The Dieppe Raid: A Failure that Led to Success

by Robert P. Arnoldt

When France fell to the German blitzkrieg in June 1940, the world looked for the Wehrmacht to com­plete its conquest of Western Europe by invading and sub­du­ing Great Britain. The long-touted in­va­sion, how­ever, never took place. The threat grad­u­ally passed from the prob­a­ble to the possible, and then to just a threat. Hitler’s attention had turned partially away from Britain and its stubborn re­sist­ance, and had re­focused on the vast ex­panses of Soviet Russia.

England, with the Royal Navy and her unique lo­ca­tion protecting her from the Wehrmacht, be­came a for­ward outpost for the survivors of Hitler’s European victory, and a base for Allied strategy to harass and eventually re-conquer Europe.

But, after the debacle at Dunkirk, the British had precious little in the way of equipment or battle-worthy ground units to press the Germans and dis­lodge them from their hold on the Continent. Imme­di­ately after Dunkirk, on 8 June 1940 (twenty-six months before Dieppe), the British “home” forces amounted to one armored division and fifteen infantry divisions. Of these formations, two had done no divisional training, five had done very little training, and the remaining nine had reached a “fair” stan­dard of training. The average strength of the di­vi­sions in question was eleven thousand men, or just over half of their operational table of or­gan­i­za­tion.

If it had not been for the skill and courage of the RAF, the blind stubbornness of Göring, and the lack of foresight displayed by Hitler, there would have been no such forward outpost for initial raids.

As the threat of invasion lessened, the Allies looked for ways to strike back at the Germans, while strength for the return to the Continent was built around the sur­vi­vors of Dunkirk.

Part of the initial strategy adopted centered on the Allied intent to conduct both small- and large-scale raids on German-occupied territories during the in­terim be­tween the fall of France and the open­ing of a second front. These operations were man­aged by the Combined Operations Group, assembled from vol­un­teers drawn from the United Kingdom, most of the conquered Eu­ro­pean nations and the United States. The raids were di­rected against var­i­ous targets on the long coast from Norway through southern France.

The port of Dieppe was eventually chosen for one of these raid sites because it offered a variety of ob­jec­tives: a radar station (to be studied and then de­stroyed); a large number of landing craft (to be cap­tured or sunk); a good opportunity to render the port of Dieppe itself useless; and opportunities to destroy local industries that were being used by the German occupation troops. But, most importantly, the raid would provide the Allied General Staffs with very important and, indeed essential infor­ma­tion concerning German defenses in the West.[1]

While other raid sites offered opportunities for de­struc­tion of specific facilities (such as the attacks on St. Nazaire or Bruneval), or interdiction of traf­fic or com­mu­ni­ca­tion (such as Spitzbergen or Maa­loy Is­land), Dieppe was chosen for different con­sid­er­a­tions such as stated above. But perhaps the most important reason for choosing the port of Dieppe was that, apart from the disastrous landing at Gal­lipoli in 1915, the Allies had very little experience in amphibious land­ings under fire and techniques involved in landing large bodies of men on enemy-occupied shores. If many thousands of men and arms were to be landed when the second front was launched the following year or the year after, expe­ri­ence must be gained the hard way by mounting commando-type raids. Another fac­tor was the very unsettled weather in the English Chan­nel, which is notorious for its sudden gales and storms. A major amphibious landing on the open beaches was con­sid­ered impossible, due to the dif­fi­cul­ties of landing an army in the short space of time before the occu­py­ing forces had had time to recover and gather strength sufficient to throw the invaders back into the sea. Logistics operations at that time demanded that a major seaport be captured intact to enable large ships to be unloaded quickly of men and arms, using dockside cranes and transportation equip­ment.[2]

This “major seaport” thesis was discarded by the Allied High Command after Dieppe, and proved to be a wise move that led to the open-beach landing so suc­cess­fully carried off on 6 June 1944. The D-Day land­ings were supported by multiple section Mulberry floating piers towed from England and placed to pro­vide a way for supplies, personnel, and armor to be brought into the beachheads without the need for an established port with dockside equip­ment, etc.

The original Dieppe operation, codenamed Rut­ter, was scheduled for execution on 21 June, and again on 8 July 1942, but was scrubbed due to weather and tide conditions.

The original plan was a very ambitious under­tak­ing that called for flanking attacks to be mounted at either side of the town and harbor. A frontal attack was to be avoided at all costs, mainly because of the topography of the area, where the town and main beach are dom­i­nated by headlands to either side on the east and west. A bat­tal­ion of Royal Marines, backed by a battalion of the new Churchill tanks, would land at Quiberville, some 7 miles to the west of the town of Dieppe. Once ashore, they would attempt to overrun the western headlands dom­i­nat­ing the town, which had been armed with pow­er­ful gun batteries that dominated the main beach. At the same time, two battalions of troops would land at the village of Pourville, nearer to the town of Di­eppe, but also to its west. Another two battalions would land to the east of Dieppe at the small village of Puys. Their task would be to quickly over­come the German gun batteries on the eastern headland dominating the main beach and then advance through the rear of the town of Dieppe toward the main beach. The troops at Pourville would adopt a similar ma­neu­ver and make for the main beach of Dieppe, after destroying the radar station and rear defenses. They would be assisted by the tanks at Quiber­ville.

After destroying all military installations and ob­jec­tives, they would be re-embarked from the main beach under the protection of the air force. The ob­jec­tives were to:

Destroy the airfield at Saint Aubin, Dieppe.

Destroy the radar station, power station, port and rail installations and ammunition and oil dumps.

Capture or destroy massed landing craft.

Capture documents from a German head­quar­ters that was believed to be at Arques la Ba­taille.

Take prisoners for questioning.

Destroy a torpedo dump under the east head­land.

The Dieppe assault force was assembled, and two preliminary training exercises were held. The first was very bad; the second, a considerable improve­ment; and approval to proceed with the operation was given. On 4 July, all forces embarked and the troops were told they were going to land at Dieppe. A chance German air raid put two of the large infantry landing ships out of action, and on 7 July, the raid was cancelled.[3]

On 17 August, it was reactivated. The same force was reassembled and sailed the next night.[4] The assault armada comprised 237 vessels and craft. The expe­di­tion was to sail in thirteen groups at varying speeds from four principal ports in the United Kingdom: Sou­thampton, Portsmouth, New­haven, and Shoreham. At a selected position out in the channel, all of the ships and landing craft would meet and form up into one convoy. Fifteen mine­sweepers would lead the way, sweeping a clear channel through an extensive enemy mine field and marking a safe path with dan buoys.

