunted, stirred and expleted. He was shocked and unhurt, and like me, trying to collect his wits. Other members of the platoon lay nearby, some wounded and all in a state of shock.48

  Not all of them escaped the wrath of the shells. Trying to collect himself, McGrath spotted the lifeless figure of Ginger Northern slumped against the bulkhead with one of the ship’s crew rifling through his pockets. Prying himself from the deck, the nineteen-year-old corporal went over to inquire about this odd behaviour, only to be told by the petty officer in a gruff tone, “He’s dead … and
I’m taking his personal stuff to send back home … orders to throw the dead overboard … here, give me a hand.” As they dumped the body overboard, McGrath wondered if his pal was the first member of the Royal Marine Commando to die on the raid. He was, but he would not be the last.

  Red Ryder was under orders not to breach the harbour mole with the Locust if German artillery fire was still active, and the three futile and near-disastrous attempts to charge in had dramatically reinforced the wisdom of this provision in the plan. Losing the Locust while running the gauntlet was acceptable—the Royal Marines on board could “swim” to the stairs and fight on through the harbour if necessary—but nothing would be accomplished if she was sunk before reaching the inner channel. Now, having been denied on three occasions, Ryder received a direct order from Hughes-Hallett via radio at 0607 hours that the Locust should not “enter until the situation at Blue Beach clears.”49 Ryder pulled the gunboat back into the Channel but continued to exchange fire with the positions on the cliff, hoping that Catto’s Royal Regiment would soon arrive from Blue Beach. For Jock Farmer, this respite was a welcome relief: “As there was very little protection on deck we dreaded the next salvo, but luckily Locust was still afloat. The skipper had already put her full astern and kept going until we were just out of range—for the time being.”50

  A view of Dieppe on the day of the raid, showing British naval craft manoeuvring close inshore as fires burn in the background and the haze of the smokescreen billows around the landing zones. This is the perspective the men on HMS Locust would have had as they tried again and again to breach the harbour that morning. (photo credits 13.4)

  An aerial image, captured by an RAF photo reconnaissance plane on the day of the raid, that reveals the outer harbour filled with German trawlers berthed at the Quai Henri IV, less than two hundred yards from the Hôtel Moderne to the left. In the background, smoke billows from the tobacco factory like a beacon marking the dividing line between Red and White Beaches—the shortest distance and most direct path from the main beach landing zones to the Hôtel Moderne and the trawlers in the harbour. (photo credits 13.5)

  The force commanders aboard Calpe never had a clear idea about what was happening on the “sharp end”—on the beaches. Despite all the communications technology Mountbatten had installed on both command ships, the “fog of war” prevailed throughout the battle. Jock Hughes-Hallett and Ham Roberts were forced to make decisions based on a patchwork collection of information flowing in from numerous sources that was always incomplete, often contradictory and sometimes erroneous. The radio operators and forward observation officers tasked with relaying the events ashore had been cut down on the beach by enemy fire or had not even landed where expected. In the ensuing muddle, the commanders made some choices that, viewed through the safety of hindsight, seem wildly disconnected from reality.

  By the time Hughes-Hallett ordered Ryder on the Locust to wait offshore, both he and Roberts knew that the landings on Orange Beach and Green Beach had scored some initial success, but they had no knowledge of the disasters on Yellow Beach and Blue Beach—only silence. With German gun positions on both headlands blazing away, they had to be aware that neither Doug Catto’s Royal Regiment of Canada nor Cecil Merritt’s South Saskatchewan Regiment had reached its prime objective and that the air attacks and naval bombardment had failed to deter the German gunners from raining fire down on the main beach or the seaward approaches to Dieppe. Most distressing for them was the news that the Calgary Tanks had arrived late, and that both the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and the Essex Scottish, caught on the beach, were pinned down and reported to be taking heavy casualties. Despite the ominous news, in their view all was not yet lost.

