WW2: Ten Poignant Stories (10b)

The last entry (10a) was from the best set of books about WW2 I have upon my bookshelf, i.e., The Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson. And in each of the three volumes one can read stirling quotes from Ernie Pyle, an American war reporter.

‘To his readers, Ernie Pyle was a master of telling the story of the little guy, of describing the fears and daily strife of soldiers fighting in World War II. He was not just a passionate writer, however. An early “embedded journalist,” he worked alongside the troops, experiencing much of what they did, placing himself in danger as they did.’ [Indiana University website]

[Above: Ernie Pyle, pictured in Normandy not long after the invasion of Europe. Pyle (left) is shown with Gordon Gammack (center) of the Des Moines Register and Tribune and Don Whitehead of the Associated Press. IU Archives] 

The following excerpts are from one of three of Pyle's columns written shortly after D-Day Normandy:

A Pure Miracle 

NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 12, 1944 –

   In this column I want to tell you what
   the opening of the second front
   in this one sector entailed,
   so that you can know and appreciate
   and forever be humbly grateful to those
   both dead and alive who did it for you.

Ashore, facing us,
were more enemy troops than
we had in our assault waves.
The advantages were all theirs,
the disadvantages all ours.
The Germans were dug into positions
they had been working on for months,
although these were not yet all complete.

A one-hundred-foot bluff
a couple of hundred yards back from the beach
had great concrete gun emplacements
built right into the hilltop.
These opened to the sides instead of to the front,
thus making it very hard for naval fire
from the sea to reach them.
They could shoot parallel with the beach
and cover every foot of it for miles
with artillery fire.

   Then they had hidden machine-gun nests
   on the forward slopes, with crossfire
   taking in every inch of the beach.

   Now that it is over
   it seems to me a pure miracle
   that we ever took the beach at all.

 

[Ernie Pyle, IU Archives]

These Bitter Sands 

Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements,
I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day,
after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore.

By the time we got here the beaches had been taken
and the fighting had moved a couple of miles inland.
All that remained on the beach was some sniping
and artillery fire, and the occasional startling blast
of a mine geysering brown sand into the air.

That plus a gigantic and pitiful litter of wreckage
along miles of shoreline.

   Submerged tanks and overturned boats
   and burned trucks and shell-shattered jeeps
   and sad little personal belongings were

   strewn all over these bitter sands.

   That plus the bodies of soldiers
   lying in rows covered with blankets,
   the toes of their shoes sticking up
   in a line as though on drill.
   And other bodies, uncollected,
   still sprawling grotesquely in the sand
   or half hidden by the high grass
   beyond the beach.

[Click here for full article]

Postscript - 

‘Among the Allied casualties was Ernie Pyle...
Eight months later while covering the Pacific war,
he would be killed by a Japanese bullet in the head.’

[pg. 183, The Guns At Last Light, R. Atkinson, The Liberation Trilogy]

This concludes WW2: Ten Poignant Stories.

More war stories will follow, however, under a different banner.

Link to WW2: Ten Poignant Stories 10a

Last Photo GH

WW2: Ten Poignant Stories (10a)

An Army At Dawn (The War in North Africa, 1942 - 1943), the first volume of The Liberation Trilogy by Rick Atkinson, was a book of firsts.

It was the first book in which I purposefully tried to trace my father's footsteps when he was a man of the barges during WW2. (The invasion of North Africa in November, 1942 was his first D-Day of three).

It was the first book in which I wrote 'prose' or 'prose of war' as a marginal note. I envisioned Mr. Atkinson being forcefully caught up in the words, phrases and sentences , and the events - seventy years old in 2012 -  drew breath and lived again.

I have since read others in which some paragraphs go beyond being the repository of mere facts and details, and illuminate the reader in a unique, poignant manner, but An Army At Dawn led the way. Excerpts follow.

The TORCH Plan, on Paper

   Three hundred warships
   and nearly four hundred transports
   and cargo vessels would land
   more than 100,000 troops - 
   three-quarters of them American,
   the rest British - in North Africa.

Task Force 34 would sail
for Morocco on Saturday morning.
The other armada would leave Britain
shortly thereafter for Algeria.
With luck, the Vichy French
controlling North Africa would
not oppose the landings.

