Prisoner of Dieppe Read online

  PRISONER OF DIEPPE

  World War II

  by Hugh Brewster

  In memory of Ron Reynolds, who was there

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: On Hiawatha Road

  Chapter 2: Camp Borden

  Chapter 3: On Board the Empress

  Chapter 4: London Pride

  Chapter 5: On the South Coast

  Chapter 6: In Training

  Chapter 7: Operation Rutter

  Chapter 8: Operation Jubilee

  Chapter 9: Blue Murder

  Chapter 10: Surrender

  Chapter 11: Journey into Captivity

  Chapter 12: Stallag VIIB

  Chapter 13: Ropers and Chains

  Chapter 14: Tunnelling

  Chapter 15: The Long March

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Images and Documents

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Author’s Acknowledgments

  Other books in the I AM CANADA Series

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  May 26, 1996

  Dear Lachlan:

  It was you who started this.

  I’m sure you remember that school project — was it Grade Five or Six? — when you came over to the house with your dad’s video camera and made me talk about the war. I told your grandmother I didn’t want to do it but she wouldn’t hear of it. She reminded me that I was always saying the younger generation needed to know what war was really like. Said it might even give me some “closure.”

  “Closure,” I thought to myself. If only it were that easy. There won’t be any of that till I close my eyes for the last time….

  Well, Lachlan, I promised your grandmother before she died that I would write it all down. So here, in my own words, is what I remember of what happened on that terrible morning of August 19, 1942, on the beaches of a French town called Dieppe. And on all the miserable days that followed. You’re the only family member who is interested in this. You’re also now the age I was when I went to war. Maybe that will help you understand how it was for me, my friend Mackie, and the others. Maybe you can understand why it had to happen.

  I don’t think I ever will.

  Your loving grandpa,

  Alistair Morrison

  CHAPTER 1

  ON HIAWATHA ROAD

  June 14, 1929

  “You’re the new Limeys, eh?”

  Some older boys had gathered by the swings where I was pushing my little sister, Elspeth. My mother had sent us to the park at the bottom of the street since she was busy unpacking trunks and boxes in our new house.

  “You’re the new Limeys, eh?” the biggest boy said again, a little louder. I found his Canadian accent hard to follow.

  “Beg pardon?” I responded.

  “Beg pa-arr-don?” the boys repeated, elbowing each other as they imitated my Scottish burr.

  “I’m no a Limey,” I said, holding the swing still and putting an arm over Elspeth’s shoulder. “We’re not English. We’re Scots!”

  “Well, Scottie dog,” said the biggest boy, chewing hard on his gum as his pals circled around us. “Maybe they didn’t tell you. This park’s just for Canadians! You forgot to ask us for permission!” With that he pushed me down and started twisting the chains on the swing. Elspeth screamed as the chains wrapped around her head. I jumped up and charged at him but another boy grabbed me and pushed me down again.

  All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I heard a high-pitched war whoop. A red-faced boy charged at the bully and head-butted him in the stomach. With a howl he fell down in the sand while Elspeth quickly unwound in the swing. His three buddies ran to his side and picked him up. Then, muttering threats, they left.

  Our rescuer helped Elspeth down and asked me if I was okay. I nodded. Then he said, “I’m Mackie. I’m Scotch, too. Though I never been there.”

  “I’m Alistair, and this is Elspeth. We’re from Glasgow,” I replied. Then I added, “My mum says Scotch is a drink and that you ought to say ‘Scottish.’”

  “Okay, then.” Mackie grinned. “We’re all Scott-ish, and the Scott-ish should stick together!”

  I blushed, realizing I shouldn’t be correcting this older boy who had come to our rescue. “Scots wha hae!” I suddenly blurted out, repeating the first words of the Scottish anthem.

  “Scots wha hae!” Mackie said, flashing his big smile. “I live on Hiawatha, too,” he continued, “just down the street. We saw you folks move in yesterday.”

  He walked us back across the park and up the street to the wooden steps in front of our porch. Then, with a wave, he was gone.

