Description
Mr. Walsh discusses why the Royal Regiment of Canada, with two other regiments, was selected to clear Dieppe based on the fact that it was decimated during the original Dieppe raid.
Graham Walsh was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, on January 22, 1925. He was the third of seven children. His father worked in a steel mill, and made a bit extra selling coke, a smelting byproduct. His father died when he was seven, and Mr. Walsh and his brother worked odd jobs to help the family. He joined the local reserves when he was fifteen and two years later, at the age of seventeen, enlisted for overseas service. Once in England, he was overlooked for Italian deployment and immediately volunteered for Normandy. Mr. Walsh served from France to post-war Germany, via the liberation of Holland, all with the Royal Regiment of Canada. He was fortunate to survive three wounds while in action.
Transcript
Then we started to clear the ports along the coast of France right up to Dieppe from Normandy up to Dieppe. We were given the privilege because our regiment was one of the, had the most casualties 1942 raid and so the three regiments. The way they work is there is a brigade. A brigade usually consists of three regiments and there was the Royal Regiment, there was the Essex Scots and Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, that was a Brigade. And they were the ones that took the bad beatings in Dieppe in 1942. So we were given the privilege of clearing the port this time around, of course, when we finished there we on up, the rest get back into Holland.