   Regardless, the Allies were to
   pivot east for a dash into Tunisia
   before the enemy arrived.

pages 30 - 31

[Map of North Africa: link to map and related text]

The Ships are Loaded

In Britain:

All the confusion
that characterized the cargo loading
now attended the convergence of
34,000 soldiers on Hampton Roads.
Troop trains with blinds drawn rolled
through Norfolk and Portsmouth,
sometimes finding the proper pier
and sometimes not.

   Sober and otherwise,
   the troops found their way to 
   the twenty-eight transport ships.
   All public telephones
   at the wharves were disconnected,
   and port engineers erected a high fence
   around each dock area...

Thousands struggled
up the ramps with heavy barracks bags
and wandered the companionways for hours
in search of their comrades.
A distant clatter of winches signaled
the lifting of the last cargo slings.

   And a new sound
   joined the racket:
   the harsh grind of
   a thousand whetstones
   as soldiers put an edge
   on their bayonets
   and trench knives.

In America:

Dawn on October 24
revealed a forest of masts and
fighting tops across Hampton Roads,
where the greatest war fleet ever to sail
from American waters made ready.

   The dawn
   was bright and blowing.
   Angels perched unseen on
   the shrouds and crosstrees.

Young men,
fated to survive and become old men
dying abed half a century hence,
would forever remember this hour,
when an army at dawn
made for the open sea in a cause
none could yet comprehend.

   Ashore,
   as the great fleet glided past,
   dreams of them stepped, like men alive,
   into the rooms where their
   loved ones lay sleeping.

pages 38 - 41

About those same days in 1942 my father wrote, very matter-of-factLy, the following (in part):

We left Greenock in October, 1942 with our LCMs aboard a ship called Derwentdale, sister ship to Ennerdale. The 80th and 81st flotillas, as we are now called, were split between the Derwentdale and Ennerdale in convoy, and little did we know we were bound for North Africa.

I became an A/B Seaman (Able-bodied) on this trip and passed my exams classed very good. We had American soldiers aboard and an Italian in our mess who had been a cook before the war.

In the convoy close to us was a converted merchant ship which was now an air craft carrier. They had a relatively short deck for taking off, and one day when they were practicing taking off and landing a Swordfish aircraft failed to get up enough speed and rolled off the stern and, along with the pilot, disappeared immediately. No effort was made to search, we just kept on.

One November morning the huge convoy, perhaps 500 ships, entered the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar. It was a nice sun-shiny day... what a sight to behold. (pages 23 - 25, "DAD, WELL DONE")

More to follow.

Link to Ten Poignant Stories (9b)

Photos by GH

WW2: Ten Poignant Stories (9b)

'We all know we are doing something that
has never been done before.'

[The Green Beret]

The speaker of the above line is unknown but he could very well have been my father, Doug Harrison. I say this for several reasons.

In The Green Beret: The Story of the Commandos I learn that 'in the early stages of development through which the Commandos passed, each troop trained as far as possible with the naval officers and ratings who manned the craft which were to take both into action.' My father was a naval rating, not only being trained in the same area of northern Scotland and southern England and at the same time as the Commandos, but being trained to man Assault Landing Craft (ALCs, for troops) and Landing Craft Mechanized (LCMs, for much of the materiel of war, e.g., fuel, ammunition, tank mesh, rations, rum, etc.).

["D. Harrison (r), guarding Quonset huts in UK, 1942"]

As well, as a child, and while sitting at my parents' kitchen table, I was privy to a conversation between my father, an uncle and cousins about father's World War 2 experience. The Commandos were mentioned, but I wasn't old enough to take in the significance of certain details and the animated conversation's full import.

["As a child I thot these guys were commandos: photo link]

In The Green Beret I also read the aforementioned officers and ratings who handled the barges filled with Commandos 'belonged for the most part to that great company of H.O.'s, as those who enlisted for the duration of hostilities only were known throughout the Navy' (pg. 46). In his naval memoirs my father described his first two years of volunteer service with RCNVR and Combined Operations as 'H.O., hostilities only'.  

What follows are excerpts from The Green Beret that relate to CO ratings like my father.

The Enthusiastic Amateur

In peacetime many of them had served in
the Merchant Navy, or had been yachtsmen.
There was something to be said in wartime
for the enthusiastic amateur, able to carry out
his duties under the guidance and command of
the regular officers of the Royal Navy. When not
on patrol or engaged on operations they lived on
shore establishments run strictly on Navy lines.

