Operation Rudder Canceled

Heroes Remember

Operation Rudder Canceled

Transcript

When we went back to the Isle of Wight, we embarked immediately on these two troops carriers, the Princess Josephine Charlotte and the Queen Emma. Now these are the two ships that the FW190s came over and bombed when the raid was, when Rudder was cancelled, Operation Rudder. Now this was when the colonel told us, this was still Colonel Basher and he didn't go on Jubilee they had changed the colonel see, Colonel Kato had taken over for Jubilee. But this was Rudder, this was still Operation Rudder. And we were all on the ships, two companies on each, like A and B company, D and C company were on Josephine Charlotte and Basher told us, he said, “Men, this is not a maneuver. This is going to be an actual operation against the enemy.” And there was a great cheer, guys throwing hats in the air and oh, jeez, never, wouldn't believe it because the boredom, the boredom, lets go, lets get at ‘em, see. The boredom started to build up. Well anyway, then Mountbatten came on, and Roberts, and told us almost the same thing, you know, but Basher he was the colonel of our regiment so he was the head man as far as we were concerned. And so, we were on the ships there, I think it was six, six nights, waiting and every morning I'd wake up and look out the port hole and I could still see the Isle of Wight. And, you know, any morning we were supposed to be there at 4:30 in the morning, you see. So the weather wasn't right, the tide wasn't right, they postponed 24 hours or postpone it again and postpone it again. So after the two planes came over and bombed the two royal ships, they unloaded us because the ship that I was on was sinking. So we got into our landing craft, lowered our landing craft. We didn't have any problem like they did with the Titanic. They went down perfectly and they took us ashore. Roberts lined us up and he said, “Operation Rudder is cancelled for now on, forever. Operation Rudder is cancelled.” See, we took us back to the main land. So we were stationed at Five Oaks. Like as I say, we were still on the ships and we were on the ships for I think it was six days so we had O Groups and you know we had lectures, oh yeah, no, no and we were studying obsolete maps where there was one gun position that wasn't manned where they were ten fold compared to, you know, they were dug into the cliff. It was unbelievable. We were mad, we were, we were in a terrible state because you know we'd prepared for all of this and now it was all over.

Description

Mr. Poolton recalls the readiness of his regiment to embark in action against the enemy, only for it to be canceled.

John (Jack) Poolton

John (Jack) Abernethy Poolton was born in Toronto, Ontario on January 9, 1918. He was one of seven children. His father farmed 100 acres near Kapuskasing, Ontario. Mr. Poolton enlisted in the Royal Regiment of Canada and provides vivid, clear details of the allied landing at Dieppe, France on August 19, 1942.

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