Day 3: July 4, 2013

We drove on from Paris to Dieppe this morning, a rather easy drive – mostly highway – and a peaceful one : apart from the D-Day coastline where remnants and memories of the landings pervade everything, this seaboard French province of Normandy oozes peace , the clichés of happy cows, apple orchards etc. Normandy has always had large ports, Dieppe being one of them, a rather likeable place once you are in town, even if the scars of WWII are still quite visible from the large number of post-war not-so-good-looking concrete buildings around. But above all « Tout va bien » (Everything’s OK), by the name of local brasserie (restaurant). More important to us, the friendly folks here like Canadians, with good reason since many Dieppois (as they call themselves) were among the first settlers of Canada. Canadian memorials abound in town and along the Promenade. But we were here essentially to survey WWII history in situ, which lesson from the local topography was quick to learn ; seeing these impossible high cliffs surrounding the city, we asked ourselves how the plan for the 1942 raid ever got approved ! Visiting the cramped site of Blue beach on the city’s outskirts , we arrived at the same conclusion. Our poor soldiers were doomed. And here they were, interred in the small cemetery which we also visited This cemetery is unique in that it was created by the occupying Germans, as the Allied raid was a disaster and many dead were forced to be left behind in enemy territory. The headstones have been placed back to back in long double rows, typical of German burials but unlike any other of our war cemeteries. When Dieppe was retaken in 1944, the Allies elected not to disturb the graves, so this unusual arrangement still stands. After Dieppe, our itinerary took us to Caen. On the way we stopped at and visited the site of a coastal battery which was taken by Canadian in the early hours of D-Day.