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  This book is dedicated to my wife Kate with love.

  First published in Great Britain in 2005 by

  Pen & Sword Military

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  Copyright © Tim Saunders, 2005

  9781783409549

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  Table of Contents

  Other guides in the Battleground Europe Series:

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER ONE - BACKGROUND AND PLANS

  CHAPTER TWO - THE DEFENDERS OF DIEPPE

  CHAPTER THREE - EMBARKATION AND ENCOUNTER AT SEA

  CHAPTER FOUR - THE GOEBBELS BATTERY

  CHAPTER FIVE - OPERATION CAULDRON

  CHAPTER SIX - INNER FLANK ATTACK I: BLUE BEACH – PUYS

  CHAPTER SEVEN - INNER FLANK ATTACK II: GREEN BEACH

  CHAPTER EIGHT - DIEPPE – RED AND WHITE BEACHES

  CHAPTER NINE - THE WITHDRAWAL AND AFTERMATH

  CHAPTER TEN - DIEPPE TOUR

  ORDER OF BATTLE

  Appendix 1 - Victoria Cross Citations

  Appendix 2 - Advice to Visitors

  Bibliography

  INDEX

  Wounded being taken aborad a destroyer during the evacuation.

  INTRODUCTION

  There are two passages of text that to my mind sum up the whole context of the Dieppe raid. The first is a US newspaper commentary on the heroism of fellow North Americans and the second are the words of an experienced Canadian soldier in the immediate aftermath of Operation Jubilee. The New York Times 19 August 1943 wrote:

  ‘Someday there will be two spots on the French coast sacred to the British and their Allies. One will be Dunkirk where Britain was saved because a beaten army would not surrender.

  ‘The other will be Dieppe, where brave men died without hope for the sake of proving that there is a wrong way to invade. They will have their share of glory when the right way is tried.’

  The second piece is by Captain Denis Whitaker of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry who recorded how Combined Operation’s Headquarters (COHQ) summoned him after the raid:

  ‘The debriefing had begun when I finally got to London. I recognized the Dieppe military commander, Major General Roberts – his face bore a gaunt stricken look... the two men beside Admiral Mountbatten were the naval and air commanders of the operation...

  ‘General Roberts was finishing his reports. “I am inclined to question whether tactical surprise was achieved... It is evident that the German gun crews were standing by with all defence posts manned when the first wave of troops came in.”

  ‘Mountbatten shrugged of the comments impatiently. “You have to take into account that a state of alert was normal at dawn, and that the conditions of weather and tide might have increased the state of alert”.

  ‘I stood up. My mind reeled. So surprise had never been possible! “Sir. I landed on the main beach. When I interrogated a German prisoner, he boasted, we have been waiting for you for a week.’

  ‘Sit down, Captain Whitaker. I do not believe the enemy was forewarned. I want constructive comments – not excuses. ”’

  From these two quotes, it can be seen that almost immediately, the scale of the sacrifice, amongst Canadian and British sailors, soldiers and airmen, combined with the painful examination of military failure, led to the Dieppe Raid’s enduring fascination. However, as it is the role of the Battleground series to concentrate on the conduct of the fighting, this book can only dedicate a modest amount of space to the main features of the controversial background to the raid. This should not represent too much of a hardship for readers, as there are literally yards of books that almost exclusively examine the political, strategic and intelligence background to Operation Jubilee. Most are not shy at apportioning blame. A bibliography of published sources and other useful Dieppe books, including a number of other Pen and Sword titles, is at the end of this volume.

  ‘Nazi circles have tried desperately to prove that the Dieppe raid was unsuccessful. They have failed.’ So ran an editorial comment in the Sunday Pictorial, 6 September 1942.

  British readers should note that other than on first mention I have for the sake of economy of space dropped the Suffix ‘of Canada’ for the Black Watch and Cameron Highlanders. Though the British and Canadian regiments bearing these names had affiliations and a common Scottish heritage, they were very much separate organisations.

