Dieppe just too late for the 65th Anniversary.

Owen,

The G/F is thinking about taking her dad to a battlefield in France for his birthday this year as a day trip.

Is there much to see apart from your excellent pictures above-It will only be a day trip and I want to go somewhere where I've not been.

Cheers for an info
Andy

 

Owen,

The G/F is thinking about taking her dad to a battlefield in France for his birthday this year as a day trip.

Is there much to see apart from your excellent pictures above-It will only be a day trip and I want to go somewhere where I've not been.

Cheers for an info
Andy

Andy

I think you are managing to convert Andrea.

Rob

 

Mums the word mate

The tricky bit was getting her to think it was her idea

 

Didn't get to Dieppe until the 25th.
Good little museum there to the raid.
Had to use my French to buy a new tyre, didn't need to though as the chap there had lived in London was married to a British woman and his father-in-law had been in Eastenders.

Lots of these posters around the town, reminding the locals of the raid.


Owen,

Just missed you by a few days. Here are are few pics from the 65th Anniversary.

 

I've noticed ATB do a photo album for a fiver...I might have a butchers at that

 

Another of the monuments on the beach -- to my old regiment. And a few more of the plaques around the community.

cheers,
phil

 

Is there anything else to see apart from memorials and a military cemetary?

Any defences, battle scars etc to get a feel for Dieppe in 1942?

Regards
Andy

 

Andy
You can go up to the headlands and have the vantage point of the defence positions, and especially on the right see how the cover of the casino gave Whitaker and the RHLIs a chance as they went in the west side of the beach.
If you go out on the pier, you can have a sense of the MG fire from behind as they landed.
One of the things I did was try to run over the cobble and reflect on that for men and tanks.
At Pourville, you can get a sense of what Merritt and his lot were up against, and the same at Puys trying to come up that cut with a MG at the top.
As I stood there, I had the overwhelming urge to phone a friend who was there with the Toronto Scottish, but I didn't know what I was going to say or if I would just cry.

 

Cheers me old china...I'll see if they wana go and do some research

 

Is there anything else to see apart from memorials and a military cemetary?

Any defences, battle scars etc to get a feel for Dieppe in 1942?

Regards
Andy

Andy,

As Phil has described, the real sense of the place is found at Pourville and Puys. There are old fortifications in both locations. More than that, especially at Puys, is just how dominating the surrounding cliffs are. Five boy scouts with sling shots could have defended that beach. I stood at the waters edge for some time back in Aug. 07 and gained an entirely new respect for the sheer guts those men from the Royal Regiment of Canada who made the attempt. Ron Reynolds, from the Royals, who manned a Bren on the beach at Puys, described that morning to me. He was hit three times and the men who attempted to bring him fresh mags were all killed. He says that the German soldiers who captured him and the other survivors flat out refused the order from their officer to kill the prisoners. Ron stopped at many headstones at the cemetary.

Once seen, it is utterly mystifying why anyone would select the beach at Puys for an assault. Even if surprise and darkness had been on their side (it wasn't) I'm not sure it could have succeeded. Ron and most of his comrades have remained understandably bitter at the futile waste of his and the other Canadian regiments at Dieppe.

I'll be very interested to hear your impressions after your trip.

 

There is a Dieppe Raid Memorial in the Allied Special Forces Memorial Grove at the National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, Staffordshire.


By jay_jafo, shot with C2500L at 2009-03-28


By jay_jafo, shot with C2500L at 2009-03-28

The Memorial is planted with heather and the centrepiece is a maple.

Pete

 

Some Op Jubilee pictures.

1.

Dieppe, landing attempt, damaged building Specially information: France, Dieppe. - British landing attempt (" Operation Jubilee"), damaged building; PK 698

2.

France, Dieppe. - British landing attempt (" Operation Jubilee"), Soldiers in the command post with machine gun (mg 34)

3.

France, Dieppe. - British landing attempt (" Operation Jubilee"), fallen English/Canadian soldiers, lined up at the beach

4.

France, Dieppe. - British landing attempt (" Operation Jubilee"), German soldiers on investigation of a captured British reconnaissance tank Daimler Dingo

5.

France, Dieppe. - British landing attempt (" Operation Jubilee"), fallen British/Canadian soldiers at the beach, burning landing boat

 

6.

France, Dieppe. - British landing attempt (" Operation Jubilee"), damaged British infantry tank Churchill, in the background landing boat at the beach

7.

France, Dieppe. - British landing attempt (" Operation Jubilee"), Corpses of fallen English/Canadian soldiers with life jackets in the water floating

8.

France, Dieppe. - British landing attempt (" Operation Jubilee"), English/Canadian soldiers at the beach wounded, behind it destroyed infantry tank Churchill

9.

France, Dieppe. - British landing attempt (" Operation Jubilee"), damaged British infantry tank Churchill, in the background reconnaissance tank Daimler Dingo at the beach.

10.

France, Dieppe. - British landing attempt (" Operation Jubilee"), on the ground sleeping allied (English/Canadian) prisoners of war soldiers