As it Happened: The Archive Edition - Unlocking the mystery of the Dieppe raid
How the WW II Allied charge on a French beach became 'the darkest day in Canadian military history'
On Aug. 19, 1942, 6,000 troops crossed the English Channel in a pre-dawn raid on the French coastal town of Dieppe. Five thousand of them were Canadian.
Within six hours, it was all over. More than 900 Canadians lay dead. Nearly 2,000 more had been captured. Less than half made it back to English soil to regroup and recover from their injuries.
The mission had been an utter failure — exacerbated all the more given by the fact that it seemed to lack a clear objective. Why target Dieppe in the first place?
The debate and speculation has continued for decades. But then, in 1995, historian David O'Keefe uncovered a clue that began to unravel the mystery behind the tragedy.
His findings became the subject of a book, One Day in August: The Untold Story Behind Canada's Tragedy at Dieppe, published in 2013.
That year, he joined As it Happens host Carol Off for a feature interview. Here are some highlights from that conversation.
A 'mind-blowing' discovery
"There was one document that had been released in 1995, which dealt with a mysterious commando unit that was designed specifically to pinch what were called ultrasecret materials — anything to do with cryptography and code breaking.
"It was a fascinating unit. I'd never heard of it before — at least in this context. And it was one line in the fourth paragraph, which just absolutely blew me away. And that was: 'The party at Dieppe did not reach its objective.'
"Now it's a very simple throwaway line, which started what turned out to be an almost 18-year journey."
A top-secret commando unit — and Bond. James Bond.
"This is the Number 30 Assault Unit, which really was only officially created after Dieppe.
"And that was part of the challenge was: to figure out where it came from. And eventually, I learned that it was actually one platoon — taken from Number 40 Royal Marine Commando.
"And it was done for experimental purposes — largely at the behest of Naval Intelligence Division, led by Adm. John Godfrey.
"And the unit, of course, was being created by [English naval officer and author of the James Bond spy novels] Ian Fleming.
"One of the big challenges, of course, for any historian when you deal with Fleming is you walk into a minefield. I mean, there is so much that transcends into the Bond character.
"In reality, he was not a superhero."
"He was not like Bond, but neither was he a faceless bureaucrat — the way some people have portrayed him. There was much more to Ian Fleming.
"He was an Eton-educated boy. He could be trusted. But he also had an incredible panache, a way of getting along with almost everybody — very manipulative in that sense, but more important. He was an ideas man and he was very Machiavellian — without a doubt, extremely Machiavellian. He was ruthless.
"He was Godfrey's hatchet man — go-to guy fixer. So anything that was on the naval intelligence agenda — anything urgent — Fleming would have his fingerprints all over. And he was also the one tasked right at the beginning of the war — right around 1940 — with developing 'pinch raids,' which were raids designed to get into enemy lines or into ships and steal the material necessary for the code breakers at Bletchley Park to do their work."
Why Dieppe?
"It's close enough to England, so you could raid successfully. In other words, you can bring land elements, sea elements — and, more importantly, air cover — over there.
"But also too because it handled various types of shipping traffic. And although it didn't handle U-boats, it still had to be equipped with the four-rotor [Enigma encryption machine].
"The principal target[s] were two things: the trawlers in the harbour — and every single trawler in the harbour, or any ship in the harbour, would have hailed the type of material they were after. So code and cipher material — even the machines — although the machines were almost secondary to the manuals, and how to use them."
"But the problem with the trawlers, and any of the ships in the harbour, was that they were only carrying the material that was current for that month and maybe next month. The real pot of gold was in the naval headquarters — because they would have had a safe that would have kept the materials that they need for six months, or maybe a year, into the future stockpiled for distribution to these ships. So for the British, that's really what they were after.
"Once the marines got into the harbour and they were able to pinch the material — right in the middle of battle — a special boat was sent into the harbour that was then to take one or two of the commandos with the material back to Fleming on the [HMS] Fernie. And from there, right in the middle of the battle, Fleming had orders to take the material directly back to the closest English port.
"That's something we never knew. He wasn't just there as an observer. He was the anchor man in the relay race.
"The amazing part is just how close they actually came to pulling this off."
Mystery solved — but does it matter why the mission failed?
"With Ron Beal, and other veterans who have come to light afterwards, there is a profound sense of relief — because now finally they understand what was at the heart of this.
"And it does make sense, given the context of the time, what they were trying to do. It doesn't excuse the way it was planned, doesn't excuse the way it was conducted, and doesn't — in my opinion — excuse the cost. Was it well worth the risk? Without a doubt, given the context of the times.
"Was it worth the cost? Probably not. There could have been a better way of doing this. And I think that's where the deep debate goes now."
As it Happened: The Archive Edition. Radio that never forgets.
Corrections
- An earlier version of this story stated that 600 Canadian troops survived the Dieppe raid. In fact, it was 2,210.Aug 17, 2019 12:12 PM ET