Paul Wilson: The boys of Dieppe grew old but could not forget
A generation ago – 25 years to be exact – The Hamilton Spectator sent me to Europe to cover the 45th anniversary of Dieppe.
It was a slaughter on that stony beach in France, Aug. 19, 1942. Nearly a thousand died in a hopeless nine-hour battle. About 200 of those men -- make that boys, some who hadn't hit 20 — were with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry.
A large contingent went over in 1987 for that 45th remembrance. And leading the parade was Minister of Veterans Affairs George Hees, a dashing 77-year-old who Chatelaine magazine had recently named one of Canada’s Top Ten Sexiest Guys.
At a reception at Canada House in London, Hees said exactly what he thought about the Dieppe mission: "It was a blind, stupid thing to do. It was typical of the military mind of the day. All you needed were several thousand strong bodies and throw them into battle. It didn’t matter how many got killed."
The anniversary expeditions started in 1967 and took place every five years. How much longer should they go on? "As long as there are people to be paid tribute to," Hees said then. "We don’t want them to think they’re no longer important."
1,000 were still alive
Twenty-five years ago, of the 5,000 Canadians on the Dieppe raid, about 1,000 were still alive. Now, as we mark the 70th anniversary, only a handful remain.
About 30 vets went over for the 45th. I travelled with them and there were good times. In the south of England, we stayed at the Queen’s Hotel, a big, white Victorian place on the beach.
'They were the ones who always wanted to jump over the bar.' —pub owner Winnie Sexton remembering Canadian soliders
At the Cricketers pub, we heard stories from Miss Winnie Sexton, the 67-year-old chain-smoking, strawberry-blond proprietor. She remembered the Canadian soldiers. "They were the ones who always wanted to jump over the bar."
And aboard the 1,700-passenger Versailles, one engine dead, we limped across the English Channel. We arrived in Dieppe late, just as the boats had been late on that morning in 1942. They squandered the cover of darkness and the Canadians were sitting ducks.
In the summer of 1987, the men saw that the beach — below the steep chalk cliffs once lined with German guns — was now a place of amusement, ferris wheel and all. It was noted that some of the sunbathers were topless.
Crowd was thin
In the village of Dieppe — some call it the poor man’s Monte Carlo — there was a parade to honour the Canadian soldiers. In places, along narrow Rue de Sygogne, the crowd was thin.
But the vets were glad to be there, grateful to be able to remember. "We just came back to think about those guys," said Jack Brabbs, a retired Hamilton cop.
He joined the RHLI at 18. Right after he enlisted, they told him to jump in the back of an open truck with some other fresh recruits and they headed along James. They were supposed to holler out that they’d just signed up.
His mother spotted him from the sidewalk, her only son. "She got over it," Brabbs said.
At Dieppe, his job was to clear away the thick coils of barbed wire on the beach using explosives and wire cutters. He got shot in the arm, but made it out.
Souvenir under his skin
He still had a piece of Dieppe in him. I distinctly remember him letting me touch a little piece of stone just under the skin on the top of his ear. It lodged there when an explosion hit the pebbles of the beach.
"The doctor said he could cut it out," Brabbs told me. "I said, ‘Hell, leave it in.’"
Some men tried to forget the war, but not Brabbs. He felt a duty to remember.
That’s why he went on those pilgrimages to France. At the 45th, he said, "If I’m still around for the 50th anniversary, I’ll be here. If not, I guess I missed it."
He did make it to the 50th. And the 55th, in 1997. Two years later, at the Hamilton General, he died of heart failure. He was 78.
His wife Irene knew what to do. The following spring, she took the ashes to Dieppe.
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