On the Beach at Dieppe
The Dieppe Raid
On the Beach at Dieppe
Transcript
This runner met us,
and he took us to where the ... the major, Major Green was
and there was a depression in the ground
and I said to Bradley, he had the radio,
I said, “Lay in there”
because we had no cover
and I had his rifle
and he was carrying this big radio set and
anyway, I gave him his rifle
and I went down into what they call the ...
the prone position
and as I went down,
I went flying through the air and
that chunk of shrapnel there on that dog tag hit me. And I...
I must have been about ten,
fifteen feet away from where I was originally anyway
and I didn’t know what the hell had happened
and I sat up and
I seemed to be alright and then I couldn’t find my right arm.
Then a stretcher bearer came up
and I said, “I’ve lost my arm.”
“No,” he says, “you’ve still got it.”
It was pointing the other way.
And he swung it around and we had these bandages
that we carried with the safety packs that we had,
first aid packs,
and he put my arm in a sling and
well I had to keep my other hand on it
to keep my arm from going all over the place.
Well then I started back to Bradley or crawled back to Bradley
and he had set up communications,
but the communications were terrible.
We had this bloody great big antenna sticking up in the air
and I think the snipers were trying to
take pieces out of it and that
and we had communication with battalion headquarters.
and the rest,
the battalion headquarters radio
couldn’t get in touch with anybody but us. And they...
It got pretty hairy there...
There was bombs and mortar shells bouncing all over the place
and every time I went bouncing up in the air,
this thing would hurt, and then I got hit in the knee
and finally Bradley said,
“All I can get is battalion headquarters.”
And I said, “well, what do they want?”
He said, “They want us to relay messages out to the Calpay,”
which was the command ship.
Description
Landing on the beach at 5:20 a.m., on August 19, 1942, Mr. Gorman oversees the set-up of radio communication equipment. The heavy rain from mortar fire results in a serious injury to his arm.
Meta Data
- Medium:
- Video
- Owner:
- Veterans Affairs Canada
- Duration:
- 03:10
- Person Interviewed:
- Donald Gorman
- War, Conflict or Mission:
- Second World War
- Location/Theatre:
- Europe
- Battle/Campaign:
- Dieppe
- Branch:
- Army
- Units/Ship:
- Essex Scottish Regiment
- Rank:
- Lance-Corporal
- Occupation:
- Signalman
- Date modified: