THE DIEPPE RAID (and other stories)

August 19th, 1942...Lead elements of 7 Australian Division,
veterans of Tobruk, arrive at Port Moresby, to stem the Japanese
tide.

     In Egypt, Alexander orders Montgomery to hold positions
while preparing the offensive.

     Mohandas Gandhi's son Devada Gandhi is arrested for
publishing dispatches in his Hindustan Times, on the civil
disobedience campaign.

     Gen Nishino, with the Kawaguchi Detachment, approaches
Guadalcanal by sea. His men read a training manual that says,
"Westerners -- being very haughty, effeminate, and cowardly --
intensely dislike fighting in the rain or mist or in the dark.
They cannot conceive night to be a proper time for battle --
though it is excellent for dancing. In these weaknesses lie our
great opportunity."

     Col. Kiyamo Ichiki's First Echelon of 917 men arrives at
Guadalcanal's Taivu Point at 1 a.m. The men unload and start
marching in the dark nine miles to Tetere, where they take a
break.
     The Americans know Ichiki is in the area, as they hear the
sound of his ships passing by them in the night.
     Meanwhile, three Japanese destroyers shell Tulagi. American
B-17s fly up to bomb the destroyers. One B-17 scores direct hits
on the tincan Hagikaze's stern, which kill 33 Sailors and wound
13. Hagikaze limps home.
     Early in the morning on Guadalcanal, Martin Clemens is asked
to provide native guides and scouts to locate the Ichiki force.
Daniel Pule is assigned to a Marine patrol, and police Sgt.
Major. Jacob Vouza leads a native patrol of his own.
     Vouza is a colorful character, an autocratic and headstrong
veteran Solomon Islands police officer. He has been reprimanded
for taking the law into his own hands, and now serves proudly as
a scout and guide.
     Early that day, US Marine Capt. Charles H. Brush hits the
trail with a patrol of 60 men from A Company, 1st Battalion, 1st
Marines. They run smack into a 38-man patrol from Ichiki's
detachment. A jungle firefight ensues, and the Marines kill all
but five of the Japanese. Brush notes that the bodies of four
Japanese officers and 29 men wear the star insignia of the
Imperial Army as opposed to the chrysanthemum of the Imperial
Navy on their fresh clothes. Obviously this is a new force. Their
large amounts of commo gear suggest a large unit. Their maps show
the Japanese know the Marine positions. Brush high-tails it to
headquarters.
     The Japanese survivors return to Ichiki's force. Although
his patrol has been annihilated, Ichiki presses on through the
jungle.
     Vandegrift studies the captured maps, and realizes that the
Japanese are coming and know his dispositions. His officers urge
a counterattack. Vandegrift wisely decides to await the Japanese
within his perimeter.
     The 1st Marines will dig in along Alligator Creek, which
Martin Clemens has named after its inhabitants, which are
actually crocodiles. The Marines think the sluggish waterway is
actually the Tenaru River.

