When you shoot from the hip,you will miss the mark!Were there any English, Scottish or Welsh troops? I don't know anything about that... So please explain me that.
http://www.geocities.com/dieppe_berlin/ ... mmando.htm
Poland and the Commonwealth in WW2
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Aufklarung
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Musashi wrote
RAF flew 2617 sorties, which cost them 106 aircraft (inc 88 Spitfires), against 170 lost German a/c.
The Royal Navy lost some 34 ships and some 500+ men
Andy H
The Canadians had been kicking there feet in the UK since early 1940, and basically they were keen and combat ready. It wasn't the case, which you seem to be implying that the British threw them to the wolves rather than 'British' soldiers. Though the losses suffered by the Canadian Division were grievous, they didn't suffer alone, given the losses suffered by the Royal Navy and RAF, which I'm sure contained English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish aswell (plus some other Commonwealth nationalities no doubt)Englander wrote:
Quote:
Why did the Canadians land there and not the British
Is that what they say in your history books?
Simply write your version. It would be nice to get to know it
I know out of 5000 Canadians who landed in Dieppe 3500 have been killed or wounded. Were there any English, Scottish or Welsh troops? I don't know anything about that... So please explain me that
RAF flew 2617 sorties, which cost them 106 aircraft (inc 88 Spitfires), against 170 lost German a/c.
The Royal Navy lost some 34 ships and some 500+ men
Andy H
Last edited by Andy H on 29 Dec 2003, 19:21, edited 1 time in total.
Pierre Sevigny
Hopefully this will add some colour to the ongoing discussion about Canada, Poland and the Commonwealth forces. Last month Pierre Sevigny passed away. Lt. Col. Sevigny was a veteran, a politician and a university lecturer. In the 1960's he found himself caught up in a minor scandal which turned out to be much ado about nothing, reflected badly for the man, and said volumes about the pettiness that often marks politics in Canada. Amongst his other honours, he was awarded the Virtuti Militari by Poland (its highest award for valour) for his determined role as a FOO attached to the 1st Polish Armoured Division during the fighting at the Falaise Pocket. Then Major Sevigny was only one of two officers to survive a determined German assault on Polish positions, and assault which left 80% casualties on the Allied side. His Obit from the Montreal Gazette is below.
Monday, March 22, 2004
Sévigny lost his leg in the Battle of the Rhine. He was awarded the Polish equivalent of the Victoria Cross.
Lt.-Col. Pierre Sévigny, a Second World War hero who, served as a Progressive Conservative cabinet minister in the 1960s, died Saturday in the Royal Victoria Hospital.
He was 87.
"He was a very good stump speaker, very emotional on the podium," said Heward Grafftey, a Conservative MP who sat with Sévigny in the House of Commons.
"He waved his arms in the old-fashioned way, but he was a very, very good politician, a very good cabinet minister, and an honourable man.
"I don't believe his sexual peccadillos diminished his considerable achievements or made him any less honourable. "
Joseph Pierre Albert Sévigny, a politician's son, was born in Quebec City on Sept. 12, 1917.
His father, Albert, was speaker of the House of Commons in 1916 and later was appointed minister of inland revenue in the Borden cabinet, then chief justice of Quebec Superior Court.
Pierre Sévigny attended Loyola High School in Montreal and the Quebec Seminary. He graduated from Université Laval.
Tall, suave and movie-star handsome in a silent-screen kind of way, he was given a screen test by MGM studios in Hollywood in 1935 and might have made it in movies, but his patrician family discouraged such a career.
Sévigny returned to Canada, where he went to work in real estate, construction and in the import-export business.
He also wrote pulp fiction for the Saturday Evening Post under a pseudonym, Peter Maple.
Sévigny enlisted in the Canadian army in 1939 and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in 1940.
During the D-Day invasion in June 1944, his Quebec artillery regiment was attached to a Polish division and subsequently took part in battles throughout Belgium and over the Rhine River into Germany.
Sévigny distinguished himself in the Battle of the Falaise Gap in August 1944. In the opening phase of the attack, Sévigny, then a captain, hurled grenades at an anti-tank gun and killed the entire enemy gun crew.
Two weeks later, Sévigny - promoted to major in the field - was trapped with 1,200 men on a hill surrounded by battle-toughened German Panzer and SS troops fighting to break out of an Allied encirclement.
Only about 250 men survived, including Sévigny and another officer.