   The training was designed to deal with
   the problems of approaching a hostile shore,
   landing upon it, remaining off it at close call,
   and then re-embarking troops from it. 
   How to beach, when to beach, how long to
   remain aground, how best to use a kedge for
   getting off, how to avoid stripping a propeller:
   these were among the problems which
   they learned to master.

'The business of keeping a ship beached
but not stranded, of shuffling it on its belly
up and down the shore, while it is being
loaded or unloaded, possibly under fire,
is no game for any but the trained,'
was the comment of one of the instructors.
One of the ratings was heard to say,
'The good thing about this job is that
we all know we are doing something
that has never been done before.'

pages 46 and 47

What follows are related excerpts from my father's naval memoirs. The first relates to training exercises; the second to D - Day North Africa, November, 1942.

You Stay With the Barge

After much practice

The job of the seaman on an ALC or LCM is to

let the bow door down and wind it up by means

of a winch situated in the stern of the barge.

This winch is divided so you can drop a kedge*

possibly about 100 or so feet from shore depend-

ing on the tide. If it is going out you can unload

and then put motors full astern, wind in the kedge

and pull yourself off of the beach. The tide is very

important and constantly watched. If it is going out

(on the ebb) and you are slow, you can be left high

and dry, and if so, you stay with the barge. 

*anchor

Working like Bees

On November 11, 1942 the Derwentdale dropped

anchor off Arzew in North Africa and different ships

were distributed at different intervals along the vast coast.

My LCM had the leading officer aboard, another sea-

man besides me, along with a stoker and Coxswain.

At around midnight over the sides went the LCMs,

ours with a bulldozer and heavy mesh wire, and about

500 feet from shore we ran aground. When morning

came we were still there, as big as life and all alone,

while everyone else was working like bees. 

There was little or no resistance, only snipers, and I kept

behind the bulldozer blade when they opened up at us.

We were towed off eventually and landed in another spot,

and once the bulldozer was unloaded the shuttle service began.

For ‘ship to shore’ service we were loaded with five gallon

jerry cans of gasoline. I worked 92 hours straight and

I ate nothing except for some grapefruit juice I stole. 

pages 25 and 26, "Dad, Well Done"

["Canadian men of the barges, circa 1942 - 45"

lower left, D. Harrison, Norwich Ontario"]

["Back of above photo: Men used the term Commando"]

Link to WW2: Ten Poignant Stories 9

Photos GH

WW2: Ten Poignant Stories (9)

1944 Here dead lie we because we did not choose

To live and shame the land from which we sprung

Life to be sure is nothing much to lose

But young men think it is and we were young

Above is part of an inscription in stone found today in the naval cemetery on the island of Vis. Vis is situated in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Croatia (formerly Yugoslavia). Details concerning the Allied campaign to occupy Vis in 1944 - with the essential support of Commando units - can be found in The Green Beret and at Wikipedia.

The Green Beret: The Story of the Commandos by Hilary St. George Saunders was first published in October, 1949 and republished 13 times in the next five years. The book is filled with information about the creation of Commandos and their many raids and contributions to Allied victory in World War II.

Below are a few excerpts from St. George Saunders' book that illustrate the travails of raiding and war through the eyes of the Commando.

Rolling Through the Darkness

The last of these small operations in which men of
No. 10 Commando were engaged ended in tragedy.

Captain Trepel, with six other ranks, left Great Yarmouth
to reconnoitre the coast of Holland north of Schevingen.

They duly left the motor torpedo boat in the dory, landed,
and presently flares were seen and shouting heard.
After that, silence. In June 1945 six bodies, all identified,
were found buried nearby. Five had died of exposure, the
sixth by drowning. How they met their fate is not known.
Such were these small raids... 

[No. 4 Commando, Group 1, running up to land]

   By this means the Chiefs of Staff,
   responsible in the last resort for the
   conduct of the war, were able to obtain
   the information necessary to perfect
   their plans and thus to prepare for the
   moment when the Allies would set
   foot upon the shores of Normandy to
   begin the last and greatest battle of all.

