One Day in August

by David O'Keefe

  Then, according to Coleman, “One of the naval ratings on the craft ignited a gas flare and tried to throw it over the side to give us some cover[,] but it hit the side and rebounded back into the craft.”9 The ALC, already covered with diesel oil from the engine and petrol from extra tanks that had been punctured by shell fragments, immediately erupted in flames. An alert regimental sergeant major ordered those sitting near the ammunition box to heave it overboard, even if alight. “We would have been blown to bits if the flames had reached it,” a thankful Paul McGrath reported. As more shells rocked the boat and the flames increased, the sergeant major, whom he never saw again, cried out, “I’m afraid it is every man for himself, try and make it back.”10

  But it was not easy to escape the flaming craft. “Being unable to disembark either through the front ramp or over the shore side,” John Kruthoffer wrote,

  the start of a raging fire became a deciding factor even for those who had been slow in realising that their number was coming up. An effective smoke screen and very rapid movement meant that evacuation was carried out without many extra casualties. A quick check that those lying in the fire were dead—and then with anti-tank bombs and 36 grenades cooking and going off—instinct took over and saved the problem of planning the next move. Nobody made it ashore, except as POWs later, and the half-platoon which came back were those who were about to get out in one piece, and had the confidence to swim out towards home in the hope of being picked up.11

  Once over the side, the survivors had a fateful choice to make: wade ashore to captivity and possible death or swim out to the Channel in the hope of being picked up before German fire or exhaustion got the better of them. For Paul McGrath and the rest of the IAU, the choice seemed obvious. “We crowded close to the boat’s hull for protection against the bullets. I quickly inflated the Mae West and, not being a good long distance swimmer, its buoyancy encouraged me. Some voices were heard ‘let’s go to the beach.’ Other voices, among them Sgt Kruthoffer’s, urged ‘Come on, let’s make for the ships.’ ” Every man from Fleming’s IAU decided to swim out to sea, hoping for rescue. Not all of them made it. The other craft that had not seen Picton-Phillips’s frantic order to withdraw—the one carrying Major Titch Houghton—later landed its charges. All of them died on the beaches or fell into enemy captivity for the remainder of the war.

  In 2007, John Barker, the son-in-law of Ernest Coleman, made an astonishing discovery: buried in secret beneath a dilapidated shed in the Coleman family’s garden was his deceased father-in-law’s account of the raid. Ernest Coleman was a Section leader in No. 10 Platoon, Company X of the Royal Marine Commando. His task, as he tells it, was to enter Dieppe to “secure … important documents” and bring them back to England. This famous photograph of a man whose trousers have been lost in the fighting is unidentified, but Ernest Coleman’s account makes vivid sense of it for the first time:

  “At the promenade I met other prisoners who had been in the water, I sat down on the grassy bank on the edge of the promenade, I was not aware until this time that I had lost my underpants, they must have come adrift when I was in the sea.… The lads made me get in the centre of the column to save my embarrassment, I was still naked from the waist down, a bit later a Frenchman noticed me and handed me a pair of trousers, they were rather small for me but very much welcomed.” (photo credits 14.2)

  Ernest Coleman was now neck deep in water, huddled, as he tells the story, with the rest of the IAU alongside the burning landing craft, the fierce fire incinerating the bodies of the dead on board. “I was able to get around the side of the craft to get a little cover,” he recalled,

  but we had few options open to us, some of the lads decided to swim out to sea, on seeing this I decided to join them, I stripped off my clothes except for my shirt and underpants, when boarding the landing craft I was given a Mae West, I also put this on, all the time we were still under heavy fire. I finally entered the water along with my weapons, swimming under water for as long as possible.12

  About one hundred yards out, Coleman wrote, an explosion rendered him unconscious, and he awoke later having washed ashore. As he attempted to make a second break for the Channel, he crossed paths with two Germans, who took him prisoner.

