The Attack Begins

I was awakened at 6 o’clock on the 18th of August by my commanding officer and he says, “We’re going on an exercise of movement.” I said, “What, another damn exercise? ” And we wandered back and forth until we arrived at Newhaven at about 6 o’clock at night and it was at that point that he said, “Okay men, this is it. We’re gonna go into Dieppe again!” So he says, “Do you remember the code words, do you remember the objectives and so on? ” I said, “Yes sir.” And he said, “Go brief your men.” But at this time, instead of being on an assault landing craft I went onto a new craft which I had never trained on before, with tank landing craft with seven, with three Churchill tanks, each one weighed over 70 tons. And we got on there and I had to brief my men and so on. And the flotilla took off. There were about two hundred and something ships and we started. And it was supposed to be a silent landing but instead of paratroopers they had commandos on either flank and the commando on our left flank met up with a knee (sp) boat patrol about 3 o’clock in the morning and all hell broke loose.