More than 71 years after 907 Canadians were cut down on the stony beaches of Dieppe during Operation Jubilee, Canadian historian David O’Keefe has produced a fast-paced and convincing book, One Day in August, that clears up decades of misinformation about the ignoble raid and should provide comfort for the few remaining survivors of that notorious massacre.

Over the years many historians have speculated about the purpose of the Allies’ August 19, 1942, raid on the French coastal town. Was it to relieve pressure on the Eastern front, where the Soviet Union was going it alone against the Nazis? Or was it a trial run for a European invasion? Perhaps it was Winston Churchill’s gift to his wife Clementine, who had once visited Dieppe and was very fond of the seaside resort. Just what was it the Allies were doing that day, when 250 ships carrying more than 6,000 troops — 5,000 of them Canadian, of which 68 per cent were either killed wounded or captured — and numerous tanks crossed the channel?

In 1995, O’Keefe began the process of finding out. While conducting research at the National Archives in Britain he came across a just-declassified file that contained a cryptic reference to something called the 30 Assault Unit, a commando group formed by none other than James Bond creator Ian Fleming. (Fleming, as O’Keefe discovered, was much closer to a Bond-like character than previously thought.) Further on, he spied another mystery: A 13-word sentence that read, “As regards captures, the party concerned at DIEPPE did not reach their objective.”

What party? What captures? What objective?

O’Keefe is a meticulous writer, and he answers these questions with authority and vigour. He spends nearly the entire first half of the book illustrating the workings of Ultra, a very secret British intelligence operation formed to break German communication codes. Working out of Bletchley Park, its most successful triumph was the cracking of the German Enigma code, created by a three-rotor Enigma ciphering machine. So significant was this that “by years end in 1941 almost every area of the (German navy’s) operations was under British surveillance to one degree or another.”

Then, in February, 1942, things changed. The German navy began using a four-rotor Enigma machine, and while the other German forces were still using the old version, it was just a matter of time before they too switched over. The Ultra team was suddenly and dangerously in the dark.

“It was this crisis surrounding Ultra that led to the creation of Ian Fleming’s commando unit, operating under the aegis of British Admiralty Intelligence and focused solely on ‘the pinch.’” (Pinch, in the context of Ultra, meant stealing without the Germans realizing a theft had taken place. If the Germans knew one of their Enigma machines had been taken, they would simply take countermeasures to render it obsolete.)

As 1942 wore on, and Bletchley lost its inside knowledge of German naval operations, British shipping losses skyrocketed. It desperately needed a pinch that would score them a trove of Enigma-related materials and an actual machine as well. Dieppe, highly fortified as it was, was seen as the perfect place to do just that, a “target-rich environment” worth “incurring heavy casualties. . . .”

And heavy casualties are all the Allies got. The battle itself was over in a few hours and O’Keefe conveys the enormity of the defeat with skill and precision: “The Germans, sitting in relative comfort on the cliffs above on three sides, saw hundreds of soldiers from the Royal Regiment clamber awkwardly out of landing craft into a hail of murderous fire as they attempted to cross a hundred yards of open beach. Only the Germans’ cries for more ammunition proved louder than those of the wounded and dying below.”

Much has been written over the years about the actual battle, but that is neither the point of O’Keefe’s book nor its significance. Building on the work of previous historians who didn’t have access to the documents he had, O’Keefe has provided meaning to what has always been seen as a senseless massacre. And for Ron Beal, who witnessed the slaughter 71 years ago as a bewildered and terrified private that is everything. “Now I can die in peace,” he told O’Keefe. “Now I know what my friends died for.”

Amen to that.

James Macgowan is a frequent contributor to The Star’s book section.

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