The Dieppe Raid

Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of The United States of America is quoted to have said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail” (Benjamin Franklin). World War Two is a story of countries learning from their mistakes and not repeating them. The Dieppe Raid on the coast of France seemed like a well thought out plan to gain control over the coast, but in reality, it was a disaster. Due to the lack of planning put into the raid, the lives of many Canadian soldiers were lost. A plan that was created to outwit the opposition, lead to total disaster and humiliation. The Battle of Dieppe is seen as a huge failure in Canadian history and the responsibility of this failure lies within the hands of the army generals due to their

The dug in German gun positions in cliffs were not spotted by Allied air photographers and this lead to the Canadian troops being caught off guard, and spotted early. As the troops approached the shore of Dieppe, they encountered a German Convoy and exchanged bullets with the convoy which made them lose their element of surprise. Due to this, the German defence forces were prepared for an attack from the Allies and had the upper hand from the start. To add on to the lack of intel, the gradient of the beach which they were to land on was also assessed by looking at holiday snapshots . This was a huge misjudgement as once the tanks had arrived on the beach, they got bogged down and could not move, being exposed to open fire from the

Captain Dennis Whittaker of The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (RHLI) fought on the front line at The Battle of Dieppe. He explains how the officers had no real training. He said, “They simply played soldier on weekends. The CO, Colonel Bob Labatt, was a stockbroker.” Whittaker talks about Bob Labatt in the interview and emphasizes how he was very untrained and was not strategic or passionate about his job as a colonel. Bob Labatt also set bad examples for the soldiers as he once arrived late to an eleven-mile march. He was nowhere to be seen until the end when he arrived in a car with his dignitaries. “This kind of behaviour destroys morale,” said Whitaker. “It sets a terrible example.” The colonels showed no professional conduct and destroyed the morale of the troops which evidently had an affect on them as they did not perform with heart and passion once they arrived at the beach. Denis Whittaker also explains how the discipline and performance of some of the soldiers was disgraceful during the battle as , “They went to ground and never got up”. The bad discipline of the troops can be blamed on the colonels and officers at higher levels who did not set the right example for the troops. Insufficient and ineffective artillery combined with undisciplined troops is a recipe for defeat and disaster