  I’d like to tell you that Mackie and I were fast friends from that day onwards. But it never happened that way. He was two years older than me, which is a big difference when you’re a kid. And he went to the Catholic school while I went to the public school, so we walked in different directions. He’d often wave at me and say with a wink, “Hey, kid, Scots wha hae!”

  I knew his brothers and sisters, too, since everybody on Hiawatha knew their neighbours. When we first arrived from Scotland, my mother couldn’t get over how friendly they all were. In Scotland, you had to be introduced to people first, but in Canada they dropped by with a pie, or jam, or maybe butter tarts — a new treat.

  People on our street became even closer once the Depression hit. All of a sudden, it seemed like everyone’s father was out of work, including ours. My dad had come over from Scotland a year ahead of us and had found a good job at the Massey-Harris tractor plant. But soon farmers couldn’t afford new tractors. We heard that on the Prairies the fields had turned into dust bowls as the dry soil blew away because of drought. So my father and hundreds of others at the plant were laid off. Every day he would go off looking for work and come home tired and discouraged. Soon he just sat in our front room or on the porch in his undershirt, smoking and reading the newspaper. My parents thought about going back to Scotland, but our relatives told us things were no better there.

  During those bleak years, no jobs meant no money — some people even had to line up for food at the soup kitchen on Queen Street. Mackie’s family was hit particularly hard. The McAllisters had six children and Mackie’s dad just couldn’t find work. For a while, he tried selling brushes door-to-door, but I think he found it humiliating. Then we heard he had gone out west to look for work. But he never came back. Mackie’s older brother Colin dropped out of school and found labouring jobs to help out. Mackie and his younger brother had a morning paper route and Mackie delivered groceries by bicycle after school. My mother always made sure Mackie’s mom got baskets of vegetables from our garden, even though I knew she didn’t like Mrs. McAllister very much. I think my mother also looked down on the McAllisters a little because they were Roman Catholics — one of the prejudices she had brought with her from the old country.

  Whenever she could scrape together a little extra money, my mother’s favourite escape was to go to “the pictures,” as she called the movies. The Rialto was our neighbourhood cinema and for 25 cents she could see the newsreels, previews, a short feature and a full-length movie. My favourite escape was the public library, which my Grade Two teacher had told me about. By the time I was twelve I’d read all the books in the children’s section, so the librarian, Mrs. Newman, let me take books from the adult shelves, as long as she looked them over first. I remember lying reading on our porch swing when Mackie would wheel by on his grocery bicycle with a large box balanced on the carrier in front of the handlebars. “Hey, Bookboy!” he would call out and I would blush and wave.

  Aft
er two years of high school, Mackie dropped out so he could help support his family. He usually had two or three jobs on the go at once, but he still had time to see his friends — he was very popular — and to play on a baseball team. When he was about seventeen, Mackie — who by then liked to be called Mack — got a job in the shipping department at Canada Packers. He soon developed broad shoulders and impressive arms from lifting heavy boxes. And his knife-parted black hair fell over his forehead in a way that made him look like Clark Gable in It Happened One Night. I remember when he would walk down our street in his sleeveless undershirt, swinging his black lunch pail and whistling, my mother would call out, “Well, here comes Clark Gable!” and my two sisters would squeal and run to the front window.

  When I was in Grade Ten, my father died. He had managed to get short-shift work back at the Massey-Harris plant, but his face seemed to get greyer by the day. As a soldier during the Great War, he had been gassed in Belgium and his lungs were never good after that. He shouldn’t have smoked, but he did, quite heavily. When he came down with emphysema he got thinner and thinner and had terrible coughing fits until one day when I came home from school, my mother and sisters were weeping, and he was gone.

  After the funeral, I told my mother that I would leave school and get a job, but she wouldn’t hear of it. “No, son,” she said, “you must finish your schooling. I’ll see to that.”