  CHAPTER ONE

  BACKGROUND AND PLANS

  The sound of boots on the gravel of the beach and the rattle of small-arms fire echoed around the cliffs of Le Touquet, south of Boulogne. On the night of 23/24 June 1940, just weeks after the British Army had abandoned its weapons and equipment at Dunkirk, a small group of soldiers from that defeated army returned to raid the mainland of Europe. Operation Collar, mounted by the newly-formed special raiding force was just a pinprick, killing only two members of the mighty Wehrmacht which was at the time sealing its victory over the French. However, such an action was exactly what Churchill had envisaged when he ordered a ‘special raiding force’ to be raised. He wrote:

  ‘The completely defensive habit of mind, which has ruined the French, must not be allowed to ruin our initiative. Enterprises must be prepared with specially trained troops of the hunter class, who can develop a reign of terror first of all on the butcher-and-bolt policy.’

  The Prime Minister had no illusions that small raids would do anything to tip the military balance. But with personal experience of how effective the Boer Kommandos had been in South Africa, he appreciated the value for morale at home of commando raids, and also how many thousands of enemy troops would be tied down waiting for the next attack. Small raids reinforced the perception that Churchill was trying to create of an active resistance, and in a phrase familiar from the Great War, helped to ‘maintain the offensive spirit.’

  A wartime PR photo used to promote the Commandos’ activities.

  Prime Minister Winston Churchill

  During the first year of the war, Commando Forces (with their famous green berets) grew in size, and mounted increasing numbers of raids, while British airborne forces developed military parachuting and trained for action. Veterans have frankly admitted that many of the first raids were ‘amateurish’. But as the scale of raids grew, experience was gained, training techniques improved, and more of the raids were considered successful. In the first airborne raid, at Bruneval, vital German radar components were snatched. Raiding enemy-held coastlines, whether in France, the Mediterranean, or in the Far East, became a regular feature of British conduct of the war.

  Lord Louis Mountbatten cousin of the King

  In the face of opposition from the three Services, Churchill formed a Combined Operations headquarters, under his personal attention, which grew from small beginnings with a limited advisory role into a major headquarters with a ‘higher importance, a more positive function and a stronger staff’. Brigadier Lucas Phillips wrote:

  ‘When the time came... we would have to fight for it, moreover, against seemingly impregnable coastal defences equipped with every modern preventive device and stratag. . . Technical problems of the most formidable magnitude confronted us, together with problems of tactics, transport and administration. “Co-operation” between the Services was not enough; there must be complete integration of thought, planning, experimentation and executive action.’

  In March 1942, Churchill singled out 41-year-old Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten as an inspiring and dynamic leader and appointed him to the new post of Chief of Combined Operations. This not only put him at the head of an increasingly powerful independent-minded organisation but also gave him membership of the Chiefs of Staffs’ Committee.

  Combined Ops badge

  The Situation in 1942

  1942 ended with the ‘turn of the tide,’ following General Montgomery’s victory at El Alamein, but in the first half of the year, without a doubt, the Allied prospects were unremittingly bad. Conversely, the Axis Powers were reaching their zenith. At home in the UK, the British people suffered the privations of rationing and a shortage of just about every commodity, as the Kriegsmarin
e’s U-boat wolf packs unrelentingly attacked the convoys of merchantmen that represented Britain’s lifeline to survival. On the battlefield, British and Commonwealth troops fighting in the deserts of North Africa were again being driven back by Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Meanwhile, in the Far East, the Americans were still feeling the shock of their immense naval losses at Pearl Harbour, and were struggling to contain the Japanese forces who occupied island after island, including the Philippines, as they spread across the Pacific towards Australia. In February, the Japanese had seized Singapore and were advancing north through Burma towards India. Rangoon fell in early March and Mandalay in mid-April, sending the British and Chinese Armies retreating to the north. On the Eastern Front, military affairs were also going badly: despite a Russian counter-offensive, the Germans held their ground, and by May, the Russians were being pushed back by the Wehrmacht counter-offensive. In the spring of 1942, the immediate outlook for the Allies’ was bleak.

  Joseph Stalin demanded action in the West

  However, it was on the Eastern Front where the situation was most dangerous. Here, the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, together numbering millions of men, were pitted against each other in a titanic struggle to the death. The Russians, who had committed all in their spring offensive, were withdrawing in the face of a German thrust through the Caucasus Mountains toward Sevastopol. There seemed to be no way of halting the Wehrmacht. In consequence, Stalin demanded that the leaders of the Western Allies take action in the west to reduce pressure on his armies. He insisted that there was an imminent danger of the Red Army collapsing. Such a Russian military collapse was a real possibility, and would have had catastrophic effect on the Allied war effort, by releasing whole armies of Germans for employment elsewhere.