The O’Connor family of Windsor suffered a huge blow on Aug. 19, 1942.

That morning, brothers Russell and Wilfrid, both privates in the Essex Scottish Regiment, splashed ashore on the slippery, pebble-strewn beaches in front of the French seaside town of Dieppe. By the end of the day, both lay dead.

The sad news was delivered to their parents, Daniel and Winnifred, as official reports of the raid slowly made their way across the Atlantic. Their grief can only be imagined.

Last week, Windsor and Essex County paid tribute to men like the O’Connor brothers by unveiling a new monument ot the raid in Dieppe Park.

Early reports painted the raid on Dieppe as a successful Canadian jab at Hitler’s Festung Europa. But as more and more somber telegrams were delivered to the families of men serving in the Essex Scottish, the true picture of events must have become painfully clear.

The regiment, recruited largely from the young men of Windsor and Essex County, left Canada with over 550 men. Among them were a notable number of Americans who had left their then-neutral country to join in the fight against Nazi Germany.

Based in England, they and other Canadians spent most of their time preparing to come to grips with the Germany army. Their chance came in 1942, when the 5,000 men of the Canadian Second Division were called on to attack the French coast, smash German defenses and make a quick getaway.

Similar raids had been carried out in the past, and Allied commanders expected a speedy success. The raid would also involved 1,000 British commandos, 237 ships and 74 British and Canadian fighter and bomber squadrons.

The Essex Scottish was called on to attack Red Beach, the portion of the French coast lying directly in front of the town of Dieppe. The first Allied attacks began just before 5am; by the time the Essex Scottish attempted their landing thirty minutes later, the German defenders were fully alerted.

Machine guns, mortars and artillery wrought havoc as the men of the Essex Scottish and the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry tried to storm Red Beach. Few got very far. Tanks that were supposed to support the infantry foundered in the water or were knocked out on the beach.

Tragically, reinforcements were thrown into the maelstrom in the mistaken belief that the assault was succeeding. By the time the evacuation of the beach was completed at 2pm, only 51 men of the Essex Scottish were accounted for; 387 were captured by the Germans, and 114 lay dead. For many, perhaps most, of the survivors, life was never the same again.

Among them were Russell O’Connor, 18, and Wilfrid O’Connor, 20.

Their names are listed at left, along with numerous others listed on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Website. It’s poignant to see names that remain familiar–Rivait, Durocher, St.?Louis and others–among the list of dead.

Kudos to our local communities for continuing to honour the local men who died on that terrible day in 1942, as well as those who, although they escaped the bullets and the shells, were still scarred by the war.  

The following is an account of the Dieppe raid given by veteran Maurice Snook, originally published in the Lakeshore News in 2005.

Don't expect to hear too many horror stories about World War II from Maurice Snook.

Even though he endured some of the most terrifying episodes of the Second World War, the Kingsville resident takes a lighthearted approach to his storytelling. In a talk at the Maidstone Bicentennial Museum, he used humour to tell the story of his combat experience and the three years he spent as a prisoner of war in Nazi hands.

Snook is one of the few remaining Canadian veterans to have fought in the disastrous 1942 raid at Dieppe.

The Essex Scottish, largely recruited from men in Essex County and Windsor, made up the force that would make the main assault on the town of Dieppe. Unfortunately, they lost the element of surprise when German gunboats noticed the Canadian landing craft approaching the beaches in the early morning darkness.

"It was just beautiful going in," said Snook, at the time a sergeant major in C Company, Essex Scottish Reigment. "Then, to put it in plain English, all Hell broke loose."

German artillery and machine guns, concealed in clifftop positions and in buildings overlooking the promenade, opened up as the Essex Scottish splashed ashore. All attempts to breach the seawall in front of Dieppe were beaten back with grievous loss.

Snook led a section of nine other infantrymen across beaches strewn with round, slippery rocks, into the teeth of German gunfire. Only Snook survived.

"I lay there for nine hours on that beach...the smell of the cordite from the artillery, and the smell of the dead bodies, I can still remember that," he said.

Only 2,200 Canadians were able to get back to their landing craft and re-embark for England. Snook was not among them; he was one of the 1,900 Canadians who became prisoners of the Germans.

Snook was transported from France to a camp on the Polish-Czech border. He describes antics that sound more like an episode of Hogan's Heroes than a prisoner of war compound.

The prisoners used to construct stoves out of whatever materials came to hand, which the guards took great pleasure in destroying. Tired of seeing his work undone, one prisoner, a Canadian engineer, built a stove out of tin cans and filled them with cement. When an especially hated guard nicknamed 'Spitfire' - "a mean old sucker" in Snook's words - tried to kick the new stove over, he broke his foot.

'Spitfire' later received even worse treatment when he forgot to wear his helmet and had wooden boards broken over his head. That prank landed Snook and the other culprits a pair of shackles and outdoor work details whenever it rained or snowed.

But the hijinks continued, with the prisoners figuring out ways to free themselves and hoodwink the guards.

"We had fun with them," he laughed. "We played a lot of tricks on them."

Snook was moved out of his camp as the Germans fled the advancing Soviet army, to a location near Stettin on the Baltic Sea. In May 1945, he was liberated by the British army.

-By William Harris