On the morning of August 19th, 1942 men from all regions of Canada took part in Operation Jubilee – the raid on the French channel port of Dieppe in German-occupied France. What was supposed to be a successful “butcher and bolt” raid as Churchill put it, turned into a nightmare of truly epic proportions; of the 5000-man raiding force set to hit the beaches in a raid designed primarily to capture material that would help win the cryptographic war and the Battle of the Atlantic, over 916 Canadians and 73 British, American and French raiders were killed in just six hours of combat. Roughly 3000 others were either wounded or captured marking this as the darkest day in Canadian military history - and one of the darkest for the western Allied forces during the Second World War. Of course, this casualty total was a mere “drop in the bucket” compared to what was unfolding on the eastern front, in the skies over Germany, or in the Pacific, but for Canadians this was the first time the human cost of the fighting truly hit home. These were civilians like all of us; civilians who when faced with a threat greater than anything we have endured, put aside the relative comfort and safety of home, put on a uniform and jumped into Hell to fight for principles they felt they had no other way to defend. In this respect, I have attached a series of photos from the Dieppe raid – some unsettling to say the least - that I have collected over the years to reinforce the human cost of the raid. “When all is said and done” as my father (a WWII vet) used to say, “war is an exercise in man’s inhumanity to man”. So with this in mind, please do not forget to pause on each and every August 19th to not just remember, but appreciate the effort and the ultimate sacrifices of these men – men who gave literally everything in the fight to rid the world of the very potent and destructive threat of Nazi tyranny and aggression. These are from the Main Beach are (Red and White sectors) in Dieppe proper.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 21:16:59 +0000
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