At a point 10 miles from Dieppe, the infantry landing ships would stop to disembark the troops into smaller assault craft. After forming up, each group would be led in to their respective beaches by motor gunboats or motor launches. Eight Hunt class de­stroy­ers of a displacement of 1,000 tons and armed with 4-inch guns would supply the sole bom­bard­ment for the invasion, and targets ashore would be signaled to each destroyer by special forward observation teams pro­vided with radio trans­mit­ters and receivers.[5]

Air support was provided, in the final tally, by a total of sixty-nine Allied squadrons, with a day’s total of 2,617 sor­ties. Allied losses amounted to 106 aircraft shot down, including eighty-eight fighters, eight bombers and ten re­con­nais­sance aircraft. Local air superiority had been achieved by the invaders, but at a cost of 153 killed and wounded. It was the RAF’s worst single day’s losses during the entire course of World War II.[6]

Command and control plans were much too rigid and prone to break down, and confusion reigned from the start. The operation’s commander, Ca­na­dian Major General John Hamilton (Ham) Roberts, was truly without the information he so desperately needed to direct his forces ashore.

Communications from the ground units to Rob­erts on the command ship Calpe ranged from inad­e­quate to nonexistent, compounded by enemy decep­tion and the chaos on the beaches. Most of the beach master’s and forward observation team’s radio equipment was de­stroyed on landing as were at least fifty percent of the tanks’ radios.

RAF communications for the air battle were good between the aircraft, the command ship, and the con­trol point in England. But not knowing how his ground forces were fairing, Roberts could not use his air sup­port to its greatest effect.[7]

When Operation Rutter was reactivated on 17 July 1942, its code-name was changed to Ju­bi­lee and its format was altered radically to allow the main thrust to be made on the main beach in a frontal as­sault against the massed guns of the en­emy. The tanks would also be landed on the main beach. The beach slope and the size and com­po­si­tion of the large “pebbles,” which made up the surface of the beach, made it totally unsuited to tank tracks and would cause many of the tanks to break or throw their tracks as they advanced out of the landing craft. This situation and the fact that a high seawall provided a virtually impassable barrier into the town from the beaches were problem points given insufficient attention by the planners. The engineers had been or­dered to blow the seawall and the tank barriers, which were made of reinforced concrete, 8 feet high, and filled with fire­steps for German infantry; but the murderous fire on the beach would cut down the unprotected en­gi­neers before most had reached the seawall or the tank obsta­cles. No alternate plans had been provided to elim­i­nate the tank barriers.

The plan to land troops on either flank, at Puys to the east and Pourville to the west of Dieppe, remained unchanged. The heavy gun batteries on the headlands overlooking the main beach rep­re­sented a major threat to any proposed landing and would have to be put out of action prior to the as­sault on the main beaches.

The Royal Regiment of Canada, aided by the Black Watch, was given the task of landing on the narrow Blue Beach at Puys. A flight of stone steps provided a seem­ingly easy climb to the cliff top, where they had been ordered to destroy the heavy gun batteries on the east headland before they could fire on the troops scheduled to land on the main beach a mere thirty min­utes later. After destroying the heavy guns, the Royals and Black Watch were or­dered to advance through the suburbs of Dieppe and head toward the main beach to meet up with their comrades of the Essex Scottish and Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (RHLI) regiments. By this time, those regiments would have landed on the main beach. A perimeter was to be set up around Dieppe to provide defense against German re­in­force­ments.

To the west of Dieppe, the South Saskatchewan Regiment (SSR) was given a similar task. They were to land at Pourville and secure a bridgehead to allow the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders to move through to attack the gun batteries on the west head­land, before advancing through the suburbs of Dieppe to the main beach. There, they would also meet up with their com­rades of the RHLI and Essex Scottish (and hopefully, the Calgary Tanks) who were sched­uled to land at 0520, thirty minutes after the flanking attacks. Assisting the main body of troops would be the Royal Canadian Engineers of the 2^nd, 7^th and 11^th Field Companies, units of the Signal and Provost Corps, Field Ambulance and Medical units, and the Toronto Scottish, who were to save many lives during the day with their invaluable suppressive fires from the landing barges. The Reg­i­ment Fusilier de Montreal (Fusilier Mont-Royal) and Royal Marine Com­mando Group “A” would remain off Dieppe acting as a float­ing reserve. At the successful completion of the op­er­a­tion, tanks and other equipment not easily re-embarkable onto landing craft were to be destroyed on the main beach. Wounded, dead, and prisoners were to be picked up, along with the rest of the force, by land­ing craft that had delivered them to their respective beaches of landing.

Strong objections to the suicidal frontal attack were met with the argument that a very heavy pre­lim­i­nary bombardment by heavy bombers of the RAF (the ma­jor­ity of which was cancelled at the last moment, due to considerations raised as to the safety of French civilians living in the town itself) would do much to cripple the enemy defenses and that, furthermore, the plan would undoubtedly suc­ceed because of the ele­ment of surprise. The fact that it was planned to land the Royals (Blue Beach) and the SSR (Green Beach) 30 minutes before the main assault seemed to have been overlooked. By the time the Essex Scottish and the RHLI hit the main beaches (Red and White) at Dieppe, the enemy would have been well-alerted by the attacks being launched only 6 miles away from the town of Di­eppe, and every man would be standing by his gun or mortar position.[8]

At the time of the Dieppe operation, landing craft such as those used by the Combined Op­er­a­tions Group, had made some progress but were definitely not up to the level of sophistication of the force used in 1944 at Nor­mandy.

At Dieppe, small Assault and Landing Craft Mech­a­nized (LCM) were carried by larger ships and low­ered to the water some 10 miles offshore for their run-in. These craft were partially armored and very lightly armed.

The larger Landing Craft, Tank (LCT), were cramped and hard to handle in any but calm waters.

A new type of support landing craft was used for the first time at Dieppe. Called the Beach Protection Craft, Flak, it was a converted LCT armed in one case with two 4-inch guns and in other cases with ten 2-pounder pom-poms. These craft were used for close-in fire sup­port and anti-aircraft protection.[9]

The major actor in the equipment department, how­ever, was not the landing craft, but the tank chosen to equip the Cavalry regiment in their role as an integral part of the main beach landings on Red and White Beaches: the Churchill, or A22 Infantry Tank Mark IV.

The Churchill tank used by the 14^th Canadian Army Tank Regiment, or “Calgary Tanks,” at Di­eppe, had its good points and bad. The vehicle was ill-matched and under-gunned for its specific role during the operation, and the operation suffered accordingly. Most Churchills that made it ashore were equipped with 2-pounder and 6-pounder can­non in their turrets, and 3-inch howitzers mounted in the nose that had only limited traverse. These were of small value against German strong points and of no use against the German bunkers and cave redoubts overlooking the beach. One Dieppe vet­eran, a troop leader who com­manded three Mark III vehicles, com­pared the mount­ing of the 2-pounder in the turret of the Churchill Mark I with “putting a peashooter into the nostril of an elephant.”[10]

Pre-landing troop briefings were, according to sur­viv­ing Canadian participants, extensive in scope but lacking in detail as to German automatic weapon, field gun, and sniper positions in the head­lands on both flanks of the main beach, and anti-tank defenses and the anti-ship obstacles at both high and low tide.[11] It has been suggested that too much reliance was placed on the pre-war tourist information and on aerial pho­to­graphs taken as little as thirty-six hours prior to the op­er­a­tion. Additionally, German troop and equipment strength was also under­es­ti­mated, as was the effect (or lack of an effect) of a min­i­mal naval bombardment and se­verely limited strategic bombing just before the landing.[12]

“Dieppe was not one battle, but eight separate ac­tions which had only limited effect on each other.”[13]

The first action joined was the chance encounter of Flotilla Group 5, carrying No. 3 Commando, with a German coastal convoy bound from Le Harve to Di­eppe at 0347. Two messages from Brit­ish naval head­quar­ters at Portsmouth, warning two hours earlier that the Ger­man convoy was in the path of the flotilla, failed to reach Group 5.