Later, in the Battle of the Rhine, Sévigny lost his leg. He was awarded the Virtuti Militari, the Polish equivalent of the Victoria Cross, and Croix de Guerre medals from both France and Belgium.
During his convalescence, he wrote his wartime memoirs, Face à l'Ennemi, which was Quebec's biggest bestseller in 1946.
That same year he married Corrine Kernan. They had three children, Pierrette, Albert and Robert.
Sévigny lost his first bid for election to the Commons in 1949, and failed again in 1957. He did, however, inadvertently coin the winning 1958 Conservative campaign slogan, One Canada.
"At one meeting, (Prime Minister John) Diefenbaker was going on and on in his inimitable way about his dream for a greater and better Canada," Sévigny recalled.
"I told him, 'Let's leave it at this - one Canada, where everyone lives in harmony.' I remember something about harmony. He jumped up and shouted, 'One Canada - what we could do with that slogan.' "
Sévigny was elected MP for Longueuil in the 1958 Tory landslide and was appointed deputy speaker. In 1959, he was named associate minister of national defence.
It was largely because of his efforts that the 1967 world's fair was held in Montreal. As early as 1956, Sévigny had lobbied Montreal Mayor Sarto Fournier for the fair, and in 1961 he headed the delegation that got the final approval for the exhibition.
Sévigny was re-elected in 1962, but resigned from the cabinet in 1963 in a dispute over Diefenbaker's nuclear arms policy. He was defeated in the general election that followed, in which the Liberals were returned.
Out of office, he wrote his political memoirs, This Game of Politics, published in 1965.
An inveterate bridge player, he might have remained a footnote to history if his name hadn't surfaced again in 1966 during a heated debate in Parliament.
During an exchange in the Commons, Liberal Justice Minister
Lucien Cardin let it slip that as a cabinet minister, Sévigny had had an affair with Gerda Munsinger, an East German communist spy.
For the next few weeks, the country was consumed with what became known as the Munsinger Affair.
Sévigny admitted he knew the woman socially when she lived in Montreal, but denied Munsinger was an espionage agent.
Since he was no longer in politics, he resented the intrusion into his private life, and used his cane to attack a CBC reporter who came to his door to question him.
The charges of infidelity did not especially bother Sévigny. What enraged him, he said, was the suggestion that he was a traitor to his county. In a public statement, Sévigny denounced the "supposed justice minister" Cardin as "a cheap, despicable little man . . . who has brought this
odious, erroneous nonsense in front of the public for dirty, petty political reasons."
His statement sidestepped the sexual nature of his relationship with Munsinger, but Sévigny vowed to fight so "infamous a slander."
"I shall ask the soldiers, who by the thousands fought and bled with me, if they believe Pierre Sévigny or any Sévigny for that matter could betray this Canada that the Sévignys love so much."
A royal commission of inquiry was set up to investigate, and it found no breach of security, "no scintilla of evidence of disloyalty." It did conclude, however, that Sévigny's liaison with Munsinger "might have exposed him to blackmail or undue pressure, and that not even his fine family background or outstanding war record could ensure he would not be subject to and yield to such pressure."
No charges were laid, but the judge censured Diefenbaker for his failure to fire Sévigny when the prime minister learned of the indiscretion. "Gerda Munsinger knew Pierre Sévigny as a man. He knew her as a woman. End of epitaph," said veteran journalist Peter C. Newman, the parliamentary correspondent who chronicled the period in two books. Former Southam News bureau chief Don McGillivray, who lived up the street from the Sévignys in Westmount, recalled: "He was a decent human being, and one of the better ministers in Diefenbaker's cabinet. "He didn't deserve to be singled out. The gal he consorted with was innocuous, although it didn't seem so at the time." The scandal ruined Sévigny financially. He started teaching public finance part time at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) in 1967 to pay the bills and became a full professor at the university in 1980.
Students who had no idea of his background found him an engaging and stimulating professor. He returned to active politics in 1971 and ran unsuccessfully for the leadership of the provincial Union Nationale party: he polled 26 of the 2,200 votes cast.
In 1978 he founded a short-lived right-wing provincial political party, Les Démocrates.
Incidentally, Sévigny finally got to be in a movie. As he walked through the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in 1979, he was cast on the spot in a Robert Mitchum film, Agency.
He played a backroom politician.
Funeral arrangements will be completed today.
