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Talking About Dieppe

WHILE waiting for another ship after Dieppe I was sent on a short lecture tour to war workers on Admiralty work. As the job was put to me it sounded rather attractive; a week in a part of the country I particularly wanted to visit, expenses (or some of them), one or two half-hour talks a day, and the rest of my time my own. In practice it didn't quite work out like that, and I found it fairly hard work-but rather fun.

I had never made a speech in my life, unless the exhortations one occasionally delivers to both watches, or after Sunday divisions, can be called speeches; and the only lecture I had ever given was at Greenwich. So, though I had a story to tell, I was rather worried. I tried to make a few notes in the train on the way down; but my own writing, the joggling train and the black-out defeated that idea, and I was reduced to mapping out a rough outline in my head and trusting to Providence and the audience for inspiration. On the whole this method worked surprisingly well. I was lucky in my first audience ­they were the men of a private yard which had refitted the ship not so long before and therefore had a personal interest, and from them I learned which parts went down best and where a little "purpling" or a crude joke was necessary to hold their attention. Thereafter it was much easier; but I was rather depressed on the second day by one audience of about a thousand girls who quite obviously had never heard of Dieppe, and didn't seem to care. I might as well have talked to a field of cows; but that was the only really heavy audience I had.

I doubt if any two talks, even when I gave them in the same factory in quick succession, were ever exactly the same. With my haphazard method that was bound to be the case if any appearance of spontaneity was to be retained; but it was also to some extent deliber­ate on my part, because each factory, often even each part of the same factory, made something different and therefore the talk needed a different twist. Thus to a shipyard I emphasized the role of the ships, to a landing craft yard the role of the landing craft, to a cordite or cartridge factory I would mention, as casually as possible, that we had expended (say) a week's worth of their output in ten minutes (this was always good for a gasp of surprise). To get the material for this twist it was quite essential to go round the factory first and talk to people; this often indicated points which might prove of special interest-and in any case helped me to judge the type of audience I would be confronting. For instance, I talked to some soldiers who were guards at one establishment and gathered that they were "browned off" by the amount of sentry duty they had to do ("only one free night in four, two hours sentry on the other three"). I was at pains to mention there that a minor difficulty the destroyers suffered was lack of time for training, because they averaged rather more than 60% of their time at sea-keeping watch and watch - on normal convoy and operational jobs.

I gave the talk sixteen times in all, sometimes twice in an hour, sometimes only once in the day and the audience varied pretty considerably. Girl repetition workers while they ate, shipyard men during working hours, mixed Admiralty employees in armament depots and factories in their dinner hour, and (most frightening of all) a mixed audience of naval, military, and Air Force officers, including the Women's Services, and, for some reason, a bishop. Whether I actually got anything across to them I rather doubt; but only the one lot of girls I have already mentioned was really sticky. Oddly enough they were a day shift, and the night shift in the same factory-which I talked to at a quarter to two in the morning-were one of the best audiences I had.

Whether such tours are a good thing I am not quite sure. They savour to my mind of a cheap publicity and pandering to popular clamour, which is rather foreign to our tradition. But on the other hand I suppose we must not be too hide-bound by tradition, and in every case there was real appreciation for the idea of hearing the story from the "Front" instead of a rhetorical exhortation from a share-holding politician.Here, so far as I can put it on paper, is the story I told. Putting it on paper is hard because one cannot translate a gesture or a tone of voice; and, as I said, it varied according to the audience.

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The few of us who knew what was in the wind were really rather relieved when, on the Tuesday morning, we heard that the Dieppe Operation was definitely set for that night. It had been boiling up for some time, and the waiting was becoming rather trying. Besides, it was quite obvious something was in preparation-even the enemy couldn't fail to see that-and we felt that the longer we waited the more chance he had of guessing what it was. Surprise-at least as to the actual time and place of the operation-was rather important; and; as we waited for the weather, we wondered if all the preliminary work was to prove useless. So when the order came through we were relieved of one worry-suspense.

