World War II: The Autobiography

by Jon E. Lewis

  . . . Our coxswain tried to take us in to one section of the beach and it proved the wrong spot. Before he grounded he swung the craft out again and we fumbled through the smoke to the small strip of sand which was the Puits beach. The smoke was spotty and the last thirty yards was in the clear. Geysers from artillery shells or mortar bombs shot up in our path. Miraculously we weren’t hit by any of them. The din of the German ack-ack guns and machine-guns on the cliff was so deafening you could not hear the man next to you shout.

  The men in our boat crouched low, their faces tense and grim. They were awed by this unexpected blast of German fire, and it was their initiation to frightful battle noises. They gripped their weapons more tightly and waited for the ramp of our craft to go down.

  We bumped on the beach and down went the ramp and out poured the first infantrymen. They plunged into about two feet of water and machine-gun bullets laced into them. Bodies piled up on the ramp. Some staggered to the beach and fell. Bullets were splattering into the boat itself, wounding and killing our men.

  I was near the stern and to one side. Looking out the open bow over the bodies on the ramp, I saw the slope leading a short way up to a stone wall littered with Royals casualties. There must have been sixty or seventy of them, lying sprawled on the green grass and the brown earth. They had been cut down before they had a chance to fire a shot.

  A dozen Canadians were running along the edge of the cliff towards the stone wall. They carried their weapons and some were firing as they ran. But some had no helmets, some were already wounded, their uniforms torn and bloody. One by one they were cut down and rolled down the slope to the sea.

  I don’t know how long we were nosed down on that beach. It may have been five minutes. It may have been twenty. On no other front have I witnessed such a carnage. It was brutal and terrible and shocked you almost to insensibility to see the piles of dead and feel the hopelessness of the attack at this point.

  There was one young lad crouching six feet away from me. He had made several vain attempts to rush down the ramp to the beach but each time a hail of fire had driven him back. He had been wounded in the arm but was determined to try again. He lunged forward and a streak of red-white tracer slashed through his stomach.

  I’ll never forget his anguished cry as he collapsed on the blood-soaked deck: “Christ, we gotta beat them; we gotta beat them!” He was dead in a few minutes.

  . . . For the rest of that morning one lost all sense of time and developments in the frantic events of the battle. Although the Puits landing had obviously failed and the headland to the east of Dieppe would still be held by the Germans, I felt that the main attack by three infantry battalions and the tanks had possibly fared better on the beach in front of the town.

  Landing craft were moving along the coast in relays and the destroyers were going in perilously close to hit the headlands with shell-fire. I clambered from one landing craft to another to try to learn what was going on. Several times we were bombed too closely by long, black German planes that sailed right through our flak and our fighter cover.

  Smoke was laid by destroyers and our planes along the sea and on the beach. Finally the landing craft in which I was at the time, with some naval ratings, touched down on the sloping pebble main beach which ran about sixty yards at that point to a high sea wall and the Esplanade, with the town beyond.

  Smoke was everywhere and under its cover several of our ratings ran on to the beach and picked up two casualties by the barbed wire on the beach, lugging them back to the boat. I floundered through the loose shale to the sea-wall. There was heavy machine-gun fire down the beach towards the Casino. A group of men crouched twenty yards away under the shelter of the sea-wall.

  The tobacco factory was blazing fiercely. For a moment there was no firing. It was one of those brief lulls you get in any battle. I thought our infantry were thick in the town but the Esplanade looked far too bare and empty.

  There was no beach organization as there should have been. Some dead lay by the wall and on the shale. The attack here had not gone as planned either. A string of mortar bombs whanged on the Esplanade. The naval ratings waved and I lunged back to the boat as the beach battle opened up again. In choking smoke we pulled back to the boat pool.

