43 million tons – amounting to about one quarter of all Allied shipping lost during the war. The Arctic convoys to Russia were also suspended in July after Convoy PQ 17 lost twenty-four of its thirty-five ships. In June in the Western Desert, the British lost Tobruk while Churchill was attending a conference in Washington. It was a humiliating blow and not one to boost US confidence in their new British ally. The following month, Rommel reached El Alamein threatening to oust the British out of Egypt and the entire Middle East. Things were equally grim on the eastern front when the Germans renewed their offensive, Case Blue, against the Soviet Union in June. By the summer of 1942, the Russians were suffering 10,000 casualties per day. Churchill faced mounting pressure at home by organized labour and abroad from Stalin to mount a “Second Front Now” to aid the Soviets. The pursuit to assign blame often fails to take into account these circumstances faced by Britain in the months preceding Jubilee. The British “needed” to do something. Launching the Raid, from a strategic level, made sense in the summer of 1942 and that is a hard aspect to accept when we know today the tragic cost of what transpired. Watching Gordon Fennel last August, I recall wondering what images went through his mind on his first visit to Dieppe since that fateful day. Did he recall faces of friends, relive actions, or hear again, the incredible sounds of battle? I am Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery.
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