Dieppe: Operation Jubilee - Channel Ports

by Tim Saunders

  The Canadian’s floating reserve were les Fusiliers Mont-Royal, who, ready in their landing craft, were prepared to be deployed from 0650 hours. The Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Menard, was to report to HMS Calpe for orders, but ‘If the operation went according to plan,’ he had been warned, ‘his task was to provide a rearguard on the western side of the harbour to cover the re-embarkation.’

  The Royal Marine Commando (later re-designated 40 Commando) and naval personnel were to mount a cutting-out operation to take and tow away enemy shipping and invasion barges found in the port. This part of the operation depended on their being able to open the lock gates and operate the swing bridges.

  The Assault

  The vessels carrying the assaulting force, HMS Glengyle, Prince Leopold and Prince Charles, reached their landing-craft-lowering positions on time, without contact with enemy shipping. The landing craft were lowered from the mother-ships’ davits, and formed up correctly with none of the navigational difficulties that beset some of the other groups. As a result, the landing craft’s run-in to the beach was uneventful.

  Meanwhile, in contrast to the ‘silent’ or unsupported flanking attacks mounted by the commandos and the Canadians on the two inner flanking beaches, four of the Hunt Class destroyers began a covering bombardment with their guns. HMS Garth opened fire on the Esplanade at 0512 hours and shifted her aim to the eastern side of the harbour at 0519 hours, while HMS Bleasdale fired on the Casino and adjacent buildings between 0513 and 0520 hours. HMS Berkeley and Albrighton fired on the fortified buildings across the Esplanade from 0510 hours.

  A sketch of the Dieppe coastline issued to the Naval Force to help with navigation.

  While the Navy was bombarding Dieppe, the Royal Air Force was also in action. COHQ reported that:

  ‘The smokescreen over the east headland was duly laid. The Air Force Commander states, “This was most effective, lasting from 0510 to 0600 hours.” The attack by cannon fighters was also put in on schedule and was “successful in neutralizing enemy fire along the front from 0515 to 0525”.’

  Smoke from the bombardment of Dieppe, seen from a landing craft.

  However, many Canadians would later question how ‘successful’ and ‘effective’ this light bombardment was. Private Carley of the Essex Scottish, aboard an LCA heading for Red beach, recorded that

  ‘We moved in until we were a half a mile from the shore directly in front of the town. We stopped as the RAF was just starting to bomb the town. We waited in our LCA till 14 minutes past five, as that was when the RAF stopped bombing. Then we moved into the beach.’

  With the air bombardment over, the landing craft continued their approach to the beach under cover of the smoke bombs dropped on the eastern headland. As they closed on the beach, the landing-crafts’ smoke mortars fired on to the Esplanade. However, according to Lieutenant Commander McMullen, who navigated the force into Red and White beaches, ‘fire appeared to be coming at us from every direction, but the boats touched down on the beach at 0523’. The force landed accurately, but the gap between the Essex Scottish at the eastern end of the beach and the RHLI in front of the Casino was greater than intended. Overhead, five close-support fighter squadrons had finished attacking the Dieppe seafront, but ‘the fact that the infantry were a few minutes late prevented their taking full advantage of this attack.’ This lack of effective coordination would explain many of the accusations from the survivors of the initial assault on the main Beaches, of a lack of support.

  A German MG 34 positioned in a concrete casemate.

  Even as the LCAs approached the beach, they were under increasingly heavy fire. Private Carley recalled that at ‘about two hundred yards away from the beach, a terrible amount of machine-gun fire and artillery fire was being sent at us.’ Private Telfer, among the RHLI’s leading wave, wrote, ‘The enemy seemed to hold his fire until we were half-way across the beach and then opened up and we were caught between crossfire’. By the time Private Dury landed, the enemy had fully recovered from the effects of the air strike. He later described his touch-down under fire:

  ‘As we neared the beach, shells were falling close around us; we learned later that much of this was heavy mortar. Then we ran into MG fire. As we reached the beach and the door opened, we could see the Casino, and right in front was a MG post firing on us.’

  The Fight for the Casino

  On White Beach, the dominating feature facing the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, immediately behind the seawall, was the large rambling three-storey Casino building. It was strongly fortified by the Germans, with at least one artillery piece in a casemate built into the building on the north-west corner, and pillboxes outside the building, including a particularly strong concrete machine-gun casemate near the north-east corner. In addition, riflemen were posted in the tower, and on the Casino’s roof an anti-aircraft gun was reported that was ‘about the same size as our own Bofors 40-mm. ’

  A view of the Casino from the beach taken after the battle.

  An extract from one of the maps in the COHQ report showing White Beach and the Casino area.

  Captain Whitaker, commander of the RHLI’s Battalion Headquarters Protection Platoon, recalled many years later:

  ‘The ramp dropped. I led the thirty-odd men of my platoon in a charge about twenty-five yards up the stony beach. We fanned out and flopped down just short of a huge wire obstacle. Bullets flew everywhere. Enemy mortar bombs started to crash down. Around me, men were being hit and bodies were piling up, one on top of the other. It was terrifying... We’d gone in naked with very little fire support.’

