Eyewitness at Dieppe - The Only First-Hand Account of WWII's Most Disastrous Raid

Eyewitness at Dieppe - The Only First-Hand Account of WWII's Most Disastrous

Raid written by Ross Reyburn and published by Pen & Sword Books - £20 -

Hardcover - Pages 192

In August 1942, Allied forces mounted an attack on the German-held port of Dieppe; titled Operation Jubilee, it represented a rehearsal for invasion. The amphibious attack saw over 6,000 infantrymen, predominantly Canadian, put ashore, tasked with destroying German structures and gathering intelligence.

The doomed raid was an abject failure and became Canada’s worst military disaster.

Eyewitness at Dieppe is a long-overdue reissue of New Zealand-born writer Wallace Reyburn’s dramatic account of the raid. He was with the first soldiers clambering ashore, and aboard the last ship returning to England after six hours of carnage.

Awarded an OBE as the only war correspondent to witness the street fighting first-hand, Reyburn was fortunate not to be numbered among Dieppe’s dead, suffering just a minor wound inflicted by mortar shell fragments. His book, Rehearsal for Invasion was a wartime bestseller.

Accompanied by freelance journalist Ross Reyburn’s new foreword on his father’s account, this new edition tells us more about Wallace’s intriguing life and details the shortcomings of his father’s book, dictated by wartime censorship corrected in the post-war years through a withering condemnation of raid’s mastermind Lord Mountbatten.

Eyewitness to Dieppe is another very good book as it gives the first-hand opinions of someone who was there to experience the attack. The book is put together by Ross Reyburn, the son of journalist or war correspondent Wallace Reyburn, it’s put together using his written accounts at the time, his opinions about how things went and in quite a few parts he gives his take on certain events that happened. It is good to have accounts of what happened but it should be remembered that Wallace Reyburn wrote his accounts whilst in the thick of the action so his opinions are of what he experienced at the time, where we have since learned some of the events might have been slightly different when you look at all the information as a whole. Reyburn is quite rightly proud of the way the predominantly Canadian troops behaved and fought, but when you look at the action as a whole there were big mistakes made by those in charge, something Rayburn is not afraid to talk about in the book.

Ross Reyburn has done a good job of putting this book together and it’s nice to read an

account of someone on the ground, interesting to see how another side of a story can

differ from another. A very good book and I enjoyed this more personal account of an event.