The German convoy escort struck first, scat­ter­ing the British. Only seven of twenty-three landing craft car­ry­ing the commandos were able to proceed, with only twenty men landing to attack the battery at Berneval. The com­man­dos in the other six landing craft that reached the French coast were unable to reach their target.

The convoy skirmish, however, had little effect on the action at Berneval. One of the landing craft able to proceed after the convoy battle landed Major Peter Young, two other officers, and seventeen men at Yellow Beach II below Berneval at 0515. Here, the target was the 2/770^th Huren-Kusten Artillerie Ab­teilung which had four 105-mm and three 170-mm coastal defense guns, as well as two 20-mm Oer­likons for anti-tank defense. The battery had 127 men, and there were 114 Luftwaffe per­son­nel man­ning the radar station in the vicinity.

Major Young’s small force landed undetected and made their way inland to the Dieppe-Berneval road. A young French boy described the best approach to the battery and led them into Berneval. There, Young cut the telephone lines to Dieppe.

The twenty British commandos then moved to within 200 yards of the battery, neutralized it with sniping for more than two hours and re-embarked at 0810. The second landing by six craft, carrying remnants of No. 3 Com­mando at Berneval on Yellow Beach I was less suc­cess­ful. They were twenty-five minutes late and landed in broad daylight, encountering heavy op­po­si­tion imme­di­ately upon landing. The Germans, who outnumbered the small British force, were soon reinforced by three more com­pa­nies of the anti-tank battalion of the 302^nd Division. Of the 120 com­man­dos who got ashore at Yellow Beach I, eighty-two were captured.

Meanwhile, on the other extreme flank, 5 miles west of Dieppe, No. 4 Commando, under Brigadier Lord S. C. J. P. Lovat, was attacking the heavy Ger­man battery, the 813^th Abteilung, which had six 150-mm guns just behind the village of Va­rangeville. While everything else about the Dieppe operation may have tragically failed, this attack was a classic in its success, despite the fact that the bat­tery had opened fire on the invasion fleet at 0447, three minutes before landing.

No. 4 Commando’s attack was made with train­ing-ground precision, and the timing of each in­di­vid­ual unit’s move was accurate almost to the sec­ond. Lord Lovat landed with B Troop at 0450 east of the River Saane, lost four men to machine guns, went a mile along the banks of the Saane, and turned east to the Blancmenil le Bas wood alongside the battery. Lieu­ten­ant A. S. S. Veasey landed A Troop at Quiberville on Orange Beach II, scaled the cliffs with tubular steel ladders, knocked out two pillboxes, and cut com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Major Derek Mills-Robert, with F Troop reinforced, landed at Vas­terival opposed only by one machine gun. The noise of his bangalore torpedoes blowing gaps in the wire along the beach was covered by the roar of the Spitfires at­tack­ing the Ailly light­house.

Precisely at 0550, the British mortars opened fire. B Troop attacked from the right flank, and Major Mills-Robert and F Troop from the left flank. An air attack by Spitfires was made simultaneously. It was over in a matter of minutes, aided appre­ci­a­bly by a direct mortar shell hit on piled cordite, which blew up, killing or stun­ning many Germans. But the hard-driving infantry attack by F Troop administered the coup de grace and overran the battery. Four Germans were taken prisoner; the rest were shot or bayoneted. By 0650, the guns were blown up, and the commandos withdrew toward Orange Beach I at Vasterival. By 0900, the unit was on its way back to England. Its casualties totaled forty-six.

On the German side, it was not until 1000 that the 302^nd Division headquarters learned that the Varange­ville battery had been wiped out.

At Pourville, 2 miles to the west of Dieppe, the South Saskatchewan Regiment, commanded by Lieu­ten­ant Colonel Charles C. I. Merritt, landed as one wave on Green Beach at 0450, without a shot being fired at it. The plan was to land astride the River Scie, which flows into the sea near the middle of the Pour­ville beach. Unfor­tu­nately, almost all of the landing force was put ashore on the west bank. This meant that A Company, which was charged with seizing the radar station and the high ground a mile to the east, had to penetrate the vil­lage and cross the bridge on the main road to Dieppe. Before it could cross the bridge, how­ever, the German defenders were in action. This was a critical de­vel­op­ment. The seizure of Le Pollet cliff on the west head­lands of Dieppe, and the silencing of the four 105-mm guns of B Battery of the 302^nd Division artillery, were essential to a successful landing on the main beaches (Red and White) at Dieppe. These two critical steps in the plan were not accomplished.

But even though the SSR was not able to drive east­ward and clear the cliff, it did hold Pourville while the Camerons landed and drove inland along the Scie. These two units fared the best of all the Canadian troops in the Dieppe operation. Of the 523 South Sas­katchewans landed, 357 were re-embarked, and 268 of the 503 Came­rons were taken off. The losses between them still amounted to a staggering sixty-five percent or 686 out of 1,026, with 151 killed, 266 taken prisoner, and 269 wounded.

At Puys, 1,500 yards to the east of Dieppe, the Royal Regiment of Canada, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Catto, made its approach to Blue Beach under murderous fire from fully-alert defenders in unex­pected defensive po­si­tions. While still well offshore, the landing craft were hit repeatedly and, when those who survived reached the beach, they had no place to go to escape the German guns. A 10-foot seawall, covered with heavy barbed wire (not reported by British in­tel­li­gence) blocked the head of the beach. On the east cliff, a concrete pillbox was hidden in the front garden of a brick house. The main slit of this pillbox covered the beach and seawall at very short range. A few hundred yards south of Puys, four German howitzers fired 550 rounds at the landing craft dur­ing insertion and the withdrawal.

The landing was a complete disaster. Being unable to move inland off the beaches, the Royal Regiment had no chance to accomplish its vital objective of seizing the headlands to the east of Dieppe. Of 554 officers and men who had embarked from England, only sixty-seven returned; 227 were dead on the beach and the rest were prisoners. Only twenty men were able to move inland off the beach. The Ger­man defenders lost two dead and nine wounded. At 0835, the German 571^st Regiment informed its division headquarters that Puys was firmly in Ger­man hands and that the enemy had lost five hundred pris­on­ers and dead.

In Dieppe itself, the headquarters of the 571^st, with two battalions defending the port, did not order action stations until 0500, after it had heard of the landings at Pourville. The German 302^nd Infantry Division went on the alert a minute later.