  Paul McGrath, floating out to sea on his back and using the Mae West for support, could see the landing craft still in flames. To his left, a motor speedboat suddenly catapulted out of the harbour at a frantic rate, in a desperate attempt to escape. Who was on it remains a mystery, but within three seconds a series of shells exploded as the Germans tried to find the range. “One behind, one in front, and one on target which disintegrated the boat,” he noted. “The German gunners were on form that day.”13 Eventually, and near exhaustion, McGrath and the majority of his platoon (except for Coleman) were plucked from the English Channel and brought aboard Calpe, which by this time was conducting search and rescue and dodging the German bombers that were now appearing over the landing zone. Huntington-Whiteley, the man Fleming had chosen to lead what he hoped would be one of the most important missions of the entire war, was also missing. He had disappeared into the surf, and nobody had any idea what had happened to the commanding officer.

  Although there is no record of any investigation, both Mountbatten’s headquarters and John Godfrey’s Naval Intelligence Division probably remained uneasy until Huntington-Whiteley’s fate was established. With no knowledge of Bletchley Park or cryptographic methods or procedures, Huntington-Whiteley would not have seemed a prize intelligence catch. Unless German intelligence had some reason to suspect that there was more to him and his mission than his youthful demeanour betrayed, the secret would remain airtight. However, during the retreat from the beaches, Brigadier Bill Southam and his staff were taken prisoner and, in his abandoned landing craft, the Germans discovered an almost complete set of the highly intricate operational plan for Operation Jubilee—the document that Mountbatten had ordered his brigade commanders to take ashore. Contained in the surviving portions was Appendix L—the search plan for Dieppe—the same one I used to connect Huntington-Whiteley to the Hôtel Moderne and the naval headquarters. I had the luxury of knowing who he was and what he was after, but it would not have taken the Germans long to figure that out either: the German soldiers who discovered the documents belonged to MARES—the same German intelligence commando unit on which Godfrey and Fleming had styled their own Intelligence Assault Unit.* 14 Needless to say, when his interrogator plopped the captured search plan in front of him, Huntington-Whiteley would have had no place to hide. He would soon have been subjected to Nazi “enhanced interrogation,” likely of the medieval sort.

  Fortunately for all concerned, Huntington-Whiteley did make it out of Dieppe alive. Despite the burns he had suffered during the fire on board the landing craft, he had managed to swim out to sea rather than fall into enemy hands and was picked up by a passing Royal Navy vessel, which brought him to the burn ward of the Brighton Municipal Hospital. In the description he wrote to John Kruthoffer from his hospital bed, he explained:

  It wasn’t until Saturday that I learned that most of you had got back, and you can imagine my feelings, as for the previous three days I had been absolutely certain that I was the only survivor from our ill-fated [TLC]. I was picked up by a small flak ship manned by the royals who did some splendid shooting … I am right as rain now except for a peeling face, a couple of outsize lips and two brick-red legs which I consider very lucky remembering the amount of refuse that was flying about. I am going to write to the missing lads[’] parents which will be very difficult as there is no definite news I can give them … In fact, the only one who I am certain about is poor [Ginger] Northern who, you may or may not know, was going to be married early in September.15

  Finally, by mid-morning, after exhausting all the reserves and cancelling the landing of the remaining elements of the Calgary Tanks on the main beach, Ham Roberts and Jock Hughes-Hallett called off the operation just after 1000 hours.*

  To
ld to expect a one-day raid, a “return ticket” or “butcher and bolt” operation, the men of the raiding force were told to jettison their extra kit—including water bottles—in England, leaving many caught on the beaches or as prisoners in German hands thirsting for fresh water from any source. (photo credits 14.3)

  Roberts sent a message by carrier pigeon back to England: “Very heavy casualties in men and ships. Did everything possible to get men off but in order to get any home had to come to sad decision to abandon remainder. This was a joint decision by Force Commanders. Obviously operation completely lacked surprise.”

