The Germans and the Dieppe Raid: How Hitler's Wehrmacht Crushed Operation Jubilee by James Shelley

Author:James Shelley
Format: epub

Chapter 12

‘A Picture like Dunkirk’: The Day After

The day after the defeat of the raid, 20 August 1942, was almost as hectic as the day before. Propaganda companies and war correspondents flooded into the area to write their dispatches and take photographs. War artists, too, came to paint the scene. Men from the Army’s Waffenamt came to inspect the Churchill tanks. Troops flooded in to secure the area and capture any British or Canadian stragglers still on the loose. Young Philippe Plantrou and one of his brothers set off southwards to Rouen – a trip of 35 miles – to reassure their parents that all was well. As they cycled, the Plantrous observed the mass of German men and materiel coming north. ‘We passed several German military convoys coming towards Dieppe, carrying equipment large and small; tracked and wheeled self–propelled guns, trucks and the like’, Philippe recalled in later life. ‘We dived into the ditch two or three times when the guns were too close to us.’ The boys’ hours-long journey was worth it in the end – when they arrived at their home in Rouen, Philippe’s parents heard the garden gate open and, with tears in their eyes, ran down the front steps to embrace their sons. ¹

Also in Rouen, but doubtless less pleased with his predicament, was Corporal Robert Prouse. After being transported hastily from Dieppe’s hospital to another in Rouen, he found his lower half had become completely immobile after his long night’s sleep: ‘I tried to swing my legs over the side of the bed but all they did was to flop like two dead lumps of meat.’ Somehow, the Canadian managed to drag himself over to the German doctor, who happily spoke perfect English, albeit with a very strong accent, and who kept Prouse busy sweeping and cleaning, with good reason: ‘The doctor had told me that there were several marks of entry from small pieces of shrapnel in both legs and one foot and that the best thing I could do was to keep them moving, since some nerves could have been severed.’

Conditions were somewhat haphazard at Rouen hospital. Although Corporal Prouse and his comrades had been treated well by their captors, there were great deficiencies in the resources devoted to their care. In one curious incident, Prouse was enlisted to hold down the legs of a Canadian who had suffered a bullet wound in the thigh. As Prouse later said, ‘Either there were no anaesthetics or the Germans did not want to waste them on us.’ Their patient was not best pleased, calling the German doctor a ‘son of a bitch of a Hun’, amongst other even less printable epithets. Having finished his first day as a makeshift orderly, Prouse stumbled across the doctor with whom he had been working. The German asked him, ‘What do you think of our wonderful German army? They stopped the invasion with only one division.’ Prouse was at pains to stress that the Dieppe operation was in

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