Today marks the 80th Anniversary of Operation Jubilee, the Allied landings at Dieppe in 1942. Much has been written about the Dieppe Raid, but like many aspects of the Second World War we continue to discover and understand more. Recent research by Canadian historian, David O’Keefe, demonstrates that Iain Fleming and British Naval Intelligence and the search for an Enigma Machine was all part of what lay behind this attack on occupied France. Whatever the reason, Dieppe was a costly disaster with Canadian casualties exceeding 3,300 with almost one in three of them being killed on the Dieppe beaches.
Forty years ago, growing up in Sussex, I used to visit an old Victorian Fort overlooking the sea at Newhaven, which was then a war museum. On one visit with my father, a Second World War veteran, we walked through the heat of a summer’s day into the shade of the courtyard of the fort. There in groups were men of my father’s generation, quietly talking. Seeing my father some came over thinking he was a fellow Canadian veteran, for these were men who had served at Dieppe, maybe more than two hundred of them, gathering in Britain close to their old training grounds and where they had left for the beaches, prior to attending the 40th Anniversary in France.
I was a teenager then, but they talked to me kindly, fascinated that a '“young British lad” could be so interested in their war. Then they were four decades from the moment their boots had crunched the gravel on those beaches, and the zip-zip-zip of machine-gun fire had filled the air around them, as men who had trained together, lived together, crossed the great ribbon of the English Channel together, now fought and died together, too.
And now, well now I am four decades from that moment when I met them, and I know that few will be alive today. As we move further and further towards the centenary of the Second World War, that generation slips from our grasp, and their voices go quiet. And I realise how lucky I was to have known so many of those who were there.
But today, people form Britain, Canada and France will gather in Dieppe: some veterans will be there, too - not as many as that day in Newhaven all those years ago, but even in that handful who remain, each will look across those beaches and the past will flicker in their eyes, and no-one but them will really understand what they see.
Dieppe 80: Veterans Gather
Thanks for this moving tribute, Paul. Much appreciated. #Dieppe80
Reflective words and memories Paul.