The frontal attack on Red and White Beaches was made by the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert R. Labatt on the right (west), landing on White Beach, and the Essex Scottish commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Jasperson on the left (east), landing on Red Beach. Nine tanks of the 14^th Tank Regiment (the Calgary Tanks) were to land with the first wave. The tanks arrived late and the in­fan­try was pinned down before it could get through the wire obstacles and over the seawall.

German riflemen showed exceptional skill in pick­ing off the officers, communications men and en­gi­neers, thus effectively hampering command and de­stroy­ing the at­tack­ers ability to communicate their plight to the com­mand ship or to coordinate an attack; and eliminating any chance of the attackers being able to clear the beach obstacles. German mortar fire was devastating and inflicted severe casualties on the Ca­na­di­ans.

The landing of the tanks, nevertheless, was re­mark­a­bly successful. All ten of the LCTs succeeded in getting tanks ashore, and eight of them landed three apiece. Two tanks were drowned driving off the LCTs into 8 feet of water. Twenty-six tanks reached the beach. Of these, fifteen crossed the seawall and reached the promenade. Here, the tanks were stopped. With all of the engineers either pinned down or killed by the withering German fire, there was no way to remove the heavy concrete road­blocks barring all streets into the town.[14]

Other problems plagued the Calgary Tanks as their landing and attempt to move inland continued. These included not only German opposition and radio failure, but also a possible design failure in the tracks of the Churchills and the composition of the beaches des­ig­nated for the landing. In addition to a moderately steep beach slope (1 in 4), the physical make-up of the main assault landing areas was a combination of large, loosely set pebbles from 3 to 6 inches in diameter interspersed with sand at low tide.[15] None of the Chur­chills ashore during the fighting were destroyed by German fire, but all of those that gained the beach and pressed inland over the 2-foot seawall eventually lost one or both tracks to the gravel or to German anti-tank defensive meas­ures. This, of course, reduced them to the limited role of pillbox until ammunition ran out.

The infantry on the main beaches of Dieppe had little chance. Resistance was much stiffer than had been expected. The tanks that were able to get into action were unable to neutralize or destroy the Ger­man gun positions along the beach or in the flanking head­lands. There was no artillery support and the guns of the sup­port­ing ships were too small to be effective. The infantry paid. D Company of the RHLI was al­most wiped out on landing. Between thirty and forty-five percent of the Essex Scottish were dead or wounded by 0545.

There was some limited penetration of the town by the infantry. The casino was captured and there was street fighting in the area around it. But this slight suc­cess only led to a compounding of the catastrophe. At 0610, the command ship, Calpe, received a message. “Essex Scots across the beaches and in the houses.” At 0640, General Rob­erts decided to land the main body of his floating reserve, and, at 0700, a battalion of Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal under the command of Lieutenant Colo­nel Menard headed for Dieppe in twenty-six unarmored landing craft. German artillery had this small fleet under direct fire for ten minutes as it approached Red and White Beaches. The force suf­fered cas­u­al­ties before landing, and, on reaching the beaches, suffered the same fate as the first assault wave.

Major General Roberts was unaware throughout the action of the extent of the disaster, especially on the main beaches at Dieppe, where he committed his reserve. At 0817, an entry in Calpe’s log reads, “Have control of White Beach.” Roberts thereupon instructed the Royal Marine Commandos under Lieutenant Colo­nel Phillips, the last of the floating reserve, to transfer to armored landing craft and land on White Beach to support the Essex Scottish. When Colonel Phillips in the lead landing craft emerged from the smoke screen and saw the dis­as­ter on the beaches, he stood up to signal the landing craft to turn back. Colonel Phillips was killed almost instantly, but he had saved most of his command.

The Allied naval losses were comparatively light. One destroyer, the Berkeley, was lost during the evac­u­a­tion, hit by German bombs being jet­ti­soned so the air­craft could escape British fighters. Five of the LCTs and twenty-eight lesser craft were sunk. There were 550 cas­u­al­ties among naval personnel with seventy-five killed and 269 missing. Naval gunners brought down twenty-nine bombers and fighters … including five friendlies!

German ground losses totaled 591 casualties, with the principal defending unit, the 302^nd Infantry Di­vi­sion, having five officers and 116 men killed, six officers and 195 men wounded, and eleven missing. The Kriegsmarine lost seventy-eight killed or missing and had twenty-seven wounded, while the Luftwaffe had 105 killed or miss­ing and fifty-eight wounded.[16]

The withdrawal from the main beaches was set to begin at 1100. The recovery of the two Com­mando groups, the South Saskatchewans and the Camerons, was already underway or completed prior to that time.

At 1100, a curtain of smoke was laid between the headlands by Bostons of No. 411 Squadron, RAF. The job was carried out with great difficulty in the face of the heaviest fire from an enemy un­subdued and still vig­or­ous. The Hamiltons moved back to the sea shore from the casino under the leadership of Captain J. M. Currie and Major H. F. Lazier. Detachments of the RHLI and of the Fusi­liers Mont-Royal held the casino until the last, pro­vid­ing covering fire for their com­rades. While the re-embarkation was in progress, the crews of the Churchills were methodically destroying their ve­hi­cles.

By 1220, most of the men who had fought their way back to the main beaches had been taken away by the crews of the landing craft, who, says the official report, “showed complete disregard of danger in their efforts to take off the troops.”

Throughout the day, and especially during the period of re-embarkation, the work of the medical officers and orderlies with the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps was of the highest order. The number of wounded was high, medical supplies ran short on the beach, and large dressings were much in demand. Most of the medical personnel were killed or captured in the course of their duties.

At approximately 1250, the naval force com­mander, Captain J. Hughes-Hallett, decided to make one further effort to take more men off. “Now Dieppe is shrouded in a pall of smoke, fog and haze,” says the log of Lieu­ten­ant R. H. M. Boyle, Royal Navy Re­serve, who was serving on the Calpe. “Even in the bit of land you could see, there are things smoking eve­ry­where. We hope to go in again and fetch more men off still there … [We] receive terrific fire from the beach, but we fire back with our forward guns.”

By then (1250), any further evacuation was impos­si­ble. The Calpe had closed to within 9 cables (approximately 1 mile) of the beach, when she came under machine gun fire from the German posts on the Dieppe breakwater. No sign of troops or landing craft, save derelicts, could be seen, and the Calpe returned to the cover of the smoke. Captain Hughes-Hallett was engaged in signaling to the Locust, which, being of more shallow draft might possibly have been able to approach nearer the beach, when General Roberts, the military force commander, received a last signal from shore at 1308. It came from Brigadier William Sou­tham’s (brigade com­mander for the South Sas­katchewans, Fusi­liers Mont-Royal, and the Camerons) headquarters, say­ing he was compelled to surrender.[17]

The return to England was mostly uneventful, thanks to the RAF, for the cover maintained was still intense. Despite weather which had become overcast, the air battle went on with hardly-diminished fury.

