Dieppe Turning Point

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Was Dieppe really a turning point in the war and a defining moment for Canada, or was it simply another battle lost to the Germans during the war? During the Second World War, on August 19th 1942, the Allies launched a major raid on the small French coast port of Dieppe. Canadian troops, along with groups of British and American soldiers, attacked the heavily fortified German-held seaport of Dieppe, located on French soil. Operation Jubilee was the first Canadian Army engagement in the European war, designed to test the Allies’ skills in launching beach assaults against Adolf Hitler’s “Fortress Europe.” The raid was a disaster: more than 900 Canadian soldiers were killed, and thousands more were wounded and taken prisoner. In this attack,…show more content…
The Germans were positioned on the cliffs overlooking the beaches, and when the Allies attacked at dawn, they were slaughtered. The sea was red with Canadian blood; bodies were stacked four deep on the beaches. Disabled tanks lay on the rocks like bashed-up toys after a child’s destructive game. The single biggest air dogfight of World War ll was raging on overhead of the ground action. By 2p.m. the operation was over. At 1:58p.m. the German artillery finally fell silent. The Germans were nearly untouched, under 600 men lost, and of the 4,903 men in the Canadian contingent, 3,367 were lost, 907 were killed, about 1000 were wounded and 1,900 were taken prisoner. Important lessons were learned during the Dieppe raid, even though 907 sounds like a lot of lives to be lost, 82% of the soldier’s survived. So ended the brave and bitter day, the only man to receive any sort of award from this battle was Honorary Captain J.W Foote, chaplain of the Hamilton Regiment. At the withdrawal, he helped bear the wounded to the boats but disdained to embark himself, choosing to finish his work as a prisoner, at the end of the war, he received the Victoria Cross-¬¬¬¬¬¬¬the first ever given to a Canadian chaplain. Back on Dieppe, Germans were still collecting the Canadian wounded and the Canadian dead in their hundreds lay yet where they had
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