|
WWII Veteran Interview: The following interview is reprinted in full from the Winnipeg Free Press from August 2002. It appears here courtesy of the Winnipeg Free Press and author Mia Rabson. This interview was submitted by Jim P. of the NWHA's Queens Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada. |
He'll Never Forget Dieppe
A Winnipeg veteran returns to
the place that shaped him.
There are some things in life you never forget. Your wedding day. The birth of your children. The pain of losing a loved one.
Doug Johnstone doesn't talk about it much, but one such memory for him is eating cabbage soup due to the generosity and compassion of his Second World War comrades.
Johstone after Dieppe, PoW camp.
In the spring of 1944, Johnstone, then 28, was a prisoner of war at a German prison camp. He tried to escape but made it only a short distance before he was caught and thrown into solitary confinement. There he stayed for more than a month, in an unlit dungeon where his only contact with the outside world was a skimpy daily delivery of rations - one day water, the next one-seventh of a loaf of bread.
Forty-two days later he emerged, starving and weary, to rejoin his comrades in the Canadian and British armies. Each one gave him a spoonful of cabbage soup.
"One spoonful doesn't seem like very much, but when you get 100 spoonfuls it's quite a lot for the person that is receiving it," he recalls.
When Johnstone get to this chapter in his story, a smile comes to his face.
"This part lives with me forever," he says.
Johnstone, now 87, remembers vividly the battle of Dieppe that put him into enemy hands, and the 32 months he spent as a prisoner of war, but he seldom talks about his experiences. The few photos he has from his days as a soldier are hidden away in his home at a Winnipeg retirement residence.
But this week, Johnstone will relive the day he was taken prisoner, the fateful day when Allied forces sailed across the English Channel to push the German front back with a raid on Dieppe.
Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of the raid - one of the major catastrophes of the war for the Allied forces. Johnstone is part of a contingent of Canadian veterans and politicians heading to the beaches of Dieppe to remember one of the worst moments in Canadian military history.
He has been back to Dieppe twice before - for the 40th and 50th anniversaries of the raid. This time, he is officially representing his regiment - the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada. He says he is honoured to do so.
"It took me only about two seconds to say yes" when officials from Veterans Affairs Canada called and invited him on the pilgrimage, Johnstone says. From this past Friday to Thursday this week, 25 veterans from the raid, young cadets, Veterans Affairs Minister Ray Pagtakhan and several other officials and MPs will be visiting memorial sites in Dieppe and the surrounding towns, including the Canadian cemetery where 707 Canadian soldiers were buried after the raid.
The initial raid was scheduled for July 4, but weather forced the cancellation of the Channel crossing. Allied troops, including 5,000 Canadians, 1,050 British commandos and 50 U.S. Rangers remained on the British Isle of Wight, preparing for the mission.
Poor planning and an underestimation of the enemy led to a defeat of great proportions at Dieppe. More than one-fifth of the soldiers died on the beaches and another third were taken prisoner.
Johnstone remembers being nervous and excited as the boats moved across the English Channel in darkness on the night of Aug. 19, 1942. Some of the Allied troops would land at Puys, to the west of Dieppe, and at Pourville, to the east, while most would come up the middle in Dieppe itself, landing on the pebble beaches and trying to take cover and climb the steep cliffs near the shore.
Johnstone's regiment, the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders from Winnipeg, and the South Saskatchewan Regiment headed for Pourville, about four kilometres east of Dieppe. Their mission was to gain a foothold on the beach, then move inland toward an enemy air base, which they were to destroy.
"It was a very beautiful morning," Johnstone says. "The sun was shining, the sky was clear."
But the clear blue sky was interrupted by a deadly battle that would kill thousands in fewer than nine hours.
"We were a disaster right from the start," Johnstone says. "The Germans opened up on us with machine-guns, mortar fire and small arms. Some of the boats were blown out of the water. We were lucky; our boat beached and we jumped out. It went by so quickly. We ran from the beach to get protection, and all the time there was mortar fire on all sides. There were dead bodies all over the place."