  And she did. Within days, Mother had got a job as a trainee telephone operator with “the Bell” as she called it. And Elspeth, who didn’t much like school, took a typing course and found secretarial work. (My youngest sister, Doreen, was still only in Grade Six.) I liked school, particularly History and English, and I wasn’t bad at languages, though Math was always a bit of a struggle. My favourite history teacher asked me if I’d ever thought about going to university, but I knew there was no money for that. Boys from Rosedale went to university, not anyone from our neighbourhood.

  In my second-last year of high school there was much talk about a war with Adolf Hitler’s Germany. On the radio we would hear Hitler giving loud, ranting speeches while thousands chanted. “Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil!” Some people on our street thought Hitler wasn’t so bad. They would say things like, “Well, at least with Hitler, everybody in Germany has a job!”

  When Hitler invaded Poland in September of 1939 we knew that Great Britain would declare war on Germany. One week later, we gathered around the radio to hear Prime Minister Mackenzie King tell us that Canada, too, was now at war. It was a sombre moment.

  Mackie’s brother Colin was already in the militia. Within a few weeks we heard that he was going off to army camp before being sent overseas. After that, Mackie’s mother depended on him even more. I know Mackie would have liked to take girls out dancing at the Palais Royale or to ride the roller coaster at Sunnyside, but he didn’t have the money. He started dropping over for visits in the evenings — I think just to get out of the house. I was usually studying, but would always make time for him. It was very flattering that a popular athlete like Mackie wanted to spend time with a skinny bookworm like me. I guess it was because I could make him laugh. Sometimes, the things I said — even unintentionally — would send him into fits of laughter. He was one of those people who would laugh until he was out of breath. Then, all of a sudden, he’d say a quick “See you” and be gone.

  The next summer, after I finished high school, I found a temporary job at Canada Packers, working on the labelling line. Mackie was still in the shipping department and we often took the streetcar home together. One day he mentioned getting a letter from Colin, who was already over in England. Colin had written that the English girls were “just crazy about the Canucks.” They were expecting invasion by the Germans any day, and Colin was stationed on the south coast near a place called Hastings.

  “Hastings!” I said. “That’s where the Normans invaded in 1066! You know, William the Conquerer and all that.”

  “Oh-h, ok-a-ay, Bookboy,” replied Mackie, flashing his big smile. “Whatever you say.”

  A few days later, Mackie said that if we went down to the Exhibition grounds we could find out what was involved in getting over to England.

  “Are you thinking of joining up?” I asked.

  “My mother would kill me,” he replied. “But it can’t hurt to find out about it. Why don’t you come with me?”

  I was always flattered when Mackie asked me to do anything with him, so I agreed. The next day, we took the streetcar along the lakefront to the huge, pillared gates of the Canadian National Exhibition. A visit to the Ex had always been a big summer treat for us as children — with free samples in the Food Building and sometimes a ticket to one of the rides on the Midway. Now, though, the Ex looked completely different, with khaki army trucks everywhere and men marching in columns. We saw a banner that said Royal Regiment on a building that had a lineup of young men in front of it. We joined the line and when we got inside the building were given forms to fill out.

  “Wait a second,” I said to Mackie, “These are recruiting forms. We’re not joining up, are we? My mother will have a fit!”

  “Oh come on, Allie,” Mackie replied with a wink. “How else are you gonna cut the apron strings? You’ll be able to see the white cliffs of Dover, and Big Ben, and maybe your relatives in Scotland, too!”

  Suddenly a big man in uniform bawled out, “Hurry up, you two, cut the chatter. You’re holding up the line!”

  We sat down at a long table. My heart was pounding. I looked over at Mackie, who was already filling out his form. For the first time, I saw that his real name was Hamish McTavish McAllister. (No wonder he preferred Mack or Mackie.) I wasn’t crazy about the idea of joining the Army. Being yelled at and told what to do didn’t appeal to me very much. But being yelled at by the foreman at Canada Packers wasn’t much better. And it would be exciting to see London and all the places I’d read about in books.