     At 4:50 a.m., 250 Allied ships arrive off Dieppe to commence
the great raid. On the right flank, tasked with destroying a
German coast battery, is 4 Commando under Lord Lovat, joined by
50 US Rangers. The commandos charge ashore and race towards their
objective, aided when Capt. Pat Porteous throws himself on razor-
sharp barbed wire so his buddies can use him as a human pathway
to get through German defense. Porteous -- who is still alive
today -- receives the Victoria Cross. The commandos destroy the
guns' ammo dump, and withdraw. Among the casualties is America's
first soldier killed in France, Lt. Edwin V. Loustalot.
     On the extreme left, 3 Commando under Maj. Peter Young lands
at Berneval, also tasked with disabling coastal guns. His men
climb a tough cliff. Unable to destroy the battery, they keep the
gunners distracted with judicious sniping.
     3 Commando, successful, is withdrawn, and all in it enjoy
additional rum rations. When the commandos return to Newhaven,
Young and his buddies stumble off the boat -- Young in bare feet
-- past the waiting senior officers, and into the base mess for
more beer.
     However, the other battalions fare less well. At Puys, the
Royal Regiment of Canada runs into a hail of bullets, with
machine gun nests on the cliffs above. German troops toss
grenades down onto the beach. Rev. Michael Boultbee, then a young
naval rating, watches the slaughter. "I wouldn't know how many
survived more than a matter of minutes, because by this time
everything was happening. The noise of gun-fire was all around. I
can't imagine they would have got more than a few yards from the
beach."
     After a few minutes, a German officer appears and tells the
Royals their CO has surrendered. 225 Royals are dead. 264 are
taken PoW. Only three men of the Royal Regiment of Canada return
to England that day.
     At Pourville, the South Saskatchewan Regiment and the
Cameron Highlanders of Canada attack. Among their objectives is a
German radar station.
     At Pourville, the Germans are surprised, and the South
Saskatchewans drive in town, until they hit a bridge over the
River Scie. There German machine guns stop the Canadians cold.
The South Saskatchewans' commander, Col. Cecil Merritt, stands up
amid shot and shell, walks out onto the bridge, and calls back to
his men, "What's the matter with you fellows? You're not
frightened, are you? Come out here." He swings his helmet int he
forefinger of his left hand and says, "You see? There's no fire
out here!" Merritt's men, rallied, charge across the bridge.
     Merritt receives the Victoria Cross. He is alive today.
     The Cameron Highlanders follow the South Saskatchewans in,
with Piper Alex Graham standing on the prow of his landing craft,
playing "One Hundred Pipers" on his bagpipes. The Highlanders get
ashore, but do not reach their objectives. Out of 503 men in the
Winnipeg outfit, 346 are killed.
     One man in this portion of the raid does his job: Sgt. Jack
Nissenthal, a radar expert who reaches a German Wurzburg-Freya
radar set, and removes vital equipment for later study, taking
back crucial knowledge for future British jamming. Nissenthal's
courage is considerable. In addition to the hazards of German
fire, his bodyguards have orders to kill him if Nissenthal might
be taken prisoner. Nissenthal is an expert on one of the great
Allied secrets of the war: the cavity magnetron.
     The main assault on Dieppe's shingle beach is led by the
Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and the Essex Scottish. The RHLI is
pinned down on the shingle beach in front of the Casino under
terrible artillery and mortar fire. German machine gunner Herbert
Titzman says, "I knew as an infantryman I wouldn't have wanted to
be in the place of those Canadians, lying on those damned stones,
not only having the fire come at them but with fragments of stone
flying everywhere."
     RHLI is followed by the Calgary Tanks' Churchills, something
new in the war, which trundle onto the shingle. Most throw their
tracks in the shingle after only a few yards. "I think I would
have to say at that point I felt sheer terror," recalls tanker
Archie Anderson.
     The Essex Scottish land on Red Beach, and 12 men led by Sgt.
Major Cornelius Stapleton charge across the promenade and into
town. They kill a few enemy and return to the beach. A radioman
reports to force headquarters on HMS Calpe that "12 Essex
Scottish" are in the town. The number is dropped from the
message, and General John Hamilton Roberts, commanding 2
Canadians, believes his men have broken through. He sends in two
more battalions, one of British Royal Marines, and the French-
speaking Fusiliers Mont-Royal, under Col. Dollard Menard.
     The Fusiliers land as tide is going out, and are massacred
as they come ashore. Menard walks onto the beach and sees
soldiers lying on the ground, "with their heads pointed towards
the wall as if they were getting ready for something. So I waited
for them to do something -- but they didn't move. So I crawled
over to one of them, turned him over, spoke to him -- he was
dead. I checked a few more. They were all dead.
     "We had no cover. WE couldn't dig in the pebbles -- it was
just like trying to make a hole in the water. You just can't do
it. We were in a cross-fire from the two high sides of the beach
and a frontal fire which covered the whole each. We couldn't walk
back, we couldn't get forward, we couldn't go on the sides. We
were dead, really, before dying."
     The Fusiliers lose 513 out of 584 men.
     Overhead, Allied and German airpower shoot it out. It's a
bad day for the RAF, as they meet something new -- the Focke-wulf
190 fighter. This rugged machine, the only major aircraft the
Luftwaffe will introduce during the war, is a radial-engined
fighter with high maneuverability. The Germans lose 48 planes,
the Allies 106. The Luftwaffe also sinks the destroyer HMS
Berkeley.
     Finally, Roberts gets the point, and orders withdrawal. A
mad rush for the boats ensues. Men throw themselves into the
boats and are shot dead as they fall in.
     Only 1,000 men are pulled off the beaches, 600 of them
wounded. German troops move onto the beach to mop up, and start
hauling in some 2,000 PoWs. "Eight or ten hours and it was all
over," a Canadian veteran says later. "That was my war."
     One of the Canadians left behind is RHLI Maj. John Foote,
the unit chaplain. He refuses to be evacuated, as he cares for
the wounded on the beach under heavy fire, then follows his men
into the bag. Foote receives the Victoria Cross.
     Logically, when the Germans take Foote in, they pick Foote
out at random for detailed interrogation along with Captain
Claire, a doctor. After a few minutes of talk, one of the German
interrogators says, "Well, this is certainly the army. Out of all
the people at Dieppe, we chose at random two people who know
nothing about the military situation. One is the chaplain and the
other is a medical officer!"
     Meanwhile, exhausted and wounded Canadians trickle back
under guard into captivity. On the other side of the channel,
Dollard Menard is the only battalion commander to fight on the
beaches and get back to England. Allied newspapermen create
stories of Canadian victory. Some American newspapers trumpet the
raid as an American triumph, reading "We and the British invade
France!" Thus ignoring the Canadian casualty bill. It is a rare
occasion that the German press reports a battle more accurately
than the Allied.
     The Allies ask the Dieppe civilians to stay out of the
fighting. Ironically, as a reward for doing so, Hitler frees
1,400 French PoWs from Dieppe and sends them home to their
families.
     The Germans also find at Dieppe an Allied document ordering
their troops to tie the hands of any German soldier captured, a
violation of the Geneva Convention. Hitler, infuriated, orders
guards at German PoW camps to manacle Canadian PoWs every day for
month. German PoW camps respond with varying degrees of
obedience. Some manacle the PoWs, while others simply place the
manacles on the desks of PoW barracks and leave them there. The
British, hearing of this, retaliate by manacling German PoWs. The
manacling stops on both sides after a few months, but the Dieppe
raiders who endure this humiliation never forget it.
     Allied casualties are immense...1,000 of the raiding force
dead, 2,000 PoW, all the vehicles and equipment gone. "This is
the first time," Hitler says, "that the British have had the
courtesy to cross the sea to offer the enemy a complete sample of
their weapons." Canadian casualties are 907 dead, 1,874 PoW.
German losses are 345 dead and four taken PoW to Britain. 2nd
Canadian Division is put in the lowest category for employment
for a year.
     The results of the raid are disputed for decades. Canadian
veterans take positions ranging from being "sold out" to the raid
being a "necessary sacrifice." Lord Mountbatten, chief of
combined operations, says that the lessons learned at Dieppe --
among them that a port cannot be captured by frontal assault --
saved the invasion of Normandy. Viscount Montgomery, who
commanded the assault at Normandy, argues that the lessons could
have been learned without expending so many casualties.
     Adolf Hitler, however, strikes another view, telling his
officers, "We must realize that we are not alone in learning a
lesson from Dieppe. The British have also learned. We must reckon
with a totally different mode of attack and at quite a different
place."
     After the war, the British Commonwealth War Graves
Commission establishes the Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery at
Hautot-sur-Mer, two miles south of Dieppe. It today contains more
than 700 Canadian burials and 200 British, with small numbers of
Australian, New Zealand and Indian. Those 40 Canadians who died
in landing craft or ships and were brought back to Britain are
buried in two rows in Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey.
Those who died and have no known graves are commemorated on the
Brookwood Cemetery.