  . . . Then the German air force struck with its most furious attack of the day. All morning long, British and Canadian fighters kept a constant patrol over the ships and the beaches, whole squadrons twisting and curling in the blue, cloud-flecked sky. Hundreds of other planes swept far over northern France, intercepting enemy fighters and bombers long before they reached Dieppe. Reconnaissance planes kept a constant lookout on the roads from Amiens and Abbeville and Rouen where reinforcements could be expected. There were air combats going on practically all morning long. It was the greatest air show since the Battle of Britain in the fall of 1940, and the R.A.F. and R.C.A.F. had overwhelming superiority. The High Command had hoped the German air force would be lured into the sky and most of the enemy strength in western Europe came up.

  . . . Bullets screeched in every direction. The whole sky and sea had gone mad with the confusion of that sudden air attack, and a dozen times I clung to the bottom of the boat expecting that this moment was the last as we were cannoned or another stick of bombs churned the sea.

  Several landing craft near us blew up, hit by bombs and cannon shells. There was nothing left. They just disintegrated. These craft had been trying to make the main beach again, as we had been, to take off troops on the withdrawal.

  Dieppe was an unmitigated disaster. More than 3,000 Canadians were killed, wounded or taken prisoner in the raid.

  THE TWATS IN THE OPS ROOM, 1942

  Anon

  RAF aircrew song. To the tune of “John Brown’s Body” .

  We had been flying all day long at one hundred fucking feet,

  The weather fucking awful, fucking rain and fucking sleet,

  The compass it was swinging fucking south and fucking north,

  But we made a fucking landfall in the Firth of Fucking Forth.

  Ain’t the Air Force fucking awful?

  Ain’t the Air Force fucking awful?

  Ain’t the Air Force fucking awful?

  We made a fucking landing in the Firth of Fucking Forth.

  We joined the Air Force ’cos we thought it fucking right,

  But don’t care if we fucking fly or fucking fight,

  But what we do object to are those fucking Ops Room twats,

  Who sit there sewing stripes on at the rate of fucking knots.

  HOLOCAUST: THE JEWS ARE ROUNDED UP, AMSTERDAM, 19 NOVEMBER 1942

  Anne Frank

  The Nazis deported some 500,000 Jews from occupied western Europe to the SS death camps. These included 104,000 Jews from the Netherlands.

  Thursday, 19 November 1942

  Dussel has told us a lot about the outside world, which we have missed for so long now. He had very sad news. Countless friends and acquaintances have gone to a terrible fate. Evening after evening the green and grey army lorries trundle past. The Germans ring at every front door to enquire if there are any Jews living in the house. If there are, then the whole family has to go at once. If they don’t find any, they go on to the next house. No one has a chance of evading them unless one goes into hiding. Often they go round with lists, and only ring when they know they can get a good haul. Sometimes they let them off for cash – so much per head. It seems like the slave hunts of olden times. But it’s certainly no joke; it’s much too tragic for that. In the evenings, when it’s dark, I often see rows of good, innocent people accompanied by crying children, walking on and on, in charge of a couple of these chaps, bullied and knocked about until they almost drop. No one is spared – old people, babies, expectant mothers, the sick – each and all join in the march of death.

  How fortunate we are here, so well cared for and undisturbed. We wouldn’t have to worry about all this misery were it not that we are so anxious about all those dear to us whom we can
no longer help.

  I feel wicked sleeping in a warm bed, while my dearest friends have been knocked down or have fallen into a gutter somewhere out in the cold night. I get frightened when I think of close friends who have now been delivered into the hands of the cruellest brutes that walk the earth. And all because they are Jews!

  Anne Frank was later taken to Belsen herself, where she died in 1945.

  OFFICER SELECTION, BRITAIN, 1943

  Rifeman Alex Bowlby, Rifle Brigade

  I had volunteered for the Army – I hadn’t fancied being called up – and this, plus the fact of my having been to one of the public schools which the regiment preferred its officers from, automatically earmarked me as a potential officer. This upset my platoon sergeant even more than my arms-drill. One bleak November morning he could stand it no longer. The squad was practising gas-drill. I had hidden myself in the back rank but the Sergeant had turned the squad round. When everyone else had replaced their respirators I was still wrestling with the head-piece. The eye of the Sergeant was upon me. Desperately I rammed home the head-piece. When I buttoned up the respirator it bulged like a pregnant serpent. The Sergeant moved in for the kill. Unbuttoning the respirator he replaced it correctly. Then he thrust his face into mine.