The soldiers laboured on, their submachine-guns ready and firing on the enemy as they climbed over the sea wall and into the town of Pourville, heading towards the airfield.
"That's when I was wounded," Johnstone says.
He was hit in the back of the neck with a bullet. The scar, about an inch wide by three inches long, is still prominent.
Medics tended his wound, and Johnstone and his fellow soldiers tried to make it back to the beach.
They didn't make it. Two-hundred and sixty-six of the soldiers who landed at Pourville were taken prisoner by the Germans. At the end of the fighting there, 269 Canadians had been wounded and 151 killed.
The soldiers who landed at Dieppe and Puys fared no better. In fewer than nine hours, 1,380 soldiers died on the beaches around Dieppe, 913 of the Canadian. Another 1,600 were wounded and more than 2,000 were taken prisoner.
The Germans took Johnstone to the courtyard outside a convent in Pourville, where he slept for two nights. After two days, the prisoners were moved by railroad. Forty soldiers were crowded into each of the small boxcars, with a pail in the middle as the latrine, and shipped to Germany.
Johnstone was initially housed in a Red Cross hospital, but after he was healed, he was moved to a prison camp in Lamsdorf, Germany, known as Stalag 8B.
"It was bloody awful," he says. "There was a shortage of food. Our hands were tied together with rope, and then chains."
According to Winnipeg historian, Drew Dodds, the Canadian prisoners were the only POWs to be shackled - in retaliation for the deaths of some German prisoners of war who had been shot while shackled in Allied custody.
Johnstone says the Germans initially tied the prisoners' hands together with rope while their arms were crossed. After a few months, the ropes came off and their arms were chained about 25 centimetres apart.
Johnstone says that at first, all he and his buddies did was plan an escape.
"It is a prisoner's duty to try and escape," he says.
His chance came 19 months after he was imprisoned when he and a comrade, Bob Bartholomew, managed to get out.
"It was very unsuccessful," Johnstone says. "We were picked up very soon by the Gestapo."
The punishment for the escape was 21 days solitary confinement, with only bread and water, one of each on alternating days. After 21 days, the maximum time allowed under the Geneva Convention, the Germans took him and Bartholomew outside the camp, shut the gates and accused the two of them of trying to escape again. It was another 21 days in the solitary-confinement dungeon.
They emerged after 42 days and their comrades donated the spoonfuls of cabbage soup.
"It brought us back to life," Johnstone says.
Some prisoners had come across a few decks of cards, and it helped pass the time. But mostly the soldiers talked of what they would do when the war was over.
"We were mostly plotting and planning and debating," Johnstone says. "Everyone telling you how well you were going to do in civilian life after."
Some of the group were sent to a farm work camp near the end of the war and were eventually liberated by the Soviets. But Johnstone stayed at Stalag 8B until the end.
Stalag 8B was liberated by the British 8th Armoured Brigade on April 16, 1945.
"That was a wonderful day," Johnstone says. "The British soldiers and Canadian soldiers came up with trucks and fed us good food. The Germans became our prisoners and we became free men."
Johnstone, 87, is proudly representing
his regiment, the Queen's Own Cameron
Highlanders, on the trip to Dieppe.
After 36 months of training, 10 hours of combat, 32 long months as a prisoner of war and several weeks of travel and recuperation, Johnstone arrived home in Winnipeg in June 1945.
His girlfriend, Muriel, and his mother met him at the train station. Four months later Johnstone and Muriel were married. They had a daughter the following spring, and a son a few years later. They spent several years farming in Decker, Man., but his time in Stalag 8B had taken a toll on his health and he spent a lot of time in and out of Deer Lodge Hospital. He had seven operations on his stomach before his doctor told him he had to give up farming.
He and Muriel moved to Winnipeg where he worked as a builder before retiring.