  The biggest decision for any commander in the heat of battle is whether to call in the reserve force—whether to reinforce the line or whether and when to call off an attack. There is no formula for the commander to follow in making this decision; rather, he trusts his instinct—what the Germans call Fingerspitzengefühl, or “fingertip feel.” In this period of the war, some in the Anglo-Canadian high command held that commanders should not call off an attack before they had used the full extent of their force—an attitude particularly common in the cocky atmosphere of Combined Operations and among enthusiastic “thrusters” like Ham Roberts. Right from the start of the raid, Roberts and Hughes-Hallett had to weigh whether the losses incurred would justify the final result, and expectations at home were high: John Godfrey had classified the objectives of the pinch as A-1 targets—targets worth incurring heavy casualties to obtain. The dilemma was straightforward: if they embarked on an attack that incurred heavy casualties but in the process failed to achieve the main objective, then calling it off would be viewed as a waste of lives for no purpose; however, if they committed the rest of their force, in this case their reserves, and by so doing achieved their objective, then the extra cost would be considered worthwhile and justifiable.* 51 Despite the increasingly gloomy news pouring in over the radio, neither Ham Roberts nor Jock Hughes-Hallett would relent, and both seemed electrified by one pivotal but ultimately misleading message from the Essex Scottish. Within minutes of Hughes-Hallett’s order for Red Ryder to wait, the command team learned that the “Essex Scottish R[egiment] crossed beaches and into houses at 604 [hours].”52 That message marked the turning point in the Dieppe saga, and started a roller-coaster ride that ended in perhaps the most controversial set of decisions ever reached in Canadian military history—and one of the greatest blunders of the Second World War. Both Roberts and Hughes-Hallett assumed from the message that the whole battalion—all four companies and five hundred men, not just the remnants of two decimated and under-strength platoons—were in the town near the port and close to their targets. At this point, they decided to reinforce the Essex Scottish.

  Minutes later, the news arrived that the Royal Regiment had failed to land on Blue Beach—but again the message was erroneous. The force commanders, thinking the Royals were still afloat rather than trapped on Blue Beach, immediately switched their landing zone, ordering them to come in over Red Beach and link up with the Essex as they tried to punch through to the port. Before long, Fred Jasperson’s Essex Scottish began to report their true situation—that the battalion was pinned down on the beach and taking grievous casualties—but Hughes-Hallett and Roberts dismissed their cries, regarding them as the overexcited utterances of a green unit fighting its first battle. All they needed, they thought, was a little stiffening and reinforcement, either to consolidate their reported position in the town or to regain their momentum and push on into the port.

  The force commanders also committed Lieutenant Colonel Dollard Ménard’s Fusiliers Mont-Royal to the fray. At 0640 hours, Hughes-Hallett, no doubt in conjunction with Roberts, recorded that he issued orders for the FMR to land at Red Beach and link up with the Essex Scottish. That too was a disaster. The landing craft bringing them to shore lost their way in the dense smokescreen and scattered, landing parts of the five-hundred-man battalion at intervals all along Dieppe’s shoreline, most of them near White Beach on both sides of the casino and at the foot of the western headland. Many of them were instantly gunned down or blown apart as they tried to cross the beach. Allegedly, a dozen men under the command of Sergeant Pierre Dubuc penetrated the town in the footsteps of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and made it as far as the two basins in the inner harbour. There, they apparently stormed aboard a set of barges, hoping to hand them over to the Royal Marines, but after a short firefight with the crews they ran short of ammunition and were forced briefly to surrender, before making their escape back to the beach.* 53

  At 0645 hours, Jock Hughes-Hallett summoned Red Ryder aboard the Calpe for a discussion—one that resulted in the most controversial decision of the entire deadly day. He met initially with Ryder alone, he wrote later in both his after-action report and his memoirs, while Roberts continued to monitor events from the bridge. After an emotionally charged exchange, he said, “with great moral co
urage, Ryder told me that he felt certain that any attempt to enter the harbour would be attended by the loss of all ships concerned, since they would have to run the gauntlet at point blank range of batteries of medium calibre guns concealed in the caves dug into the side of the cliff.”54 Given the fact that the orders had anticipated that result, Ryder’s hesitation could have cost him his career, if not for his experience and his stature. Hughes-Hallett recorded that Ryder was “emphatic that this part of the operation was no longer on,” and his “very forthright advice against carrying out his part of the operation showed as much moral courage in August as he showed physical courage when he won the VC in March at St. Nazaire. A lesser man might have felt it would be cowardly not to urge going ahead.”55

  With Ryder’s position clear, they proceeded only then “to consult” with Roberts, who seems not to have been free to call the shots in the way Hughes-Hallett and Mountbatten would later claim. In his post-battle interpretation, Hughes-Hallett reluctantly followed Roberts’s inexplicable order to commit the reserves to battle. However, in the words of the Australian journalist Wallace Reyburn, who spent hours observing the command team on board the Calpe during the battle, Roberts “had the look of someone in an office who had been given ‘full authority’ only to find that every time he turns around he finds the boss looking over his shoulder.”56 The evidence emerging in recently released documents shows that Hughes-Hallett was the main thread all through the raid—from conception to execution. This involvement, coupled with his confident and overtly ambitious personality, indicates that his account, supported in the postwar years by Mountbatten, is no more than an attempt to distance himself from the debacle by attributing their joint decision to Roberts alone. Both men in fact share full responsibility for the disaster about to unfold—what one Royal Marine called “the sea version of the Charge of the Light Brigade.”57