Tragedy at Dieppe
My favourite military historian is Mark Zuelke. It helps that he writes on Canadian military history and I am in the Canadian army.
I recently had the chance to read his book, Tragedy at Dieppe: Operation Jubilee. The title gives away the direction that this important military operation went.
The raid on Dieppe took place on August 19, 1942. The context behind the raid was pressure from the Soviet Union to open up a second front in addition to pressure from the United States to have some of their troops see action.
The response to this pressure was an attack on occupied France from Britain. This attack was largely undertaken by Canadian troops, although there were British commandos and American rangers participating as well.
In many ways, the raid was doomed from the beginning. It had already been planned and cancelled and then restarted after the pressure for having a major raid in 1942 grew. There were plenty of planning problems, errors in research and inadequate support.
Despite this, the Canadian troops fought bravely and gave the Germans a good fight. Still, bravery could not save a doomed mission. Many troops were rescued from the beach, although many others were killed or taken prisoner. As an army chaplain, I appreciated the part played by Padre John Foote in helping the wounded and ministering to the captured. (I hope to have a blog post on that specific story for you.)
Zuelke did another fantastic job with this volume. He does a tremendous job of combining official historical records, regimental diaries and personal accounts from veterans. This is the third book that I have read by Zuelke and I intend to read every volume in the series.
If you are interested in WWII history in general or Canadian military history in particular, I highly recommend Tragedy at Dieppe.
Purchase Tragedy at Dieppe from Amazon: (Canada) (USA)