   The red-tabbed, gold-braided chiefs
   at the side of a thick-set man in a
   short black coat, with a large cigar,
   were at one end of the scale;
   
   at the other were men of all nations,
   the Allied and the enemy, with black
   painted faces, in dark sweaters and soiled
   battledress, rolling through the darkness
   in cockleshell boats, groping their way
   up grim cliffs, across uncharted minefields
   and through thickets of barbed wire, or
   seeking out, thigh deep in uneasy seas,
   half-hidden obstacles and sinister devices.
   Both were necessary for victory.
   Together they achieved it. 

pages 221 and 222

WW2: Ten Poignant Stories (8)

Photo from The Green Beret by GH

WW2: Ten Poignant Stories (8)

Patrick Bishop's book, TARGET TIRPITZ, provides detailed accounts of various battles between Allied and Axis ships (e.g., the sinking of the Bismarck) during WW2. None are more gripping than the final days in the life of Germany's mightiest battleship.

PM Winston Churchill pursued the mighty ship's destruction relentlessly throughout the war. Bishop writes:

   As long as Tirpitz was afloat she cast a shadow over British

   naval planning, mesmerizing the Home Fleet and forcing its

   most powerful ships to keep a constant watch against a

   breakout into the Atlantic... page xxv, prologue

[Aboard Tirpitz, "life was good for the crew": Ship's Bierstube]

Below are a few excerpts related to the sinking of the Tirpitz.

The End, Not Far Off

Tirpitz was, of course, to be feared.*

   But to those on board it seemed that they had

   exchanged a dangerous situation for a fatal one.

   Smoke generators were set up on shore though

   it would be a while before they were working.

   The feeling settled on the ship that the end, not

   just of Tirpitz but of Germany, could not be far off.

   Just across the water on Tromso (Norway),

   the citizens saw the anxiety on the faces

   of their conquerors and inwardly exulted.

   

But the presence of the big grey ship

across the bay was ominous. Their town

had been dragged onto the front line.

Whenever the skies cleared they braced

themselves for the appearance of the bombers.**

*page 369

**pages347-48

["Tirpitz in a snug and secure fjord in northern Norway"]

Like a Rifle Bullet

A red light went on.

Then the automatic release mechanism tripped.

   The Tallboy slid away, and, suddenly freed from its

   five-ton burden, the Lancaster leaped thankfully upward.

   The bomb went into an aerodynamically perfect descent,

   spinning like a rifle bullet. Thirty seconds later it hit.

   Willy Tait 'turned and dived hard to port to see what

   was happening. The ship was almost hidden by smoke.

   A jet of white steam was gushing out

   and amidships she blazed fiercely.'

The sequence was captured by the 

film unit Lancaster's three cine cameras.

   When it first comes into view, Tirpitz looks

   tiny and exposed 'like a Dinky Toy',

   as some of the crews were to say later, lying

   broadside-on close to the flat shore of Haakoy.

   Bright lights flicker out of the monochrome

   as the flak teams frantically work their guns.

   Then, out of nowhere, a great white mushroom

   envelops the front of the ship. There is a 

   brief stutter of anti-aircraft fire from aft.

   A bomb splashes down close to the stern

   on the starboard side. Almost simultaneously

   an eruption three hundred yards away on the

   shore of Haakoy flings debris high and wide.

It is followed by another white blossoming amidships.

Two more bombs crash between ship and shore.

   After that it becomes impossible to follow the

   bombardment as the ship diappears under

   rolling banks of smoke, steam and fire.

page 355

["Photo of Tirpitz's death by woodcutter, Tromso, Norway, 1944"]

There was Nothing Else

The transformation was astonishingly quick.

In seven minutes the great ship had toppled onto her side.

   'Everything seemed to happen so quickly.

   The hellish roar of the flak set in but the detonations

   of the English bombs overwhelmed all other noise.

   Huge geysers of fire, water and debris covered every-

   thing and we had thrown ourselves on the beach to

   escape the shell splinters. Suddenly, it was quiet -

   no guns, no detonations. A chorus of screams

   reached all the way to the shore.'

   When the smoke cleared 'we could not believe

   our eyes. Tirpitz had gone. The hull stuck out of

   the water like a giant whale. There was nothing else.'

It had taken eleven minutes for the ship to turn turtle.*

But even now you can still find, amid the rocks and

seaweed of the peaceful shoreline, a hunk of steel,

   flaking and rusted through, a small memento

   of the folly and waste of war.**

*page 360-61

**page 372

Link to WW2 Ten Poignant Stories 7b

Photos from TARGET TIRPITZ by GH

WW2: Ten Poignant Stories (7b)

Farley Mowat's descriptive account of battle scenes in Sicily and Italy during World War 2 are worth another look. (First time I've given someone double billing, isn't it?) His book, AND NO BIRDS SANG, ends abruptly or at least at an unusual point as he heads toward Rome with members of a Canadian infantry unit. Why? I don't know, but I'd like to know.