That night we set off across the Channel; it was getting dark and, by the time we were all formed up, it was very dark indeed. As we made our way through the Channel all we could see was the faint wriggle of wake from our next ahead and occasionally the dark shape of a ship or boat to one side. It was very calm. There was scarcely any horizon, no line between sea and sky, hardly a ripple to show which was sea, so that the little white wriggle, sometimes faintly luminous, seemed to be suspended in the air, and the dark shapes of the ships seemed on different levels each time we looked at them.

We went on through the calm, still night. Tension increasing and then dying away again as the different small dangers did not materialize. We were, I remember, very relieved when we arrived, rather more than half-way over, in what we believed to be mine-free waters. This relief wasn't so much due to the absence of mine dangers as because, until then, it had been our role to go alongside the headquarters ship, if she should be mined, and take onboard the commanders and their staffs. The idea of going alongside a mined ship in a minefield in the dark had held little attraction for us. Now we were safe from this duty because the headquarters ship had left our party on other business.

While the assault craft and their light escorts closed steadily in towards the coast our party of destroyers made a little sweep out to the west in case the enemy had word of our coming and had sent out surface forces against us. We met nothing; but, as we were returning to take up our positions for the final assault, we saw, away to the eastward, a small but very spirited action. It was rather difficult to gauge exactly where the fight was going on; but it seemed to be the eastward of Dieppe. Perhaps we were obtuse, but we didn't-in our ship-take very much account of this brush at the time. It died out fairly quickly, the shore guns did not join in and everything was quiet again. We decided that it was probably only a brush between one of our coastal patrols and an enemy patrol. A common enough occurrence not to make the enemy unduly wakeful.

As we took up our final stations it began to grow light. First we could see the French coast; then, as we came nearer and the sky lightened more, we could pick out the cliffs, the spires and the houses. It all looked very near, and horribly clear. There we were, only a mile or two from the beach, rows and rows of landing craft with motor launches shepherding them, and, close on their heels, the destroyers. From our bridge the landing flotillas looked like rows of black beetles on a sheet of aluminium. All the time it was growing lighter. It seemed impossible that we had not been seen. And by now, too, the Commandos should be ashore on the flanks, which surely would have aroused the entire garrison. But the silence persisted, we crept on. It was very quiet and, suddenly, rather cold.

Then as the boats started their last dash, the supporting destroyers opened up with their guns on the landward edges of the beaches. For ten minutes or so they pounded the houses and roads where the enemy strong-points and billets were presumed to be. It made a fine noise with the crashing noise of the guns, the bursting shells and the echoing cliffs. The landing craft let their engines out for the last lap. Then just before the craft touched down on the beach, the Air Force arrived. Fighters machine-gunned the area at the back of the beaches and raked the houses with cannon fire; light bombers came in with them and attacked strategic points; smoke layers laid their bombs round the enemy batteries. It was all very noisy and impressive while it lasted. The dull red glare and cotton wool clouds of the smoke bombs, the dancing flashes of bursting cannon shells-like children's fireworks-and the explosions of the heavier shells from the ships made a magnificent picture. One officer from a landing craft told me afterwards that during those few minutes it was like standing on one side of a street and watching the other side being "blitzed." "Pretty to watch," he called it. A matter of taste, I suppose.

In the middle of all this pandemonium the craft touched down. The ships saw their signals and ceased fire. It seemed quiet again where we were lying, a scant mile off shore, and for a few minutes we seemed to be spectators True, we were stilll firing the main armament, but at a slower rate of fire at new targets, and there was time to hear things between salvoes There was a deuce of a riot going on on shore Machine gun, rifle and cannon fire, with heavy explosions which we took to be demolitions, rattled, cracked and crumped up and down the beach-but for the moment we were clear and only a very few spent bullets came our way.

Soon the smoke began to thin and spread about. The enemy batteries on the east cliff could see us now, and began to take us on. The smoke blotted out our land target. We ceased our desultory bombardment and returned the batteries' fire. At first we had difficulty in seeing them, but after a while we pin-pointed them and were able to develop fairly accurate fire. By keeping continually on the move it seemed that we could avoid punishment, for they did not appear to be coast defence batteries. From the way their shells burst and the sound they made we thought they were probably well-sited A.A. guns which, when not too busy at their own work, took us on as a spare-time occupation. With one battery we had quite a duel, and believe we knocked out two of its guns; unfortunately they, in return, scored a hit on our forward mounting. It was a lucky shot-for the enemy; and it put that mounting out of action for the day.

