Veterans, dignitaries and grateful locals gathered in Dieppe, France on Saturday to mark 75 years since Canada’s bloodiest Second World War battle.
Of the nearly 5,000 Canadians who disembarked for Dieppe on August 19, 1942, only about 2,200 made it back to England. Nearly 2,000 were taken prisoner. More than 900 were killed.
At Saturday’s ceremony on the shores of the English Channel, Minister of Veterans Affairs Kent Hehr said the Dieppe Raid will be never be forgotten.
“So many Canadian soldiers had been training since the war began and were eager to see action,” Hehr told the crowd.
“Veterans recall Lord Louie Mountbatten going aboard their ships, telling a joke and stating, ‘our destination is Dieppe because it’s not very heavily fortified,’” Hehr added.
“As our noble veterans and our history books have taught us, that could not have been farther from the truth.”
The Allies’ tanks failed on the beaches and the Canadians didn’t have nearly enough fire power to match the Nazis.
Stephen Prince, of the Royal British Navy, says that “there is no unit in the world that could have made a success of it.”
Three-quarters of a century later, there are still competing theories about why Canadians were sent on such a perilous mission.
War historian Larry Rose says that it would have been obvious after the First World War that a frontal assault on a defended port would prove deadly.
He says it was ordered anyway, partly because the English were facing enormous pressure from their Russian allies to open another front.
“The Germans were attacking on the eastern front and it appeared like the Russians were going to be defeated at any moment,” Rose told CTV News Channel. “So there was a cry for the Allies to do something in the west -- anything to get the pressure off the Russians.”
Rose stressed that “there can be no blame, whatsoever, that can be attached to the soldiers who went to shore.” Their actions, he said, “were really admirable.”
Retired Maj. Ken Hynes, curator of The Army Museum at the Halifax Citadel, says that not only was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill facing pressure to open a second continental front, but he was also trying to draw out Luftwaffe to reduce their numbers.
Another theory, advanced by military historian David O’Keefe, is that the mission may have been to give cover to commandoes seeking the latest model of the Enigma machine, which was used by the Nazis to encrypt their communications. Hynes says there are is evidence to support that theory.
Whatever the reason for the fateful battle, it was a huge loss for Canada and provided an important lesson for the Allies.
“It was important,” according to Rose, “because it was clear that there could not be any full-scale invasion of the European continent anytime soon.”
With reports from CTV Atlantic, CTV Winnipeg, and CTV’s Daniele Hamamdjian in Dieppe, France