Link to WW2: Recommended Reading 7

What I do know is that the book is worth a second read, let alone a second look.

He Beckoned Me to Follow

   Kennedy, as was his habit
   (one that I dreaded and abhorred),
   decided to go forward and see
   for himself what was happening.
   He beckoned me to follow.

The storm clouds rolling overhead seemed close
enough to touch, and the land lay under a leaden
obscurity drained of all colour and devoid of shape.
Ankle-deep in sucking mud we plodded across
a patchwork of little fields and vineyards.
The explosions of our own and German shells
pounded hideously inside my skull, yet Kennedy
seemed unaware. Not once did he dive for cover
or even so much as hunch his shoulders when the 
grating scream of an incoming projectile warned
of imminent destruction. Senseless anger boiled up
in the quaking bog within me: You goddamn
pigheaded idiot! I mouthed in silence.
What in hell are you trying to prove?
Rage mounted - and sustained me.

   A salvo of medium shells plunging through the
   overcast into the mud a few yards to our flank
   sent me grovelling. When I raised my head 
   Kennedy was a dim shape in a dimmed world,
   plodding steadily onward. I scrambled to my feet,
   shouting aloud now, against the Doomsday roar:
   "You crazy bastard!"

But still I followed him.
I could not break the leash.

Photos by GH

Link to Ten Poignant Stories 7

WW2: Ten Poignant Stories (6)

Please find below a collection of paragraphs from books concerning WW1 and 2. All are reminders of times that should not silently slip from our memories.

"Epus P. Murphy's pet monkey went mad and we put it

in a bag of sand meant to douse incendiary bombs

and threw him over the side"

The following are excerpts from "DAD, WELL DONE", a collection of Navy memoirs and stories by my father, Doug Harrison, Leading Seaman Coxswain (a man of the barges), with RCNVR and Combined Operations, 1941- 45.

And Then the Worst Began

July 10, 1943.
We arrived off Sicily in the middle of the night
and stopped about four miles out. Other ships were
landing troops and new LCIs*, fairly large barges.
Soldiers went off each side of the foc’sle**,
down steps into the water and then ashore,
during which time we saw much tracer fire.
This was to be our worst yet invasion.

Those left aboard had to wait until daylight
so we went fishing for an hour or more,
but there were no fish.

A signal came through, i.e., ‘do not fire on low
flying aircraft, they are ours and towing gliders.’
What, in the dark?
Next morning, as we slowly moved in,
we saw gliders everywhere.
I saw them sticking out of the water,
crashed on land and in the vineyards.
In my twenty-seven days there
I did not see a glider intact.
We started unloading supplies with our LCMs
about a half mile off the beach and then
the worst began - German bombers.
We were bombed 36 times in the first 72 hours -
at dusk, at night, at dawn and all day long, and
they said we had complete command of the air. 

page 31

*landing craft for infantry

**forecastle

Utter Death and Carnage

We fired at everything. I saw P38s, German
and Italian fighters and my first dogfights.
Stukas blew up working parties on the beach once
when I was only about one hundred feet out.
Utter death and carnage.
Our American gun crews had nothing but coffee
for three or four days and stayed close to their guns
all the time. I give them credit.

[“I was only about one hundred feet out.
Utter death and carnage.”] 

Epus P. Murphy’s pet monkey went mad
and we put it in a bag of sand meant to douse
incendiary bombs and threw him over the side.
The Russian Stoker on our ship, named Katanna,
said Dieppe was never like this and hid under
a winch. Shrapnel and bombs just rained down.

Once, with our LCM* loaded with high octane gas and
a Lorrie, we were heading for the beach when we saw
machine gun bullets stitching the water right towards us.
Fortunately, an LST** loaded with bofors (guns) opened up
and scared off the planes, or we were gone if the bullets
had hit the gas cans. I was hiding behind a truck tire,
so was Joe Watson***. What good would that have done?

Our beach had machine gun nests carved out of the ever-
present limestone, with slots cut in them to cover our beaches.
A few hand grenades tossed in during the night
silenced them forever.

page 31-32

*landing craft mechanized
**landing ship for tanks
***from Simcoe, Ontario

N.B. Above photo is of, and from, Lloyd Evans w another monkey, on another ship on its way to Sicily, 1943. Mr. Evans is now 90, and lives in Markham, Ont.

