From Dieppe to D-Day | 75th Anniversary – June 6 | Royal Canadian Legion, US Branch #25

A D-Day item from the Legion Magazine.

Firefight in Zhari District

Story by Sharon Adams

It was the middle of the night on June 4, 2008, when a squad of five Canadians and a company of 55 Afghan army recruits they were mentoring left base to check on some empty Taliban weapon caches in the Zhari District west of Kandahar.

After a long march, they stopped between two farmers’ fields. Bullets suddenly hit a low mud wall nearby.

The Taliban, perhaps as many as 60, had been waiting for them.

From Dieppe to D-Day

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

In his orders of the day on June 6, 1944, Lieutenant-General Henry D.G. (Harry) Crerar told some 14,500 Canadian soldiers destined for the beaches and drop zones of Normandy that their impending success was thanks largely to the disaster at Dieppe.

But was it?

Almost two years earlier, 5,000 Canadians, 1,000 British and 50 U.S. Army Rangers launched an ill-planned and poorly supported raid on the French seaside town northeast of the D-Day beaches. They were under orders to seize and briefly occupy the port, to prove it was possible and to gather intelligence.

June 6, 1944

On D-Day, approximately 14,500 Canadians land on Juno Beach on France’s Normandy coast, and by day’s end make their way farther inland than any other Allied force.