DIEPPE

Like Dunkirk the Dieppe Raid was a military disaster dressed up as a victory. The losses  have since been described as akin to those at the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade.

Involved were six thousand troops. These included 5,000 Canadians, the rest being made  up of British Commandos, a few Frenchmen, and a token force from the U.S. Ranger battalion. They raided Dieppe on August 19, 1942. The result was a bloody massacre and humiliation for the allied forces.

Nevertheless British archive papers released in 1972 show that Lord Louis Mountbatten,  Chief of Combined Operations, informed the War Cabinet that the raid had gone 'very satisfactorily."

As might be expected the American Press went even further by giving the impression that  the Americans (with a little help) had spearheaded the raid on Dieppe and opened up Europe for the Allies. "We Land in France' screamed the New York Times whilst the New York World-Telegram boomed, "Tanks and U.S. Troops Smash to the French Coast.'

Ross Munro of the Canadian Press Agency explained, "I never really felt, except maybe  on the Dieppe raid, that I was really cheating the public at home." We can assume that they might not have been very impressed with the casualties.

The most accurate summary of Dieppe was actually written by a German PK man who  visiting a nearby Luftwaffe station afterwards wrote: "As executed the venture mocked all the rules of military logic and strategy."

In fact 907 Allied troops were killed, 2,460 were wounded, and 1,874 were taken prisoner.  Of the 2,210 who did make it back to England only 36 were unhurt despite the fact that 200 had not even made it to the French shore.

During the raid allied air power suffered its biggest single day loss of the war when 106  aircraft were downed. Without a single exception every tank crew became a casualty and overall 60% of the invading force was marked as casualties.

The plan had been for just 10% casualties. In his report Lord Louis Mountbatten wrote  that the planning had been excellent, air support faultless and naval losses extremely light. He added that of the 6,000 men involved two-thirds had returned to Britain.

German loses were 500 dead and very few prisoners of war. That so few were taken  prisoner might have had something to do with an Allied predisposition to casually shooting prisoners. Ross Munro had witnessed one such incident when Canadian troops shot eight German prisoners-of-war.

INTERESTING FOOTNOTE: During the raid on Dieppe the local population assisted the  Germans in fighting off the marauding British and Canadian (and a few Americans) troops. The port's German defenders were bolstered by locals braving the fighting to bring them water, food, and in some cases, ammunition.

Such was the German appreciation of the town peoples actions during the raid that Hitler  later approved the repatriation of French POW's to the region soon afterwards. An act of generosity he had never felt previously obliged to offer.

According to Arvid Fedborg's Behind the Steel Walls, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel  giving an interview to neutral correspondents in Berlin, described the British as 'cowards whose methods of fighting were dishonourable.'

THE FUHRER'S NOTORIOUS 'COMMANDO ORDER'