  On the Locust, Red Ryder was also melancholy. Even years later he would be weighed down by the decisions made that day. “Coming back from Dieppe,” he wrote in his memoirs,

  I had a nagging feeling that I had not lived up to my hopes and ambitions. We had made three attempts on the harbour entrance and received an explicit signal not to continue. And yet in view of what the Canadians suffered, should I not have pressed home our attack with more resolution? We would certainly have been sunk before reaching the entrance and one had to think of the many casualties it would have involved. It would have been a forlorn hope but might have helped others.16

  On the Fernie, sitting at times just seven hundred yards off the main beach, Ian Fleming spent the day running between the bridge and the wardroom, trying to keep posted on the progress of the Royal Marines and his IAU. At times, according to his anonymous article in the Weekly Intelligence Report, he peered out through his binoculars. After the Royal Marines were dispatched to the main beach, he saw the Locust move towards the shore to take on the German guns in the east headland, “pumping 4-inch shells with incredible rapidity” while the tattered landing craft went in. Off in the distance, he witnessed the British destroyer HMS Berkeley succumb to Luftwaffe bombs that crashed through its deck and exploded, leaving her to sink a stone’s throw off the Dieppe coast. Then shells started to rip into the base of Fernie‘s funnel, killing and wounding a number of sailors.

  As the wounded fleet headed back to England, Ian Fleming turned to catch one last glimpse of Dieppe through the smoke. Sporadically, through gaps in the smokescreen, he glimpsed the results of some of the heaviest fighting still going on in Dieppe. On the beach, he could now make out hundreds of small figures lying motionless in almost uniform pattern, punctuated by burning landing craft and the silhouettes of abandoned or trapped tanks. One landing craft that had ferried men and tanks to the shore only hours before was now crammed with the wounded and the bodies of the dead. The casino where he had fared poorly in his pre-war jaunts sat in near ruins. “It was a drunken mockery of a building,” he wrote, confessing with “unholy delight” his satisfaction at seeing the “smile wiped off its face.” “There was practically no movement, although heavy firing was still going on. It was a scene of utter desolation and destruction which one was glad to leave, though with a heavy heart.”17

  Two days after Fleming returned to England, he sat down at his desk in Room 39 and typed up a report addressed to Wing Commander Bobby de Casa Maury, Mountbatten’s Chief Intelligence Officer. When Godfrey read it, he sent it directly to Mountbatten with a note: “I have read the attached notes by Commander Fleming who was present at Operation Jubilee in the course of his duties, and I generally agree with his remarks. I am forwarding the report personally to you as I think you may be interested to see what one of my staff has to say.” Although most of Fleming’s treatise revolved around issues of security, he concluded that the Germans had no advance knowledge of Operation Jubilee.

  In these candid remarks, Fleming also addressed the real reason he had been on the Fernie. He admitted that he was not there as a simple observer, overseeing the debut of his new IAU, as many biographical treatments maintain, but because it was his job to participate actively in the raid. “I was accommodated in HMS Fernie with instructions to return to the nearest British port with any booty obtained by the IAU under the command of Lt. Col. Picton-Phillips, R.M. carried in HMS Locust. The IAU did not land and in consequence I remained in HMS Fernie throughout the operation and withdrawal.” Here, in one document, is Ian Fleming’s confession that has sat in the archives for years, but with the exception of one account that missed its significance, it has never before been published in any writing about Dieppe.18 Fleming was to be the anchor man of the relay, with the Essex Scottish passing the booty to members of the IAU, who would then have Ernest Coleman whisked out of Dieppe harbour on a special motor launch to meet Fleming on Fernie. From there, with the battle still raging on shore, Fleming, perhaps accompanied by Ernest Coleman, would have headed directly to the nearest British port, bringing back what in cryptographic terms was the proverbial Holy Grail.

  Less than two years after he had paced the shores of England’s damp Channel coast waiting for Operation Ruthless to bear fruit, Fleming, unlike his legendary literary super-agent James Bond, had been foiled again. Nothing could be clearer:19 this intelligence pipeline was central to the Dieppe Raid, and Fleming was the final link in the chain designed to bring the pinched material home.

  * The Germans were ruthless after they found the plans, rounding up several Dieppois, including the local printer, who had produced copies of the German maps for the local headquarters. The Germans accused him of giving copies to the resistance, who in turn gave them to the British for targeting purposes.

