GUIDOEVERYWHERE

The Dieppe raid on Aug. 19, 1942, marked the second time the Canadian Army had gone into action in WW II and like the Battle of Hong Kong, it was a fiasco. Of the 4,963 Canadians who embarked for the operation only 2,210 returned to England, and many of these were wounded. Nine hundred and seven were killed and many more were taken prisoner. 

Nevertheless, the raid yielded two VCs. They were Charles Cecil Merritt, a Vancouver lawyer and John Weir Foote, a clergyman from Madoc, Ont. Foote was the only member of the Canadian Armys Chaplain Service to receive the medal. Both men were taken prisoner.

Born in Vancouver on Nov. 10, 1908, Merritt was educated at Lord Roberts School in Vancouver and the University School in Victoria. After graduating from the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., he became a lawyer in his native city. Prior to the outbreak of war he held a commission in the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada. In 1942, he was transferred to the South Saskatchewan Regt. as commanding officer.

Foote was born on May 5, 1904, and took his education at the University of Western Ontario in London and at Queens University in Kingston. He graduated in theology from the Montreal Presbyterian College at McGill University. He was ordained a minister and served congregations at Fort Coulonge, Que., and Port Hope, Ont. In December 1939, he joined the Canadian Chaplain Service and went overseas with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry RHLI.

On the day of the raid, the South Saskatchewan Regt. landed at Pourville, just west of the port of Dieppe. The units advance had to be made across a bridge spanning the Scie River. Wide and xposed, the bridge was being swept with enemy mortar, machine-gun and artillery fire. The first groups of men to try and cross it were mowed down. In fact, the bridge became littered with Canadian dead.

When Merritt arrived on the scene he took off his helmet, wiped his forehead and asked. Whats the hold up? He was told it was a hot spot, impossible to get across. Merritt ran forward, waved his helmet and shouted, Come on over! There is nothing to worry about here. Four times he led his men across. In describing the action that earned Merritt the VC, Canadian war correspondent Wally Reyburn wrote: As I watched him lead his men over that thundering barrage. I felt a quiver run up and down my spine. I had never seen anything like it.

Merritt led an attack on four enemy pillboxes that were holding up the regiments advance. Heassaulted one of them by throwing hand grenades into it. And although he was wounded twice he continued to direct the regiments operations. At one point, while organizing a withdrawal, he silenced a German sniper with his Bren gun. Merritt then took up a position to cover the evacuation until he was forced to surrender, but only after the last boats had left the beach.

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When Foote learned that a military operation was in the offing, he asked to be included. But the RHLI commanding officer vetoed the request. Foote told him he was going to go anyway and that  all the CO could do was arrest him for disobeying an order afterwards. The colonel relented and assigned him to the regimental aid post as a stretcher bearer.

The RHLI was one of the units assigned to the main assault on the beach at Dieppe. Touching down at 5:20 a.m., one of its companies was all but wiped out by German machine-gun fire. The survivors made for the protection of the sea wall, but even there fire rained down on the men from the west headland. As the battle raged on, Foote assisted the medical officer in administering to the wounded. During an eight-hour period he carried more than 30 wounded to the aid post, all the while under relentless enemy fire.
 

When the time came to evacuate, Foote helped carry the wounded into the landing craft. His boots became wet and heavy and so he took them off, a decision he would later regret. Finally, he boarded one of the last boats to leave the beach. Uncharacteristically for a padre, he grabbed a Bren gun and fired in frustration as a rearguard action against the Germans. He then changed his mind because he had noticed there were many more Canadians left on the beach. He coolly jumped overboard and swam ashore to surrender. He decided that those in his regiment who were about to become prisoners of war would need his servicescomfort and bove all, hopemore than those returning to England.

That night he and his fellow officers were taken to a church and locked up. I spent the night on the churchs stone floor, he recalled, and although I was worn out, I rolled a lot on the floor.

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Merritt was taken to a POW camp in Bavaria where he became senior officer of the escape committee. He escaped himself, but his freedom was short-lived. He was recaptured and remained a prisoner until liberated in the spring of 1945.

Foote was forced to march without boots along the cinders of railway tracks and over rugged terrain to a prison camp. Fellow prisoners recalled him giving up officer privileges in prison to be with the rank and file. During his time as a prisoner, he kept his congregation busy organizing three bands with instruments received from Canada and an accordion given to him by a German guard. Of his captors he said: They put up with an awful lot from us, more than we would have put up with them if the situations had been reversed. 

After the war, Foote became a member of provincial parliament, representing Durham County in Ontario. He made his home in Cobourg and later became minister of reform institutions. He was also an illustrious member of the Legion. In nearby Grafton, they named a Legion branch after him. Foote died May 2, 1988, just three days shy of his 84th birthday. He was buried in Cobourgs Union Cemetery. Among the dignitaries attending the funeral was the last surviving WW I Canadian VC recipient, Charles Rutherford.

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Merritt was elected Conservative MP for Vancouver-Burrard. In 1949 after losing his seathe returned to practising law in Vancouver. He also became commanding officer of his old reserve unit, the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada. Merritt was an honorary president for 30 years and life member of the Legions Mount Pleasant Branch in Vancouver and he held the Meritorious Service Medal. He was also for 10 years a trustee of the Vancouver Poppy Fund and chairman of the local Last Post Fund.?He died at the age of 91 in Vancouver on July 12, 2000.

Courtesy of: legion magazine.com