Small handfuls of men from the barges wrote about their adventures after WW2 was over. My father put his notes together in the mid-seventies and I am delighted to have them near at hand. Lloyd Evans is another. His recollections and photos are invaluable and remind me of days that are oft-forgotten but should not be.

The Russian Stoker (Bill) Katanna mentioned in the second piece is second from left in above photo. My father is back centre, left of man wearing Navy cap. Katanna's hammock is now housed in the Esquimalt Navy Museum, Vancouver Island. Names of 'men of the barges' aboard the SS Silver Walnut - on its way to the invasion of Sicily - are written upon it.

Photos by GH

More WW2: Ten Poignant Stories

WW2: Ten Poignant Stories (5)

Welcome to a collection of vividly written paragraphs from books - all recommended reading - concerning WW1 or 2.

"I will make it short and say I will remember it as a
complete, useless waste of good Canadian blood and
no one - even those who say we learned a valuable
lesson there - will ever change my mind."

("DAD, WELL DONE", Doug Harrison's Navy memoirs)

The following are excerpts from FORGOTTEN HEROES: The Canadians at Dieppe by John Mellor:

Nothing Stirred Except the Sea

August 19, 1942

["All quiet before the first German convoy star shell illuminated

at 0347 and the fight was on": Charcoal sketch by David Lewis,

pg. 54, St. Nazaire to Singapore Volume 1

At five in the morning,

the sea front at Dieppe lay brooding and hushed.

To the casual eye, there were no signs of life.

But from hundreds of vantage points all around

the sea front, the enemy searched the horizon

for the first signs of invasion.

They felt it must come soon.

To the east and west the sky was illuminated

by intermittent bursts of gunfire and tracers.

The atmosphere was tense. Nothing stirred

except the sea, lapping the shore at full tide.

The invasion fleet was then only three miles

away from Dieppe and forming up in the dark-

ness for the final approach and touchdown. 

page 63

The Miserable Little Beach

Later the same morning

There was little point in landing
hundreds of additional men to be slaughtered,
but the attempt had to be made if the troops landing
on the main beaches were not to be wiped out.
The batteries of howitzers above Blue Beach
were even at that moment firing hundreds of shells
in the direction of the main beaches as the Essex
Scottish and Royal Hamilton Light Infantry landed
at 0520 hours - on time and at the right places.

[Photo: Department of National Defense]

As the second wave stormed
the miserable little beach,
they were exposed to the same murderous fire
from the clifftop. If anything, the fire had greatly
increased and was now reinforced with dozens
of heavy mortar bombs and shells.

On all sides the water erupted into huge geysers
with the occasional direct hit on an assault craft.
The craft that survived this initial bombardment
reached the beach only to be subjected to
a hail of machine-gun fire.

page 55  

["A Dieppe Eightsome: Back From the Shores of Death",
i.e., seamen (RCNVR, Comb. Ops) who manned assault craft

 pg. 80, St. Nazaire to Singapore Volume 1]

Blood Ran in Red Streams

Earlier the same morning

No. 16 Platoon charged out of their craft
in the half light and disappeared into seven feet of water.
Private Jack Poolton reached the shore totally exhausted
and without his rifle. Most of the others drowned.

Private Steve Michell had to roll aside the bodies
of his comrades before he could jump onto the beach.
As he did so, he noted with horror that one of them
was his platoon commander, Lt. Walters. His batman
lay at his side with his arms over his officer's body.
In this boat too, the entire centre row of men had been
wiped out. Blood ran in red streams in all directions
before filling the scuppers.

["The entire centre row of men had been

wiped out": Dept. of National Defense]

Private Michell jumped into chest-deep water and
waded into shore with his rifle held high above his head.
In the surf he found the very young lad
known as "Smiler" trying desperately
to stuff his intestines back through
a great gaping hole in his stomach.
He was still smiling as he whispered,
"I'm done for Steve. Look after yourself."

Michell ran for the shelter
of the cliff

page 54

Some men in high places, including Winston Churchill and Lord Louis Mountbatten, have said valuable lessons were learned at Dieppe, without which the later invasions in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Normandy would not have been successful.

Something was learned. Much more was lost, said my father.

I lean toward my father's words.

Photos by GH

Link to WW2: Ten Poignant Stories (4)