The expedition’s surviving ships returned to the ports from which they sailed, some of the vessels not berthing until past midnight. The cost in lives on the Allied side was high. Of the five thousand Canadian troops involved in the operation, 3,372 were either killed, wounded or missing (captured). This included 593 officers and other ranks killed or died of wounds, 2,188 captured, and 591 wounded who were brought back to England.[18]

Analysis and Conclusions

Let us first examine the effects that the Dieppe op­er­a­tion had on the Germans.

Colonel-General Kurt Zeitzer, the Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, Commander-West (which included Dieppe and the entire Atlantic Wall), called the operation an invasion attempt, and gloated over how easy it had been to stop this sup­posed in­va­sion on the beaches at and near Dieppe.[19] Hitler liked to hear this kind of news, and ap­par­ently believed Zeitzer, and some others, who did not really know what the facts were. One result of this false optimism on the part of Hitler was the decision to put great emphasis on the use of fixed for­ti­fi­ca­tions along the Atlantic coast and the downplaying of the importance of a mobile reserve,[20] even though the official German after action report stated the importance of the mobile reserve used by the 302^nd Infantry Division during the Dieppe operation.[21]

On the positive side for the Germans, it was rec­og­nized by General Erwin Rommel, who assumed com­mand of the Atlantic coast defenses in November 1943, that beach obstacles and better camouflage against aerial reconnaissance were to be given top priority by German troops from Denmark to the Med­i­ter­ra­nean French coast. Copies of pho­to­graphs found on dead Canadians brought this point home to Rommel and von Rundstedt.[22] The impor­tance of beach obsta­cles was made very evident by the success experienced by the majority of the land­ing craft in getting ashore, using smoke as a cover, and inserting the Canadian troops and tanks.[23] The landing craft themselves, many of which were exam­ined after capture by the Germans, proved most valuable for the future design and place­ment of obstacles along the At­lan­tic coast during the re­main­ing 22 months before D-Day.[24]

Another improvement made by Rommel was the inclusion of separate coastal artillery batteries, such as those at Varangeville and Berneval, within an extended defensive perimeter around fortified ports like Dieppe. This action was taken to eliminate, as much as pos­si­ble, commando operations aimed at silencing key coastal batteries prior to, or during, Dieppe-like as­saults.[25] No one in the German gen­eral staff, not even Rommel, suspected there would be no more attempts on fortified ports.

In a more tactical vein, the fact that no German anti-tank gun was able to penetrate the armor of any Churc­hill tank during the entire engagement, and that no tank crewman was killed or wounded while inside a tank,[26] was not overlooked by the British, who stressed better, more carefully distributed ar­mor on later Churc­hill marks. The Germans, how­ever, did not even make men­tion of these facts in their after action report, dated 25 August 1942.[27] This official oversight on the part of the Germans was only one of the many mis­cal­cu­la­tions and omis­sions relating to the Dieppe op­er­a­tion, and one must only wonder at how something so obvious could have been overlooked.

The Soviets, their backs to the wall from Le­nin­grad to the Caspian Sea, benefited indirectly from the Ca­na­di­ans sacrifice, in that German troop strength in the west was increased from thirty-five infantry and panzer divisions immediately after Dieppe to fifty-two infantry and panzer divisions as of November 1942. The difference was made up mostly of German units moved from the Eastern front to the west to bolster the defenses along the Atlantic Wall.[28]

On the Allied side, there is no question but that val­u­a­ble information was secured that could not have been obtained without fighting.

Most of the payoff for Dieppe was not collected until 6 June 1944, on the Normandy beaches. How many lives may have been saved in Normandy will become apparent as we see what was learned. Lord Louis Mountbatten said that for every soldier who died at Dieppe, ten were saved on D-Day.[29]

The lessons learned included the following:

It was unwise to launch a direct assault on a port. The resistance was too difficult to over­come with­out destroying all the port facilities, which were needed intact. Further, the direct attack on a port made the plan of battle too rigid and prevented that flexibility essential to over­com­ing unexpected obstacles, such as clearing the headlands at Di­eppe. The Dieppe experience indicated the ne­ces­sity of achiev­ing a deep pen­e­tra­tion quickly with the ob­jec­tive of seizing a port from inland. This was well executed in Normandy nearly two years later when the Allies landed on open beaches, much to the surprise of the Germans, cut the pen­in­sula, and took the port of Cherbourg from the rear.

The disaster on the beaches made it apparent that overwhelming fire support was an abso­lute ne­ces­sity, with close fire support in the initial stages of the landing.

At Dieppe, the force commander was literally a spectator with the battle beyond his control. Com­pound­ing the difficulties already created by faulty intelligence, General Roberts was inad­e­quately informed about the situation on the beaches, as communications failed or he re­ceived false infor­ma­tion. As a result, he sent his reserves (Fusiliers Mont-Royal and the Royal Marine Commandos) into action when they could do nothing to affect the course of the bat­tle. Roberts did not have exclusive control over all forces employed, and perhaps even more serious, he was given a plan to implement over which he had no influence. He should have been asked to par­tic­i­pate in the ad­vance planning. All of these errors were corrected before General Ei­sen­hower sent his forces ashore on D-Day.

Tactical lessons that emerged from Dieppe that were invaluable in the planning and ex­e­cu­tion of operations at Normandy included:

The failure of communications was one of the most damaging. The leaders on the com­mand ship Calpe could not successfully di­rect a bat­tle when they had no information on its prog­ress.

The need for armored landing craft emerged even more clearly after the appalling losses suf­fered by Les Fusiliers in the unpro­tected vessels.

The value of covering smoke was em­pha­sized.

The engineers’ casualties prevented them from destroying obstacles that blocked the landing craft (to some degree) and the tanks and exposed them to destruction, and under­lined the need to protect these specialists in the as­sault wave.

It was obvious that the infantry must have tank protection from the moment of landing and that the anti-tank guns defending the beaches must be destroyed in the preliminary bom­bard­ment. Out of this knowledge emerged such specialized vehicles as the Sher­man and Churc­hill “Crabs,” the am­phib­i­ous Sherman Duplex Drive (DD), the Churc­hill “AVRE,” the Sherman and Churc­hill “Bobbins” (Carpet Layers), and the Churc­hill “Crocodile” (flamethrower-equipped). These were just a small sampling of the so­phis­ti­cated armored fighting ve­hi­cles fielded at Normandy.

Dieppe brought major new organizational con­cepts for amphibious assaults. The han­dling of assault landings became a specialized aspect of naval training. The two “dry runs” for Dieppe had obviously been inadequate to iron out all the dif­fi­cul­ties that would arise in coordinating such a sizeable force.

There was a lack of knowledge of the German order of battle below the regimental level, knowl­edge that was important to the assault forces.

There appeared to be overreliance on aerial pho­tog­ra­phy as being capable of revealing all that should be known about the German de­fenses. This, of course, is one of the classic recurrent failures in intelligence: overreliance on one source or collection system.[30]

---

[1]   Hilary St. George Saunders, Combined Op­er­a­tions: The Official Story of the Commandos. New York: Macmillan and Company, 1943, page 110.

[2]   J. M. Clarke, ed., “Dieppe,” Armed Forces Digest, June 1977 (Mississauga, Ontario, Can­ada), page 7.

