Carnage and Courage
The Dieppe Raid
Carnage and Courage
Transcript
One German shell hit the hold, the back part of the ship. HMS
Calpe. And it set the magazine on fire. Now the magazine was
storing cordite. Now, if you know anything about cordite it’s
very explosive and it looks like spaghetti. It’s flexible like
putty. But it’s very explosive. The HMS Calpe was hit. It has
three turbines. Each section of the ship is isolated. That is it
has safety doors, which are water-tight doors. The crew that are
in those compartments, in the ship, have no escape. And when the
sound of alert goes, that whoop, whoop, whoop - three times, the
doors shut down tight. Now we only had three turbines. But when
a magazine caught fire, it blocked all exits for any escape.
Three navy men. Now you wanted to know, what the navy, the
courage of the British navy. Three men, naval ratings, jumped
into the magazine, on fire. They opened the hatches, and they
start throwing out burning cordite, out of the magazine. Three
men. Yes. They were right there into an inferno, into a hell.
Well, they got the fire out, and they saved the ship. But they
didn’t save their lives, because two of them died when they
pulled them up from the magazine. A third one, he had no clothes
on, the skin, just ribbons of skin hanging down from his body. I
went, I was one of those that were still in fairly good
condition. I went down. I brought up a white hospital sheet to
wrap him up in. Well, sort of a blanket. So, he was wrapped up
into this blanket, and so, then I went and I got a pail of
water. Now it had to be distilled water because I opened up the
valves from the steam and I let the steam into the bucket, and I
got half a pail of hot water. Which is distilled water. And we
threw in twenty-five or thirty tea bags in there and I got hold
of a ladle and I went up above and I went straight to him. And I
said “You deserve one.” And so, I handed him a ladle of tea. He
drank it. “Well,” he says, “this is my last one.” I said “Why?”
He says “I’ll never live. I lost too much skin, and I know it.”
So, he says “I’m going to end it. Now don’t tell the captain and
don’t say anything to anybody until tomorrow, but I’m going
overboard.” And he put his two hands on the, on the cable and he
flipped backwards. I saw his body go down, and the blanket, and
toward the end of the ship I saw the white blanket floating away
in the darkness. Well, I says “That’s courage.”
Description
At 11 o’clock in the morning, the Royal Navy ship, from which Mr. Grand was observing the carnage on the beach, lay three miles off-shore. Orders were received to proceed to the beach with instructions to “use everything”. Mr. Grand tells of the events that followed and the remarkable courage of three British Navy men who saved the lives of those on board.
Meta Data
- Medium:
- Video
- Owner:
- Veterans Affairs Canada
- Duration:
- 04:37
- Person Interviewed:
- John Grand
- War, Conflict or Mission:
- Second World War
- Location/Theatre:
- Europe
- Battle/Campaign:
- Dieppe
- Branch:
- Army
- Units/Ship:
- Royal Canadian Signals Corps
- Rank:
- Staff Sergeant
- Occupation:
- Radio Operator and Technician
- Date modified: