70 years ago at Dieppe
Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 7:23 pm
August 19, 1942 was the date of the ill-fated Allied raid on the French port of Dieppe. The Western Allies were under great pressure from the USSR to demonstrate progress in opening up a second front, and the Dieppe raid was seen as one way of conducting a bit of a trial run in advance of planning a full scale invasion. The primary objectives were to take and hold Dieppe for the duration of two tides, inflict as much damage as possible on German installations, and gather intelligence (including, as revealed recently, attempting to recover an Enigma machine and German codebooks). None of these objectives was achieved, and the casualty rate among the almost 5000 Canadians who made up the bulk of the force was 68%. That the raid turned into such an unmitigated disaster was a combined result of unrealistic objectives, shamefully inadequate planning, and sparse intelligence. If military school cadets had been given an assignment to design a battle plan intended to fail, they could not have come up anything worse than Dieppe.
No doubt there were important lessions learned that were very useful in the North Africa landings later that year, and D-Day two years later, with countless lives saved as a result, but that does little to alter the view of Dieppe as one of the blackest in Canadian history.
No doubt there were important lessions learned that were very useful in the North Africa landings later that year, and D-Day two years later, with countless lives saved as a result, but that does little to alter the view of Dieppe as one of the blackest in Canadian history.