[3]   Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Captains Without Eyes: In­tel­li­gence Failures in World War II. New York: Mac­mil­lan and Company, 1969, page 167.

[4]   Clarke, op.cit., page 34.

[5]   Ibid., page 53.

[6]   Kirkpatrick, op.cit., page 187.

[7]   Ibid., page 197.

[8]   Clarke, op.cit., pages 40-44.

[9]   Staff writers, Random Thoughts, International Plastic Modelers Society of Canada, Volume 10 No. 8/9, August/September 1977, page 92.

[10] Honorable Marcell Lambert, Ottawa Interview, Feb­ru­ary 1977 (Ontario, Canada).

[11] Mr. John Begg, questionnaire prepared in Cal­gary, Alberta, Canada, May 1977.

[12] Clarke, op.cit., pages 50-53.

[13] Kirkpatrick, op.cit., page 178.

[14] Ibid., pages 179-188.

[15] Ibid., page 171.

[16] Ibid., pages 179-188.

[17] Saunders, op.cit., pages 142-144.

[18] Ibid., pages 144-145.

[19] Kirkpatrick, op.cit., page 193.

[20] Ibid., page 191.

[21] Operations Officer, Corps Headquarters, LXXXI (German) Army Corps, Combat Report and Expe­ri­ences Gained During the British At­tack on Di­eppe, 19 August 1942, German After Action Report, dated 25 August 1942.

[22] Kirkpatrick, op.cit., pages 190-193.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Friedrich Ruge, Rommel in Normandy, trans­lated by Ursula R. Moessner. San Rafael, Calif.: Pre­sidio Press, 1979, page 6.

[25] Ibid., page 17.

[26] Mr. A. L. Briethaupt, questionnaire prepared in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, May 1977.

[27] Operations Officer, Corps Headquarters, LXXXI (German) Army Corps, Combat Report and Expe­ri­ences Gained During the British At­tack on Di­eppe, 19 August 1942, German After Action Report, dated 25 August 1942.

[28] Kirkpatrick, op.cit., page 191.

[29] Ibid., page 192.

[30] Ibid., pages 194-196.

 

The Mystery of a Landing: Sicily 1943

by Jack Belden

What was it like to land on a hostile shore? Here is a classic example—experienced by a war reporter during the landings on Sicily.

“Go to your debarkation stations.”

The voice on the loud speaker rang with a harsh metallic note through the wardroom.

The men sat up and blinked their eyes, and for a moment all of them stared at each other with expressions that seemed to say: “This is it.” Then a few of them broke out in foolish grins and rose slowly from their chairs.

“All right, let’s go! Let’s go!” called Maj. Grant in a brisk voice. He got up and strode down the wardroom, a tiny bundle of energy, and the others slowly followed after him, their heads bent toward the deck as if they were thinking.

It was pitch-dark in the passageways. In the inky blackness men stumbled against each other, but no one muttered a word. In silence we made our way toward the bulkhead door through which a little light from the boat deck outside shone. As we passed through the door, a hand reached out and squeezed each one of us briefly on the arm. “Good luck,” said a voice. It was the captain.

The moon was still shining dimly on the deck, but though we could now see, we clung close to each other for fear of becoming separated. From every passageway men, shuffling in dreary, silent attitudes, were coming out to swell the tide of those going in on the assault waves. They made a depressing sight—a composite of dead and dull faces and drab bodies loaded down with military gear. As we turned the corner of a bulkhead, the man ahead of me halted hesitantly before a boat which was swinging violently back and forth, first toward the deck and then away from it. Several voices behind us shouted and tried to ally any feelings of doubt we had. As we hesitated, they shouted cheerfully, “Get in. What are you waiting for?”

These words, spoken to show us that we were at the right boat, did not produce the action desired. The man who was leading our group paused on hearing those words, raised his hands in a helpless gesture and called back to the others, “I can’t get in.” As he said this, the men back of us yelled as if they were going to throw a fit. The leading soldier, however, remained adamant and made no move to get in the boat.

From my vantage point, it was evident that he was quite right in refusing to do so. The boat was rocking to and fro on its davits, coming close against the ship’s side at one moment and swinging far away at the next. The only way to enter the boat was to slide down a short knotted line and drop in. But to attempt to drop in that swinging boat would be suicidal. One slight slip would mean a plunge down into the water, which was slapping now with a loud and menacing sound against the ship’s side below us. So both the soldier and I remained standing where we were, looking at the dark void between the swinging boat and the ship, making no attempt to get in.

The crowd behind us, growing impatient, again yelled imperatively at us. Goaded by the angry voices, the soldier by me said, “Goddammit, there’s no one here. Where the hell’s the Navy?” At these words, the men behind us transferred their disapproval from us to the whole U.S. Navy.

“Dammit! Get some sailors!” one officer yelled.

“Jesus!” said another. “The way the Navy’s hiding, you’d think they was going to invade Sicily instead of us.”

As yet the delay had not been serious, but in our overwrought state of mind it assumed exaggerated proportions, increasing our nervousness to a state of shaking, angry doubt.

“God!” said an officer who had come up beside us. “If we can’t get our boats launched from the ship, what’s it going to be like in the water when they start shooting at us?”

The soldier by my side laughed bitterly. “Snafu! That’s us. Always snafued.”

At last two or three sailors arrived, the boat was secured firmly, the soldiers slid one by one down the knotted ropes, and the boat descended past the ship’s side into the choppy water.

As we drew away from the ship, our moment’s irritability dropped away from us as quickly as it had come. There was an immediate sense of gladness at getting started and a heightened awareness. When we got away from the shelter of the fleet, this feeling, however, soon gave way to another. We became sick.

The rocking of the small landing craft was totally unlike anything we had experienced on the ship. It pitched, rolled, swayed, bucked, jerked from side to side, spanked up and down, undulated, careened, and insanely danced on the throbbing, pulsing, hissing sea. The sea itself flew at us, threw the bow in the air, then, as it came down, washed over us in great roaring bucketfulls of water.

The ensign standing on the high stern of the boat ordered the sailor by the bow to close the half-open ramp. As he moved to do so, the helmsman in the stern yelled, “I can’t see.”

He did not finish his sentence. At that moment there was a hissing sound, then a dull squashing crash, and a wave of water cascaded through the ramp, throwing down those who were standing on the deck and overrunning the boat with water.

“Bail with your helmets!” called the ensign in a voice of extreme irritation.

Kneeling now in the puddle which sloshed up and down the length of the boat, the men scooped up the water with their helmets, staggered uncertainly to their feet, threw their load overboard, and then went down on their knees to repeat the process.

Meanwhile, the ensign kept the boat zigzagging over the water searching the sea for the boats of our assault wave. From time to time he would shout out to another boat, “Are you the second wave?” When he would receive a negative answer, he would curse loudly, turn the boat in another direction and begin searching again.

