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Auction: 19003 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 271

A fine 'Dieppe Raid 1942' group of six awarded to Staff Sergeant L. H. Hodgson, Royal Engineers, late Canadian Army Medical Corps, who landed in the third wave on 19 August; he worked feverishly tending his comrades as they fell under the intense hail of enemy fire

It wasn't long before he also became a casualty, the result of a piece of shrapnel that tore into his left arm. Not to be perturbed, Hodgson simply tended himself and got back to work under the galling fire, later giving a first-hand account of