Helping to Carry the Dead and Wounded

Heroes Remember

Helping to Carry the Dead and Wounded

All we could do was go up and down the promenade and we’d see smoke, you know, they’d shoot at it or something like that and as I say we couldn’t do anything, we couldn’t get off beach so we were stuck there. If we could have got through the town, you know, that’s what we were supposed to do and that didn’t happen. So we sat there for eight hours on the beach, I guess. Our TLC was hit coming in and it turned around, like we were a little late coming in. We should have been in earlier. And the captain was killed I guess on the TLC. And then we were told to get out of the tanks and we were ready like because if it sank they still didn’t know what was going to happen. But they turned around and come back and we landed good. Somebody asked us if we were scared. I don’t think we were. There was a lot of dead and wounded on the beach and we helped carry them up to a church in Dieppe. That was kind of a hospital there, the nurses, the nuns in there. And Germans were helping, we were helping. I don’t know, we weren’t scared of them and they weren’t scared of us that we would do anything. I can remember one fellow and I forget his name right now. He had an eye hanging down here and he was carrying a stretcher, you know, helping with the stretcher. We were in good shape. You know for somebody to do that when they’re injured themselves and carrying stretchers up.

After being part of the battle on the beach in Dieppe, Mr. Cole tells of his involvement in carrying stretchers of the dead and wounded to the hospital.

Elmer Cole

Mr. Elmer Cole was born in Roche Percee, Saskatchewan on December 22, 1919. At age 15 he started working and left school with a grade eight education. In 1940 he joined with the South Saskatchewan Regiment taking basic training in Winnipeg and in Feb. 41 he came back to Brandon, Manitoba for mechanical training, switching over to The Calgary Tanks as a trooper on the Churchill tanks. Mr. Cole travelled overseas to England where he was given more training until the summer of ’42 when the Dieppe Raid occurred. Mr. Cole fought through the battle only to surrender with other Canadian soldiers where he became a POW until ’45 when they were set free. After returning to Canada, Mr. Cole worked with the Department of National Defence, then carried on as a mechanic but with the strong desire to always be a wheat farmer, he and his wife bought a farm in Oak bank, Manitoba until he retired at the young age of 54. Mr. Cole and wife Isabel adopted two boys. Now widowed, Mr. Cole spends much of his time playing cards and socializing with residents of his retirement home as well as spending time with his grandchildren. In 2005 Mr. Cole was presented with an Honorary Life Member certificate of the Kiwanis Club in his local community. Presently, at age 97, Mr. Coles continues to enjoy a relaxed and healthy lifestyle.