August 19th, 1942.
The Dieppe Raid, code named 'Operation Jubilee', was part of the Allied long term goal to re-establish troops on European soil two years after the 'miracle' of Dunkirk where some 337,000 Allied soldiers had been saved from capture or death after German blitzkrieg tactics made quick work of the French Maginot Line defenses. A large-scale landing was imperative to the success of the war, as the USSR was desparately calling for the opening of a second front in the West as they were suffering major losses at the hands of the German offensive 'Operation Barbarossa' that began on June 22, 1941. Before The Combined Operations Headquarters could attempt this large-scale landing, there were many logistical questions that remained to be answered, such as the efficiency of new equipment, and communication lines. The Raid, therefore, was intended to test the new technologies and techniques (not to mention, the inexperienced Canadian divisions- 'bored' from not seeing any action thus far in the war). Bascially, proof that a landing could succeed was needed.
So, lets move onto the short term goals of the operation...and how they failed miserably. The Combined Operations Headquarters planned the mission with the main goals of neutralizing German artillery positions at the flanking towns of Berneval and Varangeville, before turning to a full frontal assult on the Dieppe harbour itself to decimate the German landing barges; all this was to be done in rapid succession, and once the troops had completed their goals they were to return to the beach and board the ships waiting to carry them back to the British mainland. Indeed, the mission was meant to be only a raid- devastate German footholds and take off on the high tides.
Some 4,963 Canadian troops of the 2nd Canadian division were called upon to execute the plans, my grand father Dan Doheny included. His experience, preserved through his journal entries and made accessible through the writing of Terence Robertson in his novel The Shame and the Glory of Dieppe, is truly a case study of the errors in timing and miscommunication that made Dieppe such an infamous example of disasterous loss of life.
Dan Doheny was a junior staff officer who was initially charged with being the "Kings Messenger", delivering top secret messages pertaining to the Raid between the Combined Operations and the Canadian 2nd Division headquarters. Eventually plans for the Raid were set, and Dan (along with many others) recieved a call from 2nd Division headquarters requesting that he travel to Portsmouth for "a party". There, troops gathered, awaiting their call to actively participate in the war; the call came in the morning of August 18th, mobilizing the men who boarded their respective ships and were finally briefed about their upcoming objectives. Robertson demonstrates the secrecy of the whole affair by including a rather entertaining anecdote of my grand father's regarding his arrival to his assigned embarkation port: "He [Dan] arrived late in the evening to find sentries guarding gangways and at once realized that his army driver must guess that something big was in the wind. He handed out a carton of cigarettes and warned: "Now don't you say a word about this to anyone, understand?" The blank-eyed British soldier stood stiffly to attention and replied stolidly: "It's all right sir. I never says anything to nobody of what I 'ears, sees or does." (Robertson 197). Dan then proceeded to board the headquarters destroyer Calpe.
He expressed some doubt about the mission, stating "the General's [Roberts'] main worry centered on the Navy. He seemed so eager to get on with the show that he kept coming back to the possibility of the Hughes-Hallet cancelling the raid before the decision passed into his own hands after 3am. He repeated several times that the essence of success would be the Navy putting troops ashore at the right places, at the right times. Each time, he stressed that the Naval Force Commander had assured him all would be well and that he was satisfied. But he stressed the point too much for my liking, and I for one became quite worried about the Naval arrangements." (Robertson 201).
Hughes-Hallet was Captain and chief staff officer of the Combined Operations under Head Chief Mountbatten; he was the main naval adviser and participated actively in the planning of not only Dieppe, but the significant raid on the port of St. Nazaire in March of 1942. Hughes-Hallet was to use the "rather primitive" and "tempermental" individual radar set on his destroyer to scan the waters and warn the rest of the fleet of any enemy encounters on the way to the beach. If there were any enemy encounters, it was imperative that they would not be engaged. Any delay would have thrown the crucial timing of the raid's scheduled landings and therefore the entire operation could have been cancelled. The point of no return, as General Roberts mentioned, was at 3am.
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