The Greatest Raid of All

The Greatest Raid of All

Last September a friend and I went on one of the many battlefield tours organized by a specialist holiday company. The aim was to visit two of the sites where allied commando forces attacked 'Fortress Europe' during the early years of WWII, i.e. St Nazaire, on the north western coast of France and Dieppe, in the English Channel.

Our first night was spent in Rouen which was a convenient place from which to travel to Dieppe the following day. Our comfortable journey, by state of the art luxury coach, contrasted somewhat with the carnage that surrounded this small French port some 72 Years earlier.

On 19 August 1942 some 5000 Commandos, mostly Canadians, with insufficient training and fire support, attacked 8 beaches over a 16 Km front. The raid was designed to test the German defences, wreck their sophisticated radar and take out many of the heavy gun batteries that surrounded the town. In the event it was a near total disaster. Few of the objectives were met, 1000's of men were injured and nearly a 1000 killed. Light tanks were landed on the promenade but had nowhere to go as all streets had been totally blocked. The area became an easy killing ground. Only Lord Lovatt's British Commandos enjoyed a modicum of success on the slightly less defended right flank and were able to silence the batteries at Berneval and return home.

Memorial where No.3 Commando came ashore to attack the battery at Bernaval

We visited the war graves of the fallen and paid our respects to those incredibly brave men; viewed all the memorials to the Canadians some of which had been created out of those same concrete German bunkers, captured following the D Day landings in 1945. It was a sobering experience and our guide, a 'certifiable historical obsessive' brought the whole thing alive with a wealth of intimate detail. There is no substitute for absorbing history than actually standing on the spot where it occurred.

The following day we crossed France to St Nazaire which sits on the north bank of the River Loire in southern Brittany, between Lorient and Nantes. Unlike Dieppe, the raid on St Nazaire was a total success. The plan was to deny the Germans the facility of refitting their awesome battleship Terpitz in the only dry dock in Europe( the Normandie) which could accommodate her great size. Had they been able to use it, this formidable weapon could have reeked havoc in the Battle of the Atlantic.

The plan, put together by Admiral Mountbatten and his staff in Combined Operations, was to ram the 1500 ton gates of the lock with an old WWI destroyer packed with explosives. Meanwhile, during the confusion, 100 British Commandos would leap ashore and destroy as much ancillary machinery (pump rooms, etc.) before embarking on a fleet of small wooden patrol boats and make their escape seaward; “Butcher and Bolt!” in the words of Winston Churchill.

The Normandie lock gate at St Nazaire today [yet another sad story!]

In the event the 5000 German defenders were alerted by some desultory bombing by the RAF and the little flotilla came under very heavy fire destroying all but three of the patrol boats. HMS CAMBLETOWN, however, rammed the docks with such force that she virtually straddled it. The commandos successfully completed their mission although vastly outnumbered; most were either killed or captured. The German hierarchy were confused by the mission, as the old destroyer had done little damage to the lock gates, they continued to crawl all over the vessel in large numbers for many hours. When all the raiders had been rounded up, the ship exploded some ten hours later, killing over 250 Germans and completely destroying the lock gate.

The operation was a huge success. Tepitz was later trapped in a Norwegian fiord and sunk by the combined forces of the RN and RAF. However, 'Operation Chariot 'came at a heavy price in lives. Of the 400 men who took part 168 were killed and 214 made POWs. Incredibly, 5 commandos made their escape to Spain. There were 5 VCs awarded that night, the highest number in any single raid throughout the war.

We trod every piece of ground covered by the raid including the immense bomb proof U boat pens that survive to this day. Later we moved north to the Normandy beaches and surveyed other sites where allied Commandos attacked against impossible odds. Cap de a Hoc, where American rangers scaled the cliffs between Omaha and Utah beaches in order to silence the large guns there. This area is still a moonscape as a result of constant naval bombardment and RAF 'carpet bombing'

View of the cliffs scaled by the US Rangers at Cap de la Hoc on D Day

It had been my first experience of a battlefield tour. Every day we visited various immaculately maintained Commonwealth graves, marking the last resting place of countless soldiers, sailors and airman; fascinating and sobering in equal measure. Our generation, ageing now, has much to be thankful for, even in these uncertain times 70 years on.

S/M John Hunt

More of John's photographs can be seen below

The locals renamed their streets to mark the event after the War