For a long time we coursed back and forth over the water, picking up one boat here and another there. Then we went in a circle, going round and round in the shadow of our fleet until, certain that every boat was present we broke out of the circle formation and headed in a line toward a blue light, which, shining to seaward, was bobbing up and down some distance ahead of us.

The uneven motion of the boat was now almost unbearable. Hemmed in between the high steel bulkheads of the boat, the men crouched like beasts, shivering from the cold spray, silent, but uneasy with imminent sickness. One by one they vomited, holding their heads away from their loosely clasped rifles, and moaned softly. One man clambered up the side of the boat and crawled out on the narrow ledge running around the top and clung there like a monkey, with one hand clasping the boat and the other fumbling at his pants. The boat was rocking heavily; the man was swaying with its motion, and it seemed momentarily as if he would fall into the sea or a wave would wash him overboard. The ensign in a sharp voice commanded him to get back inside the boat.

“I have to move my bowels, sir,” the man said in a tone of distressed pain.

Someone tittered.

“Jesus! What’s so funny about that?” said a soldier, and he got up and grasped the man, who was now half-hanging over the side by his shoulders. “Here, Joe,” he said, “hold on to me.”

From that time on, our dash toward the unseen shore became a nightmare of sickness, pain, and fear. The boat had gathered speed now and we were beginning to bound from one wave crest to the next with a distinct shock. There were no thwarts, no seats of any kind in the boat; only the deck itself to sit on and the steep, high hull of the boat to lean against. The motion of the boat threw us all against one another. My hand in bracing my rolling body had accidentally come to rest on the shoulder of a young boy. I looked down at him and saw that he was holding his head in both of his hands and quietly vomiting. “It’s the motion that gets you,” I said.

“The what?” the boy said.

“The motion. It’s different from on the ship. You’ll get used to it. You’ll be all right.”

“Oh, sure. The motion. You ain’t kiddin’. I’ll be all right.” He bent his head down, a sudden spasm contracting his shoulders, and he spewed from the mouth. “Oh, sure, I’ll be all right.”

I stood up and took a quick look over the boat’s side. Astern our great fleet fled, diminishing, sinking beneath the waves. The boat had begun to pitch and shudder now, swooping forward and down, jolting almost stationary for a moment, then lifting and swooping again; a shot of spray smashed aboard over the bows like a thrown bucket of water, and I knelt down again.

The boat pounded on. It rolled us against iron pipes, smashed us against coils of wire and jammed us on top of one another, compounding us with metal, water, and vomit. There was nothing we could do but wait, herded helplessly between the high, blank walls of the boat, huddled together like blind men not knowing where we were going or what was around, behind, or ahead of us, only looking at one another with anxious eyes. That not being able to tell what was ahead of us, to catch even one slight glimpse of the universe outside our tossing, rocking world, was almost unbearable, leaving us, as it did, prey to all manner of nighttime fancies. The unnatural and unwholesome motion of the boat, churning my stomach into an uproar, the bare and opaque walls of the hull, shutting out everything but the vault of the sky overhead, evoked in my mind a picture of the world outside that was fantastic and terrifying. Instead of feeling myself part of a group of American soldiers going ashore on a carefully planned invasion, I saw myself and the men as strange phantoms flung out across the maw of the sea, into the blackness of eternity, fast revolving away from any kind of world we ever knew. I felt as if we had been caught up in some mysterious rocket, and that we were being borne onward in this bouncing projectile of machinery toward a nether-world goal as incapable of taking command over our own destinies as a squirrel in a cage.

In a moment of hollow doubt I stood up, edging my eyes over the gunwale and looking out into the comparative world of light around us. The sea was sparkling with tossed spray. Ahead, and on either side of us, boats were dodging and twisting through the choppy waves, and from their sterns, waving from side to side with the motion of the boats, showers of gleaming water streamed out behind like the plumes of birds. What was causing the water to gleam was a wide streak of light. It sprang like the tail of a stationary comet from a ball of incandescent yellow that was shining on the edge of the blackness off to our left.

Suddenly, the light swung across the water, fastened on our boat and illuminated us like actors on a darkened stage. In the glare, I saw the green, pale faces of the soldiers and their bodies huddled close against the hull. Then the light shot past and over us.

“Why don’t they shoot out that goddamn searchlight?” growled a voice from the depths of the cavernous boat. “Jesus! We’ll be drowned without knowing what hit us!”

“Steady there!” said the voice of Captain Paul Carney. “Take it easy.”

Again I craned my neck upward, just getting the top of my helmet above the hull and looking out with fascinated eyes. The light had now swung onto a small group of boats which were thrashing wildly from side to side trying to escape off into the darkness. From somewhere ahead faint red flashes began to flicker like fireflies. Then red balls, describing a high arc like a tennis lob, arched over our heads and fell down toward the illuminated boats which could not seem to shake off the hunting glare of the searchlight. At this I drew in my breath and involuntarily I shouted, “They’re shooting at the boats.” Below me, from the soldiers crouching with their heads toward the bottom of the boat, floated up an echo, “Shooting at the boats—Jesus!”

Abruptly, our boat slowed down. Above me, and slightly to the right, hung a blue light, seemingly suspended in the air. Dimly I discerned the outlines of a naval patrol vessel. Out of the darkness above mysteriously came a metallic voice, “Straight ahead! Go straight ahead. You’ll see a small light on your right. Land there. Look out for mines. Good luck.”

It was all very eerie—rocking there on the sea and hearing a voice calling out of the black above us. But I had no time to think of this. Our engine gave a sudden full-throated roar as the ensign cut off the underwater exhaust. The boat leapt forward. The other boats behind us raced around to either side of us, and we sped forward like a charging football line. “Hurry!” I thought. “God! If we can only make it!” The sea cascaded through the ramp and a broadside of water catapulted down on us. The boat shuddered, bucked, then plunged onward in a confident show of power.

All my senses were now alerted to the straining point. A flush of thrill and excitement shot through me like flame. It was wonderful. It was exhilarating.

Smash! Pound! Roar! Rush!—toward the goal. Here we come! Wheee! My mouth was open and I giggled with insane laughter.

The sailor by the bow tapped me on the shoulder. I peered around. The boy was pointing. Ahead—directly ahead—two strings of dotted red light were crossing each other. They came out from the right and left, like two necklaces of strung red and black beads, and crossed each other in the air some distance before us.

“Machine guns!” the sailor shouted. “Theirs.” The little fireflies of light were growing very close now. “Going right through them!” the sailor shouted. He made a gesture with his hand across his throat. “Right through them.”

Snap! I heard a sharp cracking sound. Snap! Snap! Snap! Jittering, I ducked below the side of the boat. Then I half slid, half fell to the deck, huddling low with the rest of the soldiers. I was on fire inside, but outside I was cold. I could feel all my flesh jerking. It was not from excitement. No longer did I feel any thrill. The boat was pitching and rocking like a roller coaster. I knelt now and was sick. Gasping for breath I wiped the strings of sputum from my lips, drawing my sleeve across my chin. Dimly I saw the boy beside me on all fours with his mouth wide open and his head bent down. I tried to pull myself together and sidled over and held his head. My gesture was almost automatic. I told myself I had to be of some use. But I no longer cared about anything. The boat seemed to be spinning like a merry-go-round. Dazed, I wished that a shell would come along and end all this horror, wetness, and misery. If we could only get out of this insanely rocking prison. If the boat would only stop for just a moment.

