We landed west of Dieppe at dawn. The British Commando troops to whom I was attached, Lord Lovat╒s No. 4 Commando, were the first men of the Dieppe raid force to jump ashore.
They had been told a few hours earlier by Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations, ╥Your task is most vital. If you don╒t knock out that German howitzer battery the whole operation will go wrong. You have got to do it even at the greatest possible risk.╙
They had heard their colonel, Lord Lovat, say: ╥This is the toughest job we╒ve had. Remember that you represent the flower of the British Army.╙
END OF A NAZI BATTERY
They knew that if they failed and the six German six-inch howitzers inland west of Dieppe bombarded the narrow Dieppe approach there would be a great disaster. They did not fail. The German guns were shattered, their ammunition dump was blown up,and the German gunners were wiped out at the bayonet╒s point in hand-to-hand fighting.
Because of that, and with superb support from the R.A.F. and the Navy, the men of the Royal Regiment of Canada, the South Saskatchewan Regiment, the Canadian Essex Scots, the Cameron Highlanders of Canada, the Galgary Regiment of Tanks, the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, the Fusiliers de Montreal, and the small detachment of American Rangers were able to land on their five appointed beaches. No German has ever been able to do that in England.
One question worried all of us in those last silent twenty minutes after the long cramped voyage in the starlight. Would the Germans be ready for us? A sergeant crouching in front of me kept up a whispered running commentary: ╥About five hundred yards now╔ See the cliffs?╔There╒s the crack we want. Look at the Jerry tracer bullets. Don╒t think they╒re firing at us, though. A hundred yards now╔ Fifty╔ God, there╒s a bloke on the cliff!╙
So our question was answered. I could just make out a figure, silhouetted for an instant in the half-light, and at the next moment we grounded on the shingle at full tide, a few yards from the foot of the cold-looking, unscalable, hundred-foot, overhanging chalk-white cliffs.
THE WORST MOMENT
That was the worst moment, as we all said afterwards. The assault craft grounded, hesitated, nosed a little to port, grounded again, and stayed put. As we blundered, bending, across the shingle to the cliff foot, a German machine-gun began to stutter from up above. The Oerlikan guns from our support craft answered. Red-hot tracer bullets flashed past each other between cliff top and sea, but for the moment we were under cover, brought in at the exact spot at the exactly appointed time ╤ 4 50 a.m. ╤ by the sound seamanship of the Navy. At the same moment the other half of No. 4 Commando, led by Lord Lovat himself, had landed a little farther west. They were to try, by a wider dip in the cliffs, to take the battery in the rear while our forces, covered by mortar fire, made the frontal attack.
There were only two cracks in the cliffs up which we could pass, and we found in a few minutes that one of these was so crammed full of barbed wire that we had not time to risk it. The second crack, a little to the left, ended in an almost vertical beach staircase for holiday bathers and fishermen, about twenty feet wide between walls of chalk. Above that was a long gully, just as narrow at its bottom, running back to the woods and fields.
A GAMBLE COMES OFF
Had the Germans prepared their defences properly we would not have had a chance. One platoon with a machine-gun could have held it against a fair-sized army. But the Commando leaders knew there was just a chance that the Germans would not believe anyone could be fool enough to try such a suicidal approach.
It came off. In a few minutes the two banks of barbed wire at the top of the steps had been blasted with explosives, and the Commando spearhead, followed by the mortar platoon, were creeping cautiously up the gully.
At that moment the howitzers fired. The light had grown just enough for their observers to spot craft a fair way out to sea. The naval bombardment of Dieppe, timed for twenty minutes after or landing, had begun. The shore batteries and all the light German guns were replying. Number 3 Commando, some way on the other side of Dieppe, were at that moment working towards another German battery. The sky was scored with the tracks of incendiary shells and the Dieppe basin was beginning to rumble and thud like the explosive growling of a volcano crater.
AIR COVER
A formation of four-cannon Hurricanes dived out of the sky on to the cliffs above us, spitting fire at the machine-gun posts and at the two German flak guns.
