76th Anniversary of the Raid on Dieppe

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THE DIEPPE VETERANS' MEMORIAL PARK COMMITTEE
Cordially invites you and a guest at the Dieppe Veterans' Memorial Park on Sunday, 19 August 2018 at 11 AM.
The Dieppe Veterans' Memorial Park is located at Beach Boulevard and Manor Avenue Hamilton, Ontario
Dress — Business attire or Regimental blazer with medals Please RSVP by August 1, 2018
905-545-4611 (Sandwiches and coffee at the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry Veterans Association, 1353 Barton Street East, Hamilton. Main Clubrooms after the Service.

NORTHWALL RIDERS CANDLELIGHT SERVICE
AUGUST 18, 2018, 7:30 P.M.​

August 19th 2018 marks the 76th anniversary of the deadly raid on Dieppe by the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and many other famous regiments in World War II. On that day in 1942, The RHLI, storming ashore in a vicious hail of machine gun, artillery, mortar and grenade fire, suffered huge casualties.
To honour all those brave men of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, on the evening of Saturday AUGUST 18th the North Wall Riders Association - Steel City Chapter we will be lighting a candle and reading the names of each and every member of the RHLI that stormed the beaches of Dieppe France.


WHEN: Saturday August 18th at 7:30pm - 9:30pm
WHERE: THE DIEPPE VETERANS' MEMORIAL PARK
Manor Ave Hamilton, Ontario L8H 6Z9 (On Beach Blvd)
INVITED: Everyone is welcome to place a candle
COST: FREE For more information call Keven Ellis - 905-312-4734

From past events;

 

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Hamilton's Dieppe Memorial is a replica of the beach in France
Kate Adach · CBC News · Posted: Aug 18, 2012 8:56 AM ET | Last Updated: August 20, 2012

The City had selected a plot of land on the east side of the beach strip and had drawn up a sample memorial that would have visitors facing the water. "This felt backwards," Budrevics said. The Hamilton soldiers it was to commemorate had approached the Dieppe port from the sea. Visitors to the park should do the same, he thought.
Budrevics and Lawrence Stasiuk, the City’s landscape architect who hired him for the $420,000 project, agreed that the memorial should be designed to honour the veterans’ experience in Dieppe in every way possible.
So Budrevics met with seven Dieppe veterans to consult with them on the design of the Dieppe Veterans’ Memorial Park in the early 2000s.
"When I told them [about his idea to replicate the layout of the Dieppe beach], they said, ’that’s brilliant!’ It was the light, it was the spark, it was the moment of understanding," Budrevics said.
The group met numerous times before the park was opened in August 2003.
"The boys and I would meet in the legion and they would just wander off in their memories of their stories," Budrevics said. "I really enjoyed working with the boys and really understanding the history of that moment."
Recreating Dieppe beach in Hamilton
The shapes, textures and layers of Dieppe’s beach were all woven into the design.
The beach rocks that surround the entrance to the memorial represent the conditions of the beach at Dieppe. To the soldiers’ surprise, the port wasn’t covered in sand, but in "pebbles the size of your fist," Budrevics said. These rocks got caught up in the tanks’ treads, he said. "That’s why our boys didn’t get up onto the beach."
Over the years since the park opened, stories have emerged that some of the stones on Hamilton’s site are from Dieppe, France.
"Families of veterans have taken one or two beach stones, put them in their luggage and exchanged them with rocks on Dieppe," Budrevics said.
The pillared wall that separates the plaza from the stones is meant to replicate what was known as "the casino" – the most prominent building on the waterfront, which the soldiers were intended to attack and seek shelter in.
The ceremonial plaza, where visitors gather and the annual memorial service takes place, represents the town square of Dieppe.
The Queen Elizabeth highway, which can be seen from the memorial, resembles the highlands behind the beach of Dieppe. "We lucked into that because of the location," Budrevics said.
And the memorial cairn at the top of the park "is an exact replica of the one the Canadians have built in France," he said.
Alexander Budrevics & Associates, is the longest-running landscape architecture firm in the country, Budrevics said. In his 48 years of business, he regularly designs parks, schoolyards, stadiums and the like. But this project was unique because it wasn’t made for an anonymous public, he said. It was for Hamilton’s veterans and their families, and it would have to acknowledge the devastation the city faced about 60 years earlier.

Read whole article;
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hami...is-a-replica-of-the-beach-in-france-1.1202686

Read more;
http://www.rhli.ca/museum/aug19.html

http://www.rhli.ca/dieppe/dieppehamiltonmonument.html

 

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Dieppe
The secret purpose behind this disastrous Second World War raid.

• Canada's History
• 1 Aug 2017
• By David O’Keefe.

Supported by naval gunfire and fighter-bomber attacks designed to sow confusion amongst the defenders, the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (RHLI), Essex Scottish, Calgary Tanks, and Canadian Engineers would storm ashore onto the main beach, push over the promenade and through German positions, and plunge into the port to overwhelm the defenders.
With the RHLI creating a cordon sanitaire past Dieppe’s distinctive beachside casino, the Engineers would blow German roadblocks in the tiny streets to allow the tanks to burst into the port. There, joined by infantry from the Essex Scottish, the Calgary Tanks would silence the trawler crews and resistance around German naval headquarters to secure the cipher material. Regardless of the outcome of this phase of the attack, the Royal Marine strike force under Ryder offshore had direct orders to barrel down the channel leading into the port, come hell or high water, and to fight to the last man if necessary to capture the desired material. Once inside the port, a special unit of the Royal Marine Commando would either fight to capture the material, if not already seized, or simply gather material for extraction.
In the midst of the fight, a special boat would be sent to remove the captured intelligence booty and take it straight to Godfrey’s personal assistant — Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming of James Bond fame — who would be waiting on a command ship offshore. With the material in hand, Fleming was the anchorman in the relay who would return to the nearest British port in the quickest possible time. With that accomplished, the Engineers would carry out a systematic destruction of the port to hide the pinch before the entire force bolted home.
Of course, that all seemed good on paper, but the reality of the day was quite different.
Read whole article;
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/canadas-history/20170801/281530816065732