  “If you ever get a commission my prick’s a bloater!”

  A week later I was sent to a War Office Selection Board. Its highlight was an interview with a psychiatrist. I thought this would be fun. When I entered his room I had to stop myself giggling. He motioned me to sit down, and continued to correct papers (we had all answered a word-association test). After five minutes’ silence I no longer found anything funny about the interview. After ten minutes I felt like screaming.

  The psychiatrist suddenly looked up from the papers. He stared at me until I had to look down.

  “You were unhappy at school, are extremely self-conscious, and find it difficult to concentrate. Correct?”

  I nodded dumbly, wondering how on earth he did it.

  “Both your parents are neurotic, aren’t they?”

  “I – I don’t know.”

  “H’m. Have you ever had a woman?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Of course!”

  The psychiatrist gave me another long stare. I ended up looking at the floor.

  “What do you like most in life?”

  “Poetry, I suppose.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s part of my ideals.”

  “What ideals?”

  “I don’t quite know how to explain. I suppose my ideals are what I believe in.”

  “What do you believe in?”

  “Helping other people. Doing what I feel is right.”

  The psychiatrist leant across the table.

  “What would your feelings be if you bayoneted a German?”

  This was much better.

  “I’d feel sorry for him. I don’t think he would have caused the war any more than I did.”

  The psychiatrist frowned.

  “Well, what would you feel if you were bayoneted by a German?”

  “A great deal of pain.”

  “Yes, but what else?”

  I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Nothing.”

  The psychiatrist glared at me. I stared back. We looked at each other until I felt dizzy.

  “You should avoid going out alone at nights,” he said finally.

  I nearly burst out laughing. But he hadn’t quite finished.

  “And if you don’t give up these so-called ideals of yours you’ll go mad within eighteen months.”

  I was so shaken I couldn’t speak. Finally I said: “But what shall I do?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  When I got out of the room I fainted.

  For some weeks afterwards my nerves were all to bits. I lived for letters from a friend who slowly convinced me that the psychiatrist was talking through his hat.

  ONE MAN’S WAR: AN AMERICAN AIRMAN’S LETTER, 1943

  Sergeant Carl Goldman, USAAF

  Goldman was an aerial gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress with the Eighth Air Force in England. The letter below was to his family, “ To be opened in case of casualty only” . He was lost in action over western Europe.

  Feb. 16, 1943

  Dear Mom, Pop, Frances, Edith, Marion, Leon and Aaron:

  Am going on a raid this afternoon or early in the morning. There is a possibility I won’t return.

  In any event, please do not worry too much about me as everyone has to leave this earth one way or another and this is the way I have selected.

  I was not forced to go to gunnery school and even after I arrived overseas I could have gotten off combat had I chosen to do so.

  If after this terrible war is over, the world emerges a saner place to live; if all nationalities are treated equal; pogroms and persecutions halted, then, I’m glad I gave my efforts with thousands of others for such a cause.

  Wish I had time to write more, but sometimes the less said the better, so goodbye – and good luck – always.

  Carl

  THE DAMBUSTERS RAID, RUHR VALLEY, 16 MAY 1943

  Guy Gibson, RAF

  The famous “bouncing bomb” attack on the Ruhr Valley dams by RAF 617 Squadron was intended to disrupt production in Germany’s industrial heartland. Nineteen Lancaster bombers led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson took part in the raid, eight of which were lost. Two dams, the Möhne and Eder, were destroyed, bringing widespread flooding; a third dam, the Sorpe, survived the bomb that hit it. Here Guy Gibson describes the attack on the Möhne dam. He was killed in action a year later.

