LESSONS LEARNED?

Treated by the Combined Operations Headquarters as a dress rehearsal for D-Day, were the so-called ‘lessons learned’ worth the sacrifices at Dieppe?

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Two years and 14 days after the Dieppe raid – 1 September 1944 – the first group of men from the 2nd Canadian Division entered the town. The lead reconnaissance unit had prepared for gunfire, but instead, they encountered crowds of cheering people thronging the streets. “There’s an operation that’s going to bring in heavy bombers,” says Dr Cook. “They’re going to saturate-bomb [Dieppe]. And at the last moment… a Canadian scout who goes in and sees the Germans have fled… they call off this operation. And wouldn’t that have been a bit of a different story — if the Canadians were waiting on the outskirts about to attack, guns ablaze, artillery smashing, tanks hurling shells, and with this massive carpet bombing of several hundred heavy bombers? That didn’t happen. And thank goodness.”

The Germans had indeed left and, two days later, on 3 September, the 2nd Canadian Division – having been welcomed back as liberators – held a ceremony to honour those who had come before them on 19 August 1942. It was perhaps a bittersweet moment to pay tribute to the 765 graves, 582 of them Canadian, that lay about 4km from Dieppe, especially since so few of the raid’s veterans were present, their lives lost on the road from Caen to Falaise after the success of D-Day months earlier. But in the eyes of Lord Mountbatten, the sacrifices made during the Dieppe raid had not been in vain. According to Mountbatten and the propaganda that immediately followed Operation Jubilee, it had in fact been a valuable lesson learned that ensured victory for the Normandy landings.