     Leningrad is still besieged, but warm weather enables
ferries to cross Lake Ladoga. By now 24,097 tons of grain, flour,
cereals, and macaroni are in the warehouses. The city also has
1,131 tons of dairy products, and more than 1 million cans of
condensed milk, tinned meat, and fish; the return trips have
evacuated 33,479 persons.
     Today, Gen. L.A. Govorov, Leningrad Front commander, hurls
the light motor craft of the Baltic Fleet for the left bank of
the Neva River, to attack towards Sinyavino. This is the first
part of a planned drive to break through the "Corridor of Death"
that separates Leningrad from the rest of the Soviet Union.
     Unfortunately for the Soviets, the Germans have transferred
by rail the 11th Army, fresh from its Crimea victory, to the
Leningrad front, along with a mountain division from Norway. Col.
Gen. von Kuchler has been ordered to obliterate Leningrad.
Instead he will have to wage a defensive battle.

     Showtime in Stalingrad as the German 6th Army is ordered to
take the city. Gen. Friedrich Paulus, the toothpick-thin
commander of 6th Army, devises a conventional plan for a
concentric attack with the armor on both wings. The Russian front
is 80 miles in circumference, convex in shape, from Kachalinskaya
along the east bank of the Don and curving back to the Volga
along the Mishkova river, 50 miles across.
     Russian defenses are two armies, 62nd and 64th, with 11
infantry divisions, most understrength. Paulus will hit in the
center with nine infantry divisions, two panzer and two motorized
on the northern flank, three panzer and two motorized on the
southern.
     Deadline to capture the city: August 25th.

     Back in Berlin, Nazi bigshot Martin Bormann writes about
Russians and Poles being shipped by hundreds of thousands to
slave-labor hell in Germany. "The Slaves are two work for us. In
so far as we do not need them, they may die. Slav fertility is
not desirable."
     Bormann's immediate and ultimate boss, Adolf Hitler, is busy
at Vinnitsa with the Caucasus campaign. He gets word that his
high-mountain troops have scaled 18,000-foot high Mt. Elbruz in
the Caucasus. All hands except Der Fuhrer are impressed. Hitler
comments that his Army's ambition should be to defeat the
Russians rather than conquer mountains. Hitler can read a map.
Mt. Elbruz is 160 miles west of Grozny, the principal city and
oil center of the Caucasus. Many perils lie enroute.

     That day, the SS round up all the patients at a Jewish
mental asylum in Otwock, near Warsaw, and deport them to the
Treblinka gas chambers.