  The minutes passed slowly as we all sweated on this summer’s night, sweated at working the controls and sweated with fear as we flew on. Every railway train, every hamlet and every bridge we passed was a potential danger, for our Lancasters were sitting targets at that height and speed. We fought our way past Dortmund, past Hamm – the well-known Hamm which has been bombed so many times; we could see it quite clearly now, its tall chimneys, factories and balloons capped by its umbrella of flak like a Christmas tree about five miles to our right; then we began turning to the right in between Hamm and the little town of Soest, where I nearly got shot down in 1940. Soest was sleepy now and did not open up, and out of the haze ahead appeared the Ruhr hills.

  “We’re there,” said Spam.

  “Thank God,” said I, feelingly.

  As we came over the hill, we saw the Möhne Lake. Then we saw the dam itself. In that light it looked squat and heavy and unconquerable; it looked grey and solid in the moonlight, as though it were part of the countryside itself and just as immovable. A structure like a battleship was showering out flak all along its length, but some came from the powerhouse below it and nearby. There were no searchlights. It was light flak, mostly green, yellow and red, and the colours of the tracer reflected upon the face of the water in the lake. The reflections on the dead calm of the black water made it seem there was twice as much as there really was.

  “Did you say these gunners were out of practice?” asked Spam, sarcastically.

  “They certainly seem awake now,” said Terry.

  They were awake all right. No matter what people say, the Germans certainly have a good warning system. I scowled to myself as I remembered telling the boys an hour or so ago that they would probably only be the German equivalent of the Home Guard and in bed by the time we arrived.

  It was hard to say exactly how many guns there were, but tracers seemed to be coming from about five positions, probably making twelve guns in all. It was hard at first to tell the calibre of the shells, but after one of the boys had been hit, we were informed over the RT that they were either 20-mm type or 37-mm, which, as everyone knows, are nasty little things.

  We circled around stealthily, picking up the various landmarks upon which we had planned our method of attack, making use of some and avoiding others; every time we came within range of t
hose bloody-minded flak-gunners they let us have it.

  “Bit aggressive, aren’t they?” said Trevor.

  “Too right they are.”

  I said to Terry, “God, this light flak gives me the creeps.”

  “Me, too,” someone answered.

  For a time there was a general blind on the subject of light flak, and the only man who didn’t say anything was Hutch, because he could not see it and because he never said anything about flak, anyway. But this was not the time for talking. I called up each member of our formation and found, to my relief, that they had all arrived, except, of course, Bill Astell. Away to the south, Joe McCarthy had just begun his diversionary attack on the Sorpe. But not all of them had been able to get there; both Byers and Barlow had been shot down by light flak after crossing the coast; these had been replaced by other aircraft of the rear formation. Bad luck, this being shot down after crossing the coast, because it could have happened to anybody; they must have been a mile or so off track and had got the hammer. This is the way things are in flying; you are either lucky or you aren’t. We, too, had crossed the coast at the wrong place and had got away with it. We were lucky.

  Down below, the Möhne Lake was silent and black and deep, and I spoke to my crew.

  “Well boys, I suppose we had better start the ball rolling.” This with no enthusiasm whatsoever. “Hello, all Cooler aircraft. I am going to attack. Stand by to come in to attack in your order when I tell you.”

  Then to Hoppy: “Hello, ‘M Mother’. Stand by to take over if anything happens.”

  Hoppy’s clear and casual voice came back.“OK, Leader. Good luck.”

  Then the boys dispersed to the pre-arranged hiding-spots in the hills, so that they should not be seen either from the ground or from the air, and we began to get into position for our approach. We circled wide and came around down moon, over the high hills at the eastern end of the lake. On straightening up we began to dive towards the flat, ominous water two miles away. Over the front turret was the dam silhouetted against the haze of the Ruhr Valley. We could see the towers. We could see the sluices. We could see everything. Spam, the bomb-aimer, said, “Good show. This is wizard.” He had been a bit worried, as all bomb-aimers are, in case they cannot see their aiming points, but as we came in over the tall fir trees his voice came up again rather quickly. “You’re going to hit them. You’re going to hit those trees.”