  More formally, Captain Whitaker wrote in the RHLI’s post-Operation Jubilee report, which was attached to the battalion war diary, that:

  ‘On landing we were met by heavy enemy fire of all types from the Casino, the buildings and positions along the esplanade and from the headlands on both flanks. The entire battalion was pinned down by the weight of this fire. D Coy, on the west of the Casino, was almost wiped out. In front of us lay three rows of wire, a six-foot wall and 150 yards across the esplanade, Dieppe itself. Many of the Officers and men were killed or wounded in an attempt to cross the beach and scale the wall.’

  The RHLI’s difficulties had been observed from craft offshore. The arrangements for bomber or fighter-bomber support to the assault troops were proving to be ponderous and slow. Only a small fraction of requests that made their way up the RAF chain of command were accepted, and the resulting raids were eventually over target as late as eighty minutes after the request. Consequently, despite the biggest air battle going on overhead, Lieutenant Hargraves-Heap aboard one of the flak craft, was ordered in to support the land battle:

  ‘The ship was manoeuvred close in to the beach, and set a course parallel to the promenade, and about 600 yards off shore with the starboard side facing it. Three Oerlikons and the port battery of pom-poms were detailed to look after the ships’ AA defence, whilst the shore was engaged with the starboard pom-poms and one Oerlikon. Three pom-poms were using HE with self-destructive graze fuse, alternate shells having tracer, and the fourth pom-pom used Semi-Armour Piercing... We appeared to be having quite a little success with our shelling, and had made a trip up and down the beach twice.’

  With the aid of fire-power such as this, and despite the chaos and heavy casualties on the beach, some of the Hamiltons managed to get Bangalore Torpedoes up to the wire and detonate them. One of the first through the resulting gap was Private Greaves, who charged the pillbox that was causing so much of the trouble: wielding a six-foot Bangalore like a lance, he thrust it into the embrasure and killed or wounded the occupants by detonating it.

  With the pillbox neutralised, the RHLI broke into the Casino ‘after wire on a sun porch on the front of the building had been cut.’ They fought from room to room in the rambling building, with a liberal use of hand grenades. Lance Corporal McDermott from HQ Company was with them in the main rooms of the Casino:

  ‘I spotted three enemy, a
nd worked my way close enough to throw a grenade, but they didn’t seem afraid, because they threw one back which hit me on the foot. I ran about forty feet before it went off, knocking the rifle from my hand. I threw another grenade and followed up, but they had gone, leaving a pool of blood.’

  One of Dieppe’s stongly built and lofty hotel buildings.

  Among the Hamilton’s battle group was Sergeant Hickson of the attached Royal Canadian Engineers’ demolition party. Colonel Stacey reported that:

  ‘The infantry, assisted by the sappers, who were well equipped with demolition charges, now began to clear the Casino. It was a very large building, and its interior was a maze of rooms and passages of various sizes. Clearing it of enemy snipers was in consequence a long and complicated operation.’

  Sergeant Hickson used his plastic explosive ‘mouse-hole’ charges to blow holes in the Casino’s internal walls to allow the RHLI to clear the building, killing numerous determined enemy infantry in the process. The last enemy bastion to fall was the gun emplacement in the north-west corner of the Casino, which was firing at the approaching tank-landing craft. Sergeant Hickson and his men blasted a way into the casemate. The Canadian report described the action:

  ‘The casemate was of two storeys, the gun (which was firing upon our ships offshore) being in the upper one. Entrance from the Casino was by a steel door, which was locked. Sgt Hickson blew this door down with a charge, which also killed or stunned the men of the gun-crew. Hickson then entered the emplacement and exploded a one-pound charge on the breach of the gun, in which there was a shell. This presumably destroyed the gun.’

  It had taken over an hour for the RHLI to kill or capture all the Germans in the Casino. Sources indicate that the total number of prisoners taken in the rambling Casino was between twenty-three and thirty. The number of enemy dead was probably double this figure. According to the intelligence log, a report reached General Roberts aboard HMS Calpe at 0712 hours that the Casino had been taken. The fight in the close quarters of the Casino was hard, but the days of training in the ‘blitzed’ buildings of the Isle of White proved to be thoroughly worthwhile for the RHLI. The reflex reactions of trained combat soldiers and the instinctive execution of battle drills carried them forward, in defiance of normal human reaction. In the close-quarter fighting in the Casino, the Germans were outclassed.

  However, not all of the Hamiltons were involved in the fight for the Casino. Unable to close with the enemy, others were pinned down on the beach. Sergeant Douglas reported that he:

  ‘...landed with A Coy and made a dash from the boats to about halfway up the beach. Lieutenant Baisley from then on took us forward over the wall. At this point Lieutenant Baisley was killed. Nobody else tried to go over the wall after that. We did not know exactly where the fire was coming from. The places we fired at were the windows of the tower in the Casino where we could see tracers originating; both rifles and Bren fired into the windows and no more fire was seen from there. We remained on the beach, being pinned down by fire from the high ground to the west of the Casino.’

