On August 19, 1942, Canada suffered its worst losses during the second world war during the Dieppe Raid.
The plan was to capture the port of Dieppe, in Northern France, hold it for a period of time, destroy the German infrastructure and collect intelligence.
Instead, in less than a day’s fighting, 3623 of the 6086 men who landed had been killed, wounded or became prisoners of war, about 5000 of them Canadians.
Designed to provide a moral boost to the Allied forces, it instead proved disastrous, though the lessons learned helped inform the Normandy Invasion in 1944.
In the end, over 900 Canadians died and nearly 2000 were taken prisoner, for a casualty rate of 68 percent. Meanwhile, the Germans suffered 591 casualties, 322 fatal and 280 wounded, 48 aircraft and one patrol boat.
While Dieppe was a disaster, General Mountbatten claimed “I have no doubt that the Battle of Normandy was won on the beaches of Dieppe. For every man who died in Dieppe, at least 10 more must have been spared in Normandy in 1944.”
Meanwhile, Winston Churchill said that “my Impression of ‘Jubilee’ is that the results fully justified the heavy cost” and that it “was a Canadian contribution of the greatest significance to final victory.”
One veteran, John Patrick Grogan of Ontario, says “we knew what we were supposed to do all right. We were to get to land and get over the beach as quickly as we could and get up over the sea wall. But on landing… the beach was lined with people all lying there… I just couldn’t understand what they were all lying there for. But they were dead.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
