August 1942 – Newhaven – Great Britain
After the Dieppe fiasco, British commandos return to Newhaven in southern England, not far from Brighton. These Scottish snipers, the Lovat Scouts, have been quite successful in the chaotic and totally disordered attack on the French coast.
Led by Commander Simon Fraser, the fifteenth Lord Lovat, they managed to knock out a battery of six German guns.
The Allied attack on Dieppe, one hundred kilometers north of Le Havre and directly opposite the south of England, was launched by Admiral Louis Mountbatten, the British commander of Combined Operations Headquarters. It is an overconfident attempt to blow a hole in the German coastal defenses and to gain experience for later, larger landing operations.
On August 19, 1942, more than six thousand men, mostly Canadians, set course for Dieppe. Things are already going wrong in the Channel, where the attack fleet is spotted by a German coastal convoy. The storming of the Normandy beach therefore comes as no surprise to the Germans, who welcome the invasion force with a murderous barrage.
More than four thousand allied infantrymen are killed, wounded or captured. The material losses are also enormous. The tanks rolling out of the landing craft immediately run aground on the beach, which turns out to be strewn with large boulders.
The British and Canadian air forces also lose another hundred aircraft.
After several dramatic hours on the battlefield at Dieppe, the signal for a general retreat is given and the almost destroyed invasion army seeks refuge at sea. The downfall in the Channel teaches the Allies that a successful landing on an occupied coast requires much more air support and considerably better communications.
The only ones to return to British soil with their heads held high are Lord Lovat and his scouts. The military failure even earns Commander Fraser, head of a Scottish clan, an award.
In 1944, however, circumstances were much different, and the German troops in Dieppe wisely withdrew from the town during the evening of 31 August.
On 1 September 1944, Major Dennis Bult-Francis led his 8th Reconnaissance Regiment into Dieppe. The rest of the 2nd Canadian Division followed. Several officers and men in the 2nd Canadian Division had taken part in the 1942 raid. Many of their friends had perished on the beaches of Dieppe or had been taken prisoner.
Colourised PIECE of JAKE
