At dawn on 19 August 1942, five thousand Allied soldiers landed at the French port of Dieppe in the first major test of the defence of the German-held coastline of Europe since Dunkirk. The codename given to the operation was 'Jubilee' and its aim was to capture Dieppe and the headlands which dominate the town, hold them for a few hours and provide the Allied war planners with the vital information they needed about enemy preparedness for the Second Front demanded by the Russians to relieve their sorely-pressed armies in the East.

In nine hours of carnage and horror 'Jubilee' became a disaster. A combination of over-rigid planning, inadequate supporting firepower and, in the final hours before the raid, sheer bad luck, inflicted on the Allies one of their worst defeats in a war which was already going badly. British Commandos carried out the flank attacks against coastal gun batteries which dominated the seaward approaches to Dieppe and one of these raids, led by Lord Lovat, was spectacularly successful. But the assault on the port itself and the beaches on either side of Dieppe, the task of the Canadian 2nd Division, was a disastrous and bloody failure. Of the 5,000 men who took part almost 3,500 were killed captured or wounded, some of the Canadian units involved suffered ninety percent causalities.