  And maybe I would get up to Glasgow to see my aunts and cousins. I could just remember the red sandstone tenement in Glasgow where we used to live.

  I picked up the pen and began to print my name.

  An hour or so later, we were standing in another line, this time in our underpants. At the front of the room was a doctor with a stethoscope giving each recruit a physical examination. I felt quite shy and pale and skinny, particularly standing behind Mackie, who was so brown and brawny. I must have dawdled when my turn came because an officer with a little waxed moustache bawled out, “Come on, Mr. Bones, move it! Maybe the Army will put some meat on you!” I blushed and scurried up to the doctor.

  At the end of all the inspections, they formed us into a line and told us we were now “Royals” — members of the Royal Regiment of Canada. In a week, we had to report for training.

  When we got outside, Mackie was jumping about. “Well, Allie, we did it! We did it!” Then, to the tune of the old war song “Tipperary,” he sang, “Hello, Piccadilly, Goodbye old T.O. We’re on our way to Piccadilly, So Allie, let’s go!” and then burst out laughing. I laughed too, swept up in his exuberance. But I wasn’t at all sure about what we’d just done. And I dreaded having to tell my mother.

  “You’ve done what?” she exclaimed when I gave her the news. “What has that Catholic boy talked you into? I’ll go and speak to his mother this minute!”

  “Mother, we’re not boys,” I replied. “And it’s too late, we’ve enlisted. And I’ll be able to see Scotland and Auntie Lil and the cousins —”

  “You won’t be able to see anyone if you’re killed, now will you? Have you thought about that?” She sat down heavily in a chair and then her features crumpled. She put her face down into her apron and cried in a way I’d never heard before, not even when my father died.

  “Oh son, son, what have you done, what have you done?” she wailed between heaving sobs. “You don’t know … you’re not the army type … your dad was in the last one … look what it did to him …”

  She fled to her room and slammed the door. The n
oise of her crying echoed through the whole house. At times it would die down and I would think of going to talk to her, but then it would start up again. My sisters crept around the house, casting dark glances at me.

  It was very hard to see my mother so upset, but in a way it made it easier. I knew I had to escape from this house of women. I had to find my way in the world and become a man.

  Or so I thought.

  CHAPTER 2

  CAMP BORDEN

  August 12, 1940

  I awoke early and, for a second, thought I was still in my bed at home. The sun’s first rays shining through the speckled canvas of the tent made me feel happy. Then I remembered where I was and my heart sank. Camp Borden. And another day of basic training lay ahead. I was already stiff, sore and fed up, even though it was only our second week at the camp. My mother’s warning, “You’re not the army type,” kept playing in my head. I’d shrugged it off at the time, but now I often wondered if she wasn’t right.

  I heard snuffles and snoring from a few of the seven other men stretched out in their sleeping bags around the central pole of the musty old tent. Then the first notes of the bugler playing “Reveille” sounded outside.

  Tun-tun, ta-ra-rum, Tun-tun, ta-ra-rum, Tun-tun, ta-ra-rum, RA-RA-rum.

  This was followed by the all-too-familiar voice of Sergeant-Major Kewley, our training instructor. When I stuck my head out through the flaps, I could see Kewley strutting about between the tents, tapping on them with his sergeant’s cane.

  “Come on, boys, everybody up, up, UP. Let’s go, go, GO. PT in five, outside, shorts only,” he shouted in his morning incantation. “Get up, get out, get GOING!”

  Kewley was strictly old-school British army. He had fought at the battle of the Somme in 1916, where, as he had told us in his strong English accent, “so many good men died — fifty thousand in the first bleedin’ day.”

  I often wished that he had been one of them — because Sergeant-Major Kewley yelled at everybody, but at me especially. “Come on, Morrison,” he would bellow during parade-ground marches, “this is no bleedin’ tea party. Get in STEP!” During inspections, he always found something wrong with my kit, or uniform or rifle, and I can still smell his foul smoker’s breath as he ranted in my face, his eyes blazing above his blotchy red nose and ratty little moustache.