  Also among those pinned down on the beach, some distance east of the Casino, was Lieutenant Colonel Labatt, along with his Headquarters Company. From here, he ‘was able to exercise some direction over the unit by his No. 18 set.’ Sergeant Goodman, also of HQ Company, recalled how ‘after firing across the seawall with a Bren gun, he was directed by Lieutenant Colonel Labatt to organise men in this vicinity to direct their fire towards the high ground to the west.

  One of 7 Kompanie’s positions dug into the lawns of the Esplanade and manned by either infantry of the Wehrmacht or the Kriegsmarine.

  The Eastern Headland, with its concealed enemy positions dominated Red Beach.

  Red Beach

  The ground over which the Essex Scottish were to attack was not immediately overlooked by a fortified building like the Casino, but, as described in the Canadian report,

  ‘The beach on which the Essex Scottish landed was completely open and was commanded by the east headland, in which the Germans had weapons sited in caves . . . at a range of only some 400 yards. It was also overlooked by the lofty buildings along the Boulevard de Verdun and by pillboxes on the Esplanade wall, while snipers in the upper parts of the Casino were able to harass the Essex on the beach with fire at longer ranges.’

  A considerable volume of fire was directed against the Essex Scottish as they approached the beach ‘although the smoke laid from the air must have interfered with that of the guns on the east headland.’

  A photograph taked after the raid showing some of the pillboxes and caves in the Eastern Headland and harbour all that caused so much trouble.

  German machine gunners in action amongst the ruble.

  Captain Guest led A Company across the beach as a part of the initial assault wave:

  ‘We touched down 200 yards to the right of where we should have been. We ran across the beach, stumbling on the shingle banks, but we were trapped at the first belt of wire. Through an error, our Bangalore torpedoes had not been allocated to us at Southampton, so Corporal Storr had to struggle to cut the heavy rolls of dannert wire, but it was hopeless. Without Bangalore torpedoes we could have been stuck suffering casualties, but fortunately where we were the wire was not very high above the beach. I took a running jump at the wire and cleared it and the remainder of the men followed me. But by the time we reached a little bit of shelter at the seawall, I had only about 35 out of my 108 men left and the wire on the top of the seawall was impenetrable. Enemy Spandau gunners got anyone who moved up to the wire. There was nothing for it but for us to dig scrapes in the shingle.’

  Elsewhere, the men of the Essex Scottish were more fortunate, but they suffered casualties while they breached and crossed the second wire entanglement. Some of the wounded men collapsed on the wire, thus providing a path across the obstacle for their comrades. Others became caught in the wire as they attempted to cut their way through, such as Private Prince of C Company, who wrote, ‘I think the German sniper is a real specialist. They are wonderful shots and go for the officers and NCOs. We found that they were mostly all planted on roofs or in very high buildings.’ In addition the Germans directed both mortar and shellfire at the Canadian infantry, along with raking bursts of machine gunfire. Lieutenant Colonel MacRae wrote,

  ‘There was at this time a great deal of MG fire on the wire obstacles, which caused casualties amongst the troops while crossing said wire. Opinion is that by 0545 hrs, somewhere between 30 and 40% of the Essex Scottish personnel were either killed or wounded.’

  The Commanding Officer started to organise attacks across the Esplanade ‘with a view to penetrating into the buildings on the Boulevard de Verdun.’ However, with the Germans covering the Esplanade, and with very little fire support, the Canadians were committed to a ‘forlorn hope.’ Lieutenant Colonel MacRae described the attacks:

  ‘This crossing attempt was met with intensive gun and mortar fire as well as LMG fire and almost all of the assaulting troops were killed or badly wounded. The companies were reformed and despite the loss of some officers started a second assault under cover of smoke. By this time, some of the 2-inch mortars had been destroyed by enemy fire and the second attack suffered a similar fate to the first... A third attempt on a reduced scale was made to cross the wall and was met by a hail of fire, causing most of the personnel to become casualties.’

  The steep slope of 3-4” pebbles that stopped many of the Calgary Regiment’s tanks.

  The enemy continued to mortar the beach and rake it with machine-gun fire from the flanks, causing numerous casualties.

  Despite the disaster on the beach, about twelve men from the Essex Scottish under command of Sergeant Major Stapleton succeeded in crossing the Esplanade, and reached the enemy dug in on the lawns and positioned in the buildings beyond. This is the only party of the Essex known to have made such a penetration. According to one witness, ‘Stapleton... did a remarkable job of getting forward into the buildings wi
th about twelve men and accounted for a considerable number of enemy in transport and also enemy snipers.’ A message in HMS Calpe’s signal log timed 0610 hours, ‘Essex Scot across the beaches and in houses’, was interpreted by General Roberts to mean that the whole battalion was across the beach. This misleading information contributed to the commander making an unfortunate decision.

  The Tanks

  The German Port Commander, Captain Whan, explained in his report that during training exercises:

  ‘I demanded as a final phase that a panzer attempted to advance across the shingle bank on the beach. Within a short while the panzer was stuck so firmly that it could no longer be moved. The tracks had to be removed and I remember I made the observation “Now we know that the British can’t land here with tanks”.’

  A Tank Landing Craft disabled having discharged its load of Churchills.