  * The remaining two flights of PLCs, carrying the whole of A Squadron and three troops of C Squadron—a total of twenty-eight tanks—were never sent in. Although they did receive a signal at 0850 hours to land at White Beach, this order was countermanded ten minutes later during the approach. The two tank beach parties, instead of carrying out their planned initial tasks of directing the tanks to their objectives, spent most of their time in assisting wounded and in organizing tank cover for the general withdrawal. (“Extract of report from the Commanding Officer of ‘B’ LCT,” app. 15 to encl. 13, p. 2, John Hughes-Hallett, “Naval Force Commander’s Report No. NFJ 0221/92,” 30 August 1942, LAC, RG 24/10872/232C2 [D48].)

  EPILOGUE

  In 1942, Ron Beal’s war, like that of the overwhelming majority of the men who landed on Dieppe’s beaches, was in essence fifty yards wide and fifty yards deep. As an infantry private in the Royal Regiment of Canada, he would not have been privy to the significance of the role his unit would play in relation to the overall plan. For the regular infantryman, the prevalent wisdom of the day dictated that he needed to know only just enough to get the immediate job done and nothing more. Such is the nature of military security, based on the strictest interpretation of the “need to know” principle. Without knowledge of the planning sessions in Richmond Terrace, or the ability to eavesdrop on radio traffic during the battle, or be a fly on the wall at Bletchley Park or in Room 39, Ron Beal’s initial understanding of what he went through was as narrow as his job description. However, when he returned from the war, he began his life’s journey, searching for the rationale behind what he and his comrades had experienced on August 19, 1942—something that seemed all too irrational. His quest translated into an advanced knowledge of all aspects of the raid—albeit knowledge based on the incomplete historical verdicts built up over the last seventy years.

  For decades, his frustration and bitterness grew. The long litany of excuses, historical arguments and counter-arguments about what motivated the raid simply never made sense to him—or failed to satisfy his distinctly restless soul. Like many of the others who took part in the raid—and indeed like many in the generations that followed these veterans, including many of Beal’s close friends—he felt they were, as he would say, “just thrown away.”1 This was the Ron Beal I met with one spring morning in 2012 when I sat down to interview him for the documentary Dieppe Uncovered.

  At first, I did not plan to reveal my years of research or my findings in a detailed way to the ninety-three-year-old veteran. However, my production partner on the film, producer/director Wayne Abbott, sensed Beal’s profound angs
t and so we spent the afternoon with documents in hand, taking him step by step through the story that now appears in these pages. His response was both moving and profound.

  Indeed, the new evidence, interwoven with the established historical record so thoroughly explored over the decades, fundamentally changes our understanding of Dieppe. But clearly, without that groundbreaking work of two previous generations of very talented historians, I would not have understood the potential of the initial discovery I made two decades ago in the British National Archives. Time too has been on my side, as the classified archives of the various intelligences services in England, Canada and the United States have slowly opened to the public. Such is the collective nature of history.

  As the years passed, the new evidence fell into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—and there will be more to come. These new documents have made a significant contribution to the Dieppe saga, demonstrating that the search for intelligence material was not a driver for the raid but indeed the driver. Certainly the four-rotor crisis was the most urgent problem facing British naval intelligence, and the beleaguered Allied war effort in general. After the failure of the Dieppe pinch, the crisis worsened. But just two months later, in October, pure luck—in this case a “pinch by chance” from a floundering U-boat off Port Said in Egypt by a group of heroic Royal Navy sailors—saved the day. That pinch, which included a four-rotor machine and its ancillary tables and code books, permitted the cryptanalysts in Frank Birch’s Naval Section to develop systems that, with a few exceptions, read this traffic for the remainder of the war. As the planners of the pinch raid at Dieppe certainly understood when they sanctioned the force commanders to go “all in” to obtain this objective, one good pinch could do the trick, as had happened in Norway. The evidence makes clear that they never doubted the importance of this material or the potential influence it would have on the course of the war.