Another good article;
http://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/military-war/dieppe-a-colossal-blunder

 

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'End of an era': First Dieppe remembrance service in Hamilton without a Dieppe veteran

CBC August 20, 2018

The service of remembrance for the 76th anniversary of the Second World War raid on Dieppe in Hamilton on Sunday was the first without any veterans of the raid in attendance.
"It's really the end of an era," said Lt. Col. Bryan Robertson, who led the service.
The annual service commemorates the 582 members of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (RHLI) who fought in the deadly raid on the French coast on Aug. 19, 1942.
The raid resulted in a major loss of Canadian life with 197 Hamilton casualties.
Each year the service has seen fewer and fewer remaining veterans. Of the RHLI members, there's only one known survivor of the attack.
His name is Ken Curry.
At the age of 96, Curry told CBC News the trip from his home in Sidney, B.C. to Hamilton this year wasn't possible because of health reasons.
He wanted to be at the Dieppe Veterans Memorial Park near the lift bridge in Hamilton for Sunday's service.
"I'm the only one and I'm very honoured about it. I'm awfully sorry I'm not going, but my heart will be there," Curry said in a telephone conversation.
"It's always a sad time for me this time of year with many memories of lost comrades, but I feel greatly honoured that I can still represent the regiment I served in. I've been honoured to speak before many groups and classrooms over the years. I know that Canada has many vets at this time and they, like me, represented the fighting in our country," Curry said.
He says he hopes to be in Hamilton this time next year to remember.
'We are down to one'
Robertson, a former RHLI commanding officer and now ordained minister, recognized Curry and the absence of other Dieppe raid veterans.
"We are down to one. We will honour him."
When asked about remembering veterans in the future, Robertson says to continue with services like Sundays.
"We'll just keep doing this and when there's none left, we'll still do it," Robertson told CBC News.
"We're never going to let them forget."
It was a messaged heard loud and clear by people who attended the service, including Jack McFarland's granddaughter, Kristal.
"To be here without any veterans is emotional. It's the first time I've been here without any veterans, like all of us, and it's very sad. I just hope that we can continue to remember them forever and we just have to keep carrying on the legacy forever," she said.
McFarland was captured in the raid. He died in 2016 at the age of 95 and his ashes were brought back to France for the 75th anniversary to be scattered.
"It was a very emotional time for him and he was very emotional talking about it, but getting out the story of the raid of Dieppe was very, very important to him," she said.
"If my grandfather was here today, he'd want to share the message of remembering the past. Remembering the people who fought for us."
In 2014 Deborah Adams lost her father, Stanley Darch, who also fought at Dieppe.
Adams says the veterans' stories need to be told to keep their memory alive.
"It's scary. All the veterans are dying, which means that we're losing a lot of history," she said.
After McFarland's death, only Curry and Fred Engelbrecht remained until Engelbrecht died last May at the age of 98.
Remembering Dieppe
Curry joined the RHLI at the age of 15. He lied and said he was older. The minimum age was 16.
He says his buddies were heading overseas and he wanted to go too.
His officer at Canadian Forces Base Borden told him, however, that if he got a note from his mother, giving him permission, he too could head to war.
Curry says that when he was lying on the beach at Dieppe, he was 20 years old.
"I went overseas," he said "and I remember clearly lying on the beach there and bullets were flying and there's guys dropping around, you could see them. It was just terrible and I thought to myself, 'man oh man why did I ever let my mother write that it's ok to go overseas.'"
Curry remembers those dangerous moments.
"When I was at Dieppe it was a terrible place when we landed. They dropped the ramps and we flew off and went into a hail of bullets and shrapnel and shells and machine gunning from the air," said Curry.
"We didn't have a snowball's chance of getting through. We did what we could. I could see men dying around me and others were yelling and badly wounded, but there's nothing you could do for them until we withdrew and we put what we could on the boats and got on the boats ourself."

Read whole article;
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/hamilton-dieppe-service-without-veterans-1.4791210

 

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Members of the public, current and former servicemen met to commemorate the Dieppe Raid at the Dieppe Memorial on Hamilton Beach Srip Sunday morning.

Related Content

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  And then there were none

The 76th anniversary of the raid was the first Dieppe anniversary marked without any local soldiers who survived the raid in attendance.



The last surviving local Dieppe veteran 96-year-old Ken Curry, who now lives in Victoria B.C., was not healthy enough to make the trip this year but sent a message which was read by Lt-Col Bryan Robertson, a former RHLI commanding officer who is also an ordained minister and honorary padre.

 

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Ill-fated raid on Dieppe was the worst ever loss of life of Hamiltonians on a single day
Sat., June 19, 2021

A total of 582 members of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry took part in the infamous botched assault of the French coastal city of Dieppe, France, that was heavily fortified by the Germans.

In the end, 200 Hamiltonians — 197 from the RHLI — died on that Aug. 19, 1942 attack, and nearly 300 were wounded or taken prisoner. More than 6,000 soldiers, most of them Canadian, took part in the effort to seize the port.

Read whole article;
https://www.thespec.com/life/local-...-day.html?li_source=LI&li_medium=thespec_life