[email protected]
Obituary of Lt.-Col. Pierre Sévigny
© Copyright 2004 Montreal Gazette
Monday, March 22, 2004
Sévigny lost his leg in the Battle of the Rhine. He was awarded the Polish equivalent of the Victoria Cross.
Lt.-Col. Pierre Sévigny, a Second World War hero who, served as a Progressive Conservative cabinet minister in the 1960s, died Saturday in the Royal Victoria Hospital.
He was 87.
"He was a very good stump speaker, very emotional on the podium," said Heward Grafftey, a Conservative MP who sat with Sévigny in the House of Commons.
"He waved his arms in the old-fashioned way, but he was a very, very good politician, a very good cabinet minister, and an honourable man.
"I don't believe his sexual peccadillos diminished his considerable achievements or made him any less honourable. "
Joseph Pierre Albert Sévigny, a politician's son, was born in Quebec City on Sept. 12, 1917.
His father, Albert, was speaker of the House of Commons in 1916 and later was appointed minister of inland revenue in the Borden cabinet, then chief justice of Quebec Superior Court.
Pierre Sévigny attended Loyola High School in Montreal and the Quebec Seminary. He graduated from Université Laval.
Tall, suave and movie-star handsome in a silent-screen kind of way, he was given a screen test by MGM studios in Hollywood in 1935 and might have made it in movies, but his patrician family discouraged such a career.
Sévigny returned to Canada, where he went to work in real estate, construction and in the import-export business.
He also wrote pulp fiction for the Saturday Evening Post under a pseudonym, Peter Maple.
Sévigny enlisted in the Canadian army in 1939 and was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in 1940.
During the D-Day invasion in June 1944, his Quebec artillery regiment was attached to a Polish division and subsequently took part in battles throughout Belgium and over the Rhine River into Germany.
Sévigny distinguished himself in the Battle of the Falaise Gap in August 1944. In the opening phase of the attack, Sévigny, then a captain, hurled grenades at an anti-tank gun and killed the entire enemy gun crew.
Two weeks later, Sévigny - promoted to major in the field - was trapped with 1,200 men on a hill surrounded by battle-toughened German Panzer and SS troops fighting to break out of an Allied encirclement.
Only about 250 men survived, including Sévigny and another officer.
Later, in the Battle of the Rhine, Sévigny lost his leg. He was awarded the Virtuti Militari, the Polish equivalent of the Victoria Cross, and Croix de Guerre medals from both France and Belgium.
During his convalescence, he wrote his wartime memoirs, Face à l'Ennemi, which was Quebec's biggest bestseller in 1946.
That same year he married Corrine Kernan. They had three children, Pierrette, Albert and Robert.
Sévigny lost his first bid for election to the Commons in 1949, and failed again in 1957. He did, however, inadvertently coin the winning 1958 Conservative campaign slogan, One Canada.
"At one meeting, (Prime Minister John) Diefenbaker was going on and on in his inimitable way about his dream for a greater and better Canada," Sévigny recalled.
"I told him, 'Let's leave it at this - one Canada, where everyone lives in harmony.' I remember something about harmony. He jumped up and shouted, 'One Canada - what we could do with that slogan.' "
Sévigny was elected MP for Longueuil in the 1958 Tory landslide and was appointed deputy speaker. In 1959, he was named associate minister of national defence.
It was largely because of his efforts that the 1967 world's fair was held in Montreal. As early as 1956, Sévigny had lobbied Montreal Mayor Sarto Fournier for the fair, and in 1961 he headed the delegation that got the final approval for the exhibition.
Sévigny was re-elected in 1962, but resigned from the cabinet in 1963 in a dispute over Diefenbaker's nuclear arms policy. He was defeated in the general election that followed, in which the Liberals were returned.
Out of office, he wrote his political memoirs, This Game of Politics, published in 1965.
An inveterate bridge player, he might have remained a footnote to history if his name hadn't surfaced again in 1966 during a heated debate in Parliament.
During an exchange in the Commons, Liberal Justice Minister
Lucien Cardin let it slip that as a cabinet minister, Sévigny had had an affair with Gerda Munsinger, an East German communist spy.
For the next few weeks, the country was consumed with what became known as the Munsinger Affair.
Sévigny admitted he knew the woman socially when she lived in Montreal, but denied Munsinger was an espionage agent.
Since he was no longer in politics, he resented the intrusion into his private life, and used his cane to attack a CBC reporter who came to his door to question him.
