Narration from an unnamed male and Dennis Whitaker its transcribed in full.
[START: 00:00]
Narrator: On the main beaches, the bloody story was being repeated. Men of the Essex Scottish, Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, the Calgary Tanks, and Les Fusiliers-Mont Royal, fought a deadly and well-entrenched enemy.
Visual Description: Archival footage of large artillery guns, soldiers on streets with rifles.
[TIME: 00:17 ]
Dennis Whitaker: As we came into shore, the ramp went down, we had a drill where everybody ran out at top speed and spread out on the beach, and laid down. To collect ourselves, so to speak. This was accomplished, in our case fortunately, without
any incident. As we lay there in front of us, we could see three rolls of concertina barbed wire which we were supposed to blow. For this purpose we’d taken with us a bangalore torpedo, which is a long tube filled with explosive. This was placed underneath
the wire, a fuse lit, and the wire blown up. We had our first casualty at this point. A fellow named Bill Grant, who’d placed the bangalore, was shot through the head and killed. Another fellow went up and blew the wire.
Visual Description: The screen is clouded; a landing craft full of soldiers is on rough waters. Men disembark and run through the water and onto a rocky beach. Capt. Dennis Whitaker is shown.
[TIME: 01:13]
D.W.: This got us up the beach approximately 50 yards to a wall which was about 7 feet high with wire on top of it. This was swept by machine gun fire and there was no way we could get over the wall. To our right was the casino, a big building
which obviously would give us some protection. The casino was about 50 yards away. We legged it as fast as we could to the building. Fortunately nobody was shot in our race to casino. Inside the building, there were probably a platoon of German infantry
who had been partially cleared by some men from B company who had got in just before we did.
Visual Description: Capt. Dennis Whitaker speaks to the camera in front of a curtain. Aerial footage of the Dieppe coast is shown, with a focus on the large semi-circle casino building. Soldiers with guns run across the screen.
[TIME: 01:58]
D.W.: The object of my platoon was to get to a church and set up a battalion headquarters, which was some 1.5 blocks inside the town itself. Two or three lads and myself decided we would try to get across the esplanade and give the others some
cover so that they could come over behind us. We were shot at as we went across and when we got to a low wall we found that there was enemy behind us who were shooting at us. So obviously this was not a very healthy place to stay. I decided that somehow
we needed to get around through a gate and into the town. Here again we made another run for it. At this point we were not able to carry out our plan to give the others protection because we didn’t have any protection ourselves, we were really running
for our lives.
Visual Description: Capt. Dennis Whitaker speaks to the camera in front of a curtain. A soldier is shown firing through a hole in a wall. Several soldiers run cautiously through a debris filled street. Explosions and fire are shown. Men fire guns, hide behind walls, and cautiously run from position to position.
[TIME: 02:53]
D.W.: So we got through the wall, and ran across the main boulevard which runs along the front of the hotels which run from one end of the beach to the other. We ran across the road and into a theatre. When we got into the theatre we ran across
one or two other RHLI lads. We preceded to the other end of this and tried to get into the street. But here we ran into – they were filled with German infantry and there was no way that four or five of us were going to accomplish very much. We stayed
there for some time and then in much as there was really nothing that we could do, we decided to try to make our way back to the beach. So here we ran the gamut of all the fire back to the trench in front of the casino and then back into the casino.
Visual Description: Soldiers watch the scene outside through a window, hidden inside a building. Men fire guns from behind walls and atop piles of rubble. Capt. Dennis Whitaker speaks to the camera in front of a curtain.
[END: 03:48]