By now things in general had become considerably more lively. Apart from the batteries there were smaller guns, oerlikon, heavy machine guns and high velocity rifles, sending things in our direction. We became quite good at knowing, from the sound, whether they were close or not and we ducked less often. Not that ducking was the slightest use anyway; we do it by instinct, I suppose. The air, too, was full of aircraft and not always friendly either. Several times, and more often as the day advanced, we had to dodge drastically to avoid bombs. The Air Force were doing remarkable work, but they couldn't possibly keep off all the enemy; they were knocking them down all right, though.It became obvious, even to us who were not receiving that sort of intelligence, that something had gone wrong on the left or eastern flank. The enemy batteries there were only too obviously still in action and, though of course they did give us targets, it was all rather involved.

We felt we still had to be rather careful, because our own troops might easily be very close to them and about to attack. But soon this difficulty was cleared up. We were sent in to relieve another ship in support of one of the eastern beaches. But no form of signalling produced any reply-except hostile fire-from the beach, and we could see no British troops anywhere near. So, having replied to the enemy fire, and established beyond doubt that there were no friendly troops about, we returned to the main body. It was annoying that, while we were examining the beach, our pom-pom was temporarily put out of action by a shell and the director layer's sight was damaged by a high velocity bullet. But just then we were dive-bombed by three Ju.88s. We dodged them successfully and, to our surprise, hit one with a four-inch shell, a direct action one which we had been going to fire at the shore. The whole plane fell apart, wings, tail, fuselage, engine cascading down like leaves. It was said that one of the crew managed to escape by parachute but that part of the plane came down on it and folded it up-I didn't see that myself. It was our first personal attack, the first time we had obviously been singled out as a bombing target, and the result made us all feel better. The short range weapons were claiming a second plane damaged and possibly down-but we couldn't confirm it.At this stage there was a good deal of smoke about, laid to thwart the enemy shore batteries. There were destroyers, motor launches, motor torpedo boats and gunboats, landing and support craft, all milling about in and out of the smoke; firing at the shore or at aircraft; ferrying wounded out to the destroyers; dodging in and out to avoid the shells and bombs. It was remarkable that half of us weren't sunk by collision.

Things went on like that for the rest of the forenoon; and then, as the withdrawal proceeded, things became rather hotter. So far the enemy's gunfire and bombing, though extremely unpleasing, had been reasonably inaccurate, intermittent and sporadic. There had been distinct periods of calm. Now they grew less frequent and shorter. In fact by about 12.30 it became distinctly unhealthy, and we were all ordered to withdraw a mile or two further out. There it was a lot quieter. I gather the Commanders were going to take stock of the situation to see if it would be possible to make another attempt to bring off more troops.

We had just reached the rendezvous when we found we could lay just one more smoke screen. A questing shore battery indicated that now was a good time to lay it and we set off to make a circuit and get the wind right. It was an unfortunate moment to choose. As we turned, three aircraft, Dorner 217s I think, came in from astern and attacked us. We dodged two but the third got us, right under the forward mounting. The jar was terrific, water poured down on the bridge and various other things started falling around, too. (Fixed ammunition out of the magazine, we saw later.) At first it felt as if we had run under or were capsizing; but, when we managed to get to our feet, we found we were still afloat, still steaming quite fast and turning with a heavy list.

As the ship lost way she righted a little and we got away the boats to help lighten her. We thought for a few minutes we might be able to save her, and I remember being very angry for a moment when a landing craft and a' motor gunboat came alongside. (In reality they did a remarkably fine job because we were still moving and apparently about to turn over.) But soon the ship took a couple of lurches and it began to look less hopeful. The forecastle, what was left of it, was wagging a different way from the rest of the ship; her back was broken; both boiler-rooms and the engine-room were flooding; none of the guns-not even the oerlikons-would work. We left; and shortly afterwards another of our ships torpedoed her. I didn't watch that. We were lucky in one thing; the forward mounting being out of action we had very few men there, so our casualties were fewer than they might have been.

More information can be found On This Website. Though it helps if you can read French!

BERKELEY.