The charges of infidelity did not especially bother Sévigny. What enraged him, he said, was the suggestion that he was a traitor to his county. In a public statement, Sévigny denounced the "supposed justice minister" Cardin as "a cheap, despicable little man . . . who has brought this
odious, erroneous nonsense in front of the public for dirty, petty political reasons."
His statement sidestepped the sexual nature of his relationship with Munsinger, but Sévigny vowed to fight so "infamous a slander."
"I shall ask the soldiers, who by the thousands fought and bled with me, if they believe Pierre Sévigny or any Sévigny for that matter could betray this Canada that the Sévignys love so much."
A royal commission of inquiry was set up to investigate, and it found no breach of security, "no scintilla of evidence of disloyalty." It did conclude, however, that Sévigny's liaison with Munsinger "might have exposed him to blackmail or undue pressure, and that not even his fine family background or outstanding war record could ensure he would not be subject to and yield to such pressure."
No charges were laid, but the judge censured Diefenbaker for his failure to fire Sévigny when the prime minister learned of the indiscretion. "Gerda Munsinger knew Pierre Sévigny as a man. He knew her as a woman. End of epitaph," said veteran journalist Peter C. Newman, the parliamentary correspondent who chronicled the period in two books. Former Southam News bureau chief Don McGillivray, who lived up the street from the Sévignys in Westmount, recalled: "He was a decent human being, and one of the better ministers in Diefenbaker's cabinet. "He didn't deserve to be singled out. The gal he consorted with was innocuous, although it didn't seem so at the time." The scandal ruined Sévigny financially. He started teaching public finance part time at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) in 1967 to pay the bills and became a full professor at the university in 1980.
Students who had no idea of his background found him an engaging and stimulating professor. He returned to active politics in 1971 and ran unsuccessfully for the leadership of the provincial Union Nationale party: he polled 26 of the 2,200 votes cast.
In 1978 he founded a short-lived right-wing provincial political party, Les Démocrates.
Incidentally, Sévigny finally got to be in a movie. As he walked through the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in 1979, he was cast on the spot in a Robert Mitchum film, Agency.
He played a backroom politician.
Funeral arrangements will be completed today.
[email protected]
Obituary of Lt.-Col. Pierre Sévigny
© Copyright 2004 Montreal Gazette
Lets turn this question around ,why not the Canadians?Musashi wrote:[ The same about Dieppe. Why did the Canadians land there and not the British? They had so close...
You seem to be implying that the British used the Canadians because they knew it would be a failure.... Seeing they didn't, in what way can the British be blamed for their choice of units.
Were the British only supposed to use British units in their battles against the Axis, in case the allied formations suffered casulties :roll:
Uh oh, I`m joining this thread quite late, but I`m jumping straight to some facts I`d like to mention
Enigma - In my opinion, Polish and British contribution in this case was equal. Remember this. Poles worked it out in late 30`s, managed to get a complete machine and produce some copies, broke all the simple and a little more complicated codes at that time. As far as I remember, in early 1939 emissaries of France and Britain were asked to come for a secret meeting, where they recieved fully built copies of Enigma machines, plans, and codes etc., basically everything Polish scientists knew about Enigma at that time.
The story is, both countries were astonished by this, which is obvious, when you get a gift of unimaginable value just like that. Of course, Germans didn`t sit around and with every year codes were getting more difficult to breake and the machine more sophiscicated. Actually, by 1940 codes previously broken by Poles were already useless, unless you`d like to read some minor importancy messages between German post offices for example
Britts weren`t given Enigma codes on the Polish plate. They had to breake u-boot codes and everything they did for that was their own achievement. It`s like Enigma was a way of education, Poles done all the grades in the primary school, Britts took it to collage. I guess this comparision gives the best picture of it.
Enigma - In my opinion, Polish and British contribution in this case was equal. Remember this. Poles worked it out in late 30`s, managed to get a complete machine and produce some copies, broke all the simple and a little more complicated codes at that time. As far as I remember, in early 1939 emissaries of France and Britain were asked to come for a secret meeting, where they recieved fully built copies of Enigma machines, plans, and codes etc., basically everything Polish scientists knew about Enigma at that time.
The story is, both countries were astonished by this, which is obvious, when you get a gift of unimaginable value just like that. Of course, Germans didn`t sit around and with every year codes were getting more difficult to breake and the machine more sophiscicated. Actually, by 1940 codes previously broken by Poles were already useless, unless you`d like to read some minor importancy messages between German post offices for example
Britts weren`t given Enigma codes on the Polish plate. They had to breake u-boot codes and everything they did for that was their own achievement. It`s like Enigma was a way of education, Poles done all the grades in the primary school, Britts took it to collage. I guess this comparision gives the best picture of it.