Soon I was almost beyond feeling. All I knew was that we were enclosed in an infernal machine, shuddering through the darkness, toward the edge of the world, toward nowhere. I did not feel the boat slow down. I neither heard nor saw men get to their feet. At first, all I felt was a violent shudder. Then I heard the engine break out into a terrible thundering roar. At last, there was a jerk and a bump and the boat came to a halt.

“Open ramp!” shouted the ensign at the stern.

Glancing fearfully toward the bow of the boat, I saw it swinging down, like a huge jaw opening. Halfway down it stopped, stuck. We could see nothing. Only a half-open hole.

The soldiers stared at the hole as if fascinated. Grappling at the side of the boat, they pulled themselves to their feet and peered uncertainly out into the darkness through the ramp. For a brief moment they stared at each other, then bent their heads down, shuffling their feet. No one moved.

The ramp jerked down farther until it was level with the water. Still nothing could be seen. Still no one moved.

“Get off!” Major Grant’s voice was imperious.

No one moved.

“Jump off!” he hollered again. “You want to get killed here? Get on that beach!”

With these words he leapt into the darkness. Another man with a coil of wire followed. The others hesitated as if waiting to see what happened to those who had jumped.

I felt I would go crazy if I stayed in the boat any longer. I advanced to the ramp. ‘Here it comes,’ I thought and jumped.

The water struck me like a shock. I kept going down. ‘It’s over my head,’ I thought. My feet sank down and touched bottom. My chin was just at the water. I started to push forward. A sharp crackle burst the air nearby. There was a whine and whiz overhead. Then a metallic, plunking sound as if something was striking the boat.

The water was growing shallower. I bent my knees, keeping only my helmet-covered head above the water. I felt as if I were wearing a shield. Finding I wasn’t hit, I realized the machine gun fire was so far surprisingly light. “Hell,” I said to myself, “this is not as bad as the Mareth Line.”

It was dark. The fires that had been visible from the ship could not be seen here. Ahead of me I made out a sandy beach, rising in a slight slope. Figures were crawling on hands and knees up the slope. Every few moments they halted and lay on their stomachs. By now the water was really shallow. I straightened up and dashed for the beach. Bullets snapped overhead. I threw myself flat on the sand. At last I was on dry land.

 

 

A Square Looks at the “Bomb”

by Francis Casselman

I am a “square.” I believe in paying my bills, am often found in church on Sunday, and regard with amazement the capers which some young people hail as the incoming tide of social ethics.

I mention these incidentals to introduce an argument: the proposition that the dropping of the atomic bomb was not the greatest crime of our century. Most of the humanitarians who argue that it was have one characteristic in common: the oldest of them was in diapers at the time the event occurred. I was not. I was at work in headquarters of the 21st Bomber Command on Guam when the first strike pictures of the obliteration of Hiroshima passed through our Quonset. I saw it then as an act of war, as a step towards the end for which the whole world was praying. And I see it that way today.

This much is exceptional about my point of view. I was born in Japan. Saito-san, who was my nurse, Hosano-san, who cared for my brother, and the gentle Japanese cook, willing to make-believe bargain with me for two pails of non-existent vegetables, are dim shapes in my memory. We lived in Sendai, a city later burned to the clay by the great B-29 raids of the war.

But to return to Guam. At the same time we hit Hiroshima we were preparing for the invasion of the home islands of Japan. Okinawa had been taken. There was only one direction to go-north.

On our island, comradeship between the Marines and the Air Force was infrequent, as always between the desk workers and the attack troops. And yet, some of us had bridged the gap. One of my tent-mates had a cousin, a Marine stationed nearby. Others of us had been riflemen before the Army transformed us into statisticians. So we talked, and we knew. The rumor was out—expect half a million casualties when American combat boots crunch the soil of Honshu. That was the whisper coming down the grapevine, and in those days we lived on rumors.

So there was the great fear among the combat men, the fear all brave men feel, and which the American fighting man is apt to conceal behind sardonic humor. The men did not like the word “casualties.” To them it meant a buddy with half of his jaw shot away, or a stub where a foot used to be, or a corpse, if enough flesh remained to make one. Only on television is a casualty a dimple where a bullet has passed harmlessly through, leaving a scar to show the kids.

I do not know where the casualty figure came from. Perhaps it was not true, but other figures were true. At Saipan we accepted 16,000 casualties. On Okinawa 12,000 Americans died while they killed 110,000 Japanese. And finally there had been Iwo Jima, eight square miles of it, where we counted 20,960 Americans bloodied and stricken while their buddies blasted the defenders out of a network of concrete caves. The Japanese soldier was good in the only sense that any battlefield warrior is really good: At the death he was a snarling, killing animal. I cannot explain it better than this. Americans were ready to invade, and they knew that a great many of them would die.

President Truman knew it, too. He knew more. One person in all the world might halt this bloodletting: Emperor Hirohito, worshipped as a god, had the will, if a way could be found to override the war lords around him. The president did not hesitate. His orders went out, and Hiroshima died with almost 80,000 of its people. Three days later, when cables sent back and forth had failed, Nagasaki paid with 40,000 dead, and another 60,000 injured. There it ended.

Were we inhuman in what we did? We sacrificed 120,000 people, and saved countless times that many more. Most of those granted their lives were Americans. To apologize for that would be the purest kind of hogwash. We were at war. Our object was to destroy our enemies before they killed us. Those were the rules, ratified at Pearl Harbor, where 2,000 American sailors rot forever in the steel coffins of their shattered battle wagons.

The breast-beaters groan about all this destruction by just two bombs, dropped from two airplanes. I find this argument pointless. In Tokyo, on 9-10 March 1945, we firebombed and destroyed 97,000 people, and wounded 125,000 others. On that occasion the full strength of the 20th Air Force struck down on the tortured city-and that is the only difference, just the variation in the number of planes thrown in.

Additionally, the idea that the United States was the only country in possession of nuclear knowledge in 1945 is false. Two years before the first trial of an atomic bomb at Yucca Flats in Nevada, British agents had detected a factory in Norway, which had set up and was in the process of manufacturing a substance called “heavy water.” Heavy water has the chemical property of carrying in its makeup an unstable hydrogen atom, and Hitler’s scientists knew it. They were far down the trail which our own country had also chosen to travel. We beat them to it, largely because Hitler’s paranoiac intuition switched him away from a super-high explosive, and into the manufacture of rockets, which he later loosed against England. The world came that close to hatching two nuclear powers at the same time. And make no mistake as to what Hitler would have done with his thunderbolt if he had achieved it.

And so to me, and a lot of people like me, the dropping of two atomic bombs was a legitimate exercise of overpowering force, used to win a war. The nuclear door had already swung open. The fact that we were the first to go through it could never close it again.