Boston bombers, higher up, hurried across the coast on their way to strafe the German airfields. Commando troopers under the cliffs yelled ╥Give them hell!╙ They were excited and pleased by the first sight of air support. Lord Louis Mountbatten had told them there would be two R.A.F. fighters for every three men in the raid force, a proportion stronger than anything ever known since aerial warfare began. One of them grinned at me, saying: ╥You╒d be safer up there.╙
The signals officer came back down the gully. He spoke to his wireless crew: ╥Everything all right your end?╙
╥Yes, sir.╙
╥We╒re in rather a jam up at the top there. We╒ve got no telephone line to the mortars.╙
WORK FOR A LAYMAN
I knew then what one of my jobs in this battle would be. Even if you are not allowed to carry arms, there is always plenty to do in a modern battle. Information must be kept going back and forward. Endless chains of communications must move with the troops. Even an untrained man can strip the tapes of mortar fuses and unscrew them ready to fire.
By now, shortly before 6 a.m., a round, red sun was rising beyond Dieppe. I could see the long lines of tank-landing craft, the smaller assault landing craft, and their destroyer and motor-gunboat escorts moving steadily in on Dieppe.
╥Like to come up and see what╒s going on above?╙ said the signals officer. We climbed the steps. ╥I can╒t guarantee that there won╒t be any German snipers about,╙ he added cheerfully, as we walked along the bottom of the gully, smelling the fresh, coarse cliff grasses.
He was right, as I found out a little later as I passed several times up and down the gully, carrying messages or mortar shells. Snipers seemed to be the Germans╒ favourite defence immediately along the coast. They were responsible for most of our remarkably few casualties.
Where the gully ended there was scrub and beyond that a narrow road into the woods which screened the howitzer battery,.
BATTLE COMMENTARY
I took my first message to the beach. ╥Battery assaulted frontally,╙ it said, which meant that we were attacking the battery position from our side. Behind a big boulder on the beach, almost lapped by the sea, sat the officer in charge of one of the special wireless sets which carried a running commentary on the battle direct from France to the headquarters ships and to England.
I handed him my message and talked to him for a moment. As we talked the air almost at cliff height over our heads was suddenly full of fighters snarling, screaming, and twisting in a dog-fight. I could see the heads of the Germans in their Focke-Wulf 190s and the R.A.F. pilots in their Spitfires. ╥Aren╒t they having fun?╙ said the officer happily as they whirled out to sea.
Just as I got back to the gully stairs a bullet or two began to whistle past. ╥That saucy sniper,╙ said a Navy signaller, ╥is too bloody cocky.╙
A chain of mortar-shell carriers were winding up the gully and through the woods. I caught up a load of shells and went with them. As we got to the top of the gully a sergeant sent two men to try to deal with the snipers to left and right of us, whose bullets were still whistling overhead.
THE DUMP GOES UP
An explosion in front of us, louder and longer than any we had heard that morning, made us crouch suddenly. It seemed far louder than the crump of a big bomb. We waited by the mortar battery, wondering what had happened and ducking when the shells from a German mortar somewhere beyond the woods came a little too near.
Presently Major Mills Roberts, the leader of our part of the Commando force, came back through the trees, grinning with pleasure. ╥We╒ve got their ammunition dump,╙ he said. ╥Mortar shell bang on top of it. Bloody fools ╤they╒d got their ammunition all in one lot.╙
A minute later I was running down the cliff gully again with another message to pass to England. It read: ╥Battery demolished 06.50.╙ Quickly after me came another message which said: ╥Assault has gone in.╙ This meant that Lord Lovat and his men had worked their way round and were swarming over the battery position from the rear.
ATTACK ON THE BATTERY
Beyond the woods where our conquering mortar lay there was a stretch of open field, and beyond that lay the barbed wire round the howitzers. It was carelessly laid wire which gave our men little trouble, but the battery defenders knew how to fight. To get at them the attackers had to cross open ground under fire from carefully concealed snipers. There fell two Commando officers, one killed and one seriously wounded, and several men. But once across the battery wire it was man to man in as fierce an all-in struggle as anywhere that day.
Sniping from his office window was ╥Hauptmann and Batterie Fuehrer╙ Schoeler, the battery C.O. A trooper kicked in the door, sprayed him with tommy-gun bullets. ╥Couldn╒t take him prisoner,╙ he said. ╥It was him or me.╙
Another trooper killed four Germans and got his section out of a nasty corner. It was as much a fight of bayonet as of bullet. Troopers barged in and out of battery huts and the houses near, thrusting, stabbing, firing.
On the battery commander╒s wall, along with the battery╒s list of names, was an order of the day: ╥Dienstplan fuer Mittwoch den 19 August, 1942,╙ it was headed, and the first item after rising was ╥6.45-7.00: Fruehsport╙ [╥physical jerks╙]. The battery had its ╥Fruehsport╙ all right, and at the right time, but not quite of the planned type.
When Lord Lovat and his men left the battery there was not a gunner alive except for some prisoners. The ammunition had been blown up, and the six great guns had had explosive charges detonated inside them.
Back on the beach, the three-inch mortar was being set up to cover our withdrawal and the slow, difficult passage of the wounded men and stretcher-bearers down the gully and the precipitous stairs.
The mortar officer, whose men were all busy hauling ammunition, grabbed me. ╥Hey, would you mind?╙ he said, and showed me how to prepare the shells for firing. ╥Why will no one bring me any smoke?╙ he grumbled, meaning the green-painted smoke shells with which he could set up a smoke screen to cover us. As we worked an enemy mortar and a machine-gun began to feel for our range. Mortar shells trundled overhead, exploding among the rocks.
A Spitfire flew overhead, and a German flak post that had been silent for a long time opened fire on it. ╥Can╒t you fix that bastard?╙ said the intelligence officer to the mortar officer. We heaved the mortar round and tried to estimate the range. As I unscrewed the tops and passed the shells the mortar officer popped them in, stunning my ears with such close explosions. Either because we had found his range or because he could not find another target we did not hear the German flak gun again. But the enemy╒s mortar and machine-gun continued to bother us.
LORD LOVAT
In a pause of the firing I looked up to find Lord Lovat sitting against a rock beside me. You could see that he was bubbling with happiness. ╥By God, we did the job all right,╙ he said. ╥Went in straight with the bayonet. Cut them to shreds. Not a man left in the battery. How glad I am I wasn╒t in the battery! But they fought hard.╙
He was easy to pick out anywhere in that day╒s battle. ╥Cool as a trout,╙ as Trooper Fraser said. And he had the only clean face among us, being the only one who had not blacked his face for the half-light landing. Besides, he wore corduroy slacks instead of our denims or battle-dress trousers.
The enemy mortar banged down a bit of cliff near us. ╥Getting a bit hot,╙ said Lord Lovat. ╥I╒m going abroad.╙ He strolled into the sea up to his knees, following the long lines of men who were clambering into the assault landing craft. ╥Hi!╙ he yelled to the nearest craft some way out. ╥You come in here. Why should I get my knees wet?╙ But it was too shallow for the craft now the tide had fallen, and we had to wade out.
THREE OF OUR PRISONERS
As I climbed in someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, ╥Vous, correspondent, parlez franìais?╙ I thought he was one of the new Fighting Frenchmen who crossed with us, but when I looked up I saw that he was a young German in thin cotton uniform and artillery boots, an untidy lad, wearing spectacles. He was an artilleryman, a Rhinelander, with an artilleryman from Westphalia and another from Western Germany. One had been captured in his trousers, braces, socks, and one carpet slipper ╤ nothing else.
They seemed fairly resigned, though another was worried by the thought of his young son in Germany. One told me that he had been two years in the army, that he had a brother on the Russian front, and that the Russian war was ╥schrecklich╙ (frightful). On the long weary voyage back our men shared their cigarettes, water, food, and blankets with the prisoners.
The people of occupied France went about their work during the battle with great calm, one man of over sixty bicycling slowly up the road near the battery position, not bothering about the bullets and shells.
LIKE A GRIM REGATTA
As we put a little way out to sea and lay off to look at Dieppe we suddenly discovered what an excellent co-operation job the Fighter Command was doing. There, lying in Dieppe roads, as they did all day, was a great fleet of craft, from destroyers to tank craft and landing-boats, rows and rows of them. It was for all the world like a grimmer Cowes Regatta, and but for the smoke and din of Dieppe just as peaceful in the hot sun. So busy were the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulf 190s kept by our fighters that they had no time to strafe our craft.
We, too, were almost unmolested on our way back across the Channel. Once a Focke-Wulf tried to attack us, but our escorting motor-gunboat shot it down into the sea. All through the afternoon I watched German and British fighters scribbling their quarrels across the sky.
Many ╒planes fell, whether German or British I could seldom see. Once an American pilot in a Spitfire whirled down baling out as he fell. One of our craft picked him up. Then we watched a German pilot parachuting down, and stopped to pick him up too. After many hours, even watching one of the most significant air battles of the war palled. We huddled slackly down in the boat, dead-tired, filthy-looking, ragged, lolling, happy men ╤ happy because we knew that the Commando had made the Battle of Dieppe possible.