While the Canadian land forces were considered good solid combat formations in WW2, they didn't gain a reputation as elite 'shock' troops as they did in WW1.Lord Gort wrote:I have always udnerstood Candians to be the eltie shcok troops of the Empire, or is that a hangover impression from the first world war?
regards,
Well, was he in 'Brygada Swietokrzyska', member of NSZ (National Armed Forces) ?Prit wrote:My practice manager's father is a veteran of WW2 - he was a partisan in Poland for much of the war, finally escaping overland to Czechoslovakia and on to the west. My practice manager bought him Davies' book for Christmas - I'll be interested to know what he makes of it.
Prit
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Musashi
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A very interesting British book:
http://www.questionofhonor.com/questionofhonor.htm
http://www.questionofhonor.com/questionofhonor.htm
1772-1918
Poland partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria.
1776-1781
Polish engineer Tadeusz Kosciuszko plays pivotal role in the Continental Army’s victory in the American Revolution.
1794
Kosciuszko leads a failed revolt against Poland’s Russian occupiers.
1918
Poland regains its independence following the collapse of the Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian empires after World War I.
1919
Merian Cooper and six other former U.S. Army pilots offer their services to Poland in the 1919-1920 Soviet-Polish war. The Americans call themselves the Kosciuszko Squadron – a squadron that will live on in the Polish Air Force after the Americans go home.
1939
Sept. 1 – Germany invades Poland. Britain and France declare war on Germany to begin World War II.
September 17– Under the 1939 treaty between Germany and Soviet Russia, the Red Army invades Poland from the east. Their country doomed, members of the Kosciuszko Squadron and thousands of other Polish military head for France to fight again.
1940
June – France falls, and Polish airmen escape to Britain.
August 2 –One of two all-Polish squadrons is formed at Northolt, outside London. The RAF calls it the 303 Squadron, but Polish pilots prefer “the Kosciuszko Squadron.”
August 31 – After weeks of training, the Kosciuszko Squadron sees its first combat in the Battle of Britain; shoots down six German planes.
Sept. 7 – On the first day of the London Blitz, the Kosciuszko Squadron is credited with fourteen German kills, an RAF record.
October 31 – At the end of the Battle of Britain, the Kosciuszko Squadron is credited with shooting down 126 German planes in six weeks of combat, more “kills” than were credited to any other squadron attached to the RAF during that same period. Nine of the KoKciuszko Squadron pilots become aces; five are awarded the RAF’s Distinguished Flying Cross.
1941
June 22 – Germany invades the Soviet Union, in the process driving the Red Army out of Poland.
July 30 – Poland signs a treaty with the Soviet Union at the behest of Winston Churchill.
September – New Polish army formed in USSR by Poles who had been deported earlier to Soviet gulags and collective farms. These Poles later become the Polish II Corps based in the Middle East.
1943
April 13 – German troops find the bodies of more than 4,000 Polish officers buried in Katyn forest in western Russia; Germany claims the Soviets are responsible for the murders.
April 19 – Jewish insurgents begin climactic phase of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
April 26 -- After the Polish government-in-exile asks for an International Red Cross investigation of Katyn, the Soviet Union severs diplomatic relations with Poland.
November – Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt secretly agree at the Tehran Conference to cede eastern Poland to Stalin.
1944
May 18-- The Polish II Corps captures Monte Cassino, opening the door to Rome.
August 1 –Poland’s Home Army launches an uprising in Warsaw against the city’s Nazi occupiers.
October – After two months of fighting without Allied help, the Home Army in Warsaw surrenders. Warsaw residents are sent to German labor and concentration camps; the city is razed.
1945
February – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin agree at Yalta that Poland should be governed by a provisional, Soviet-backed Communist regime.
May 7 – Germany surrenders; WWII in Europe is over.
July 5 – The United States and Britain withdraw formal recognition from the Polish government-in-exile in London and recognize the Soviet-backed, communist regime in Warsaw as the legitimate government of Poland.
1946
June 8 – The British government bars Polish forces under British command from marching in the Victory Parade out of fear of offending Stalin.
November 27 – The Kosciuszko Squadron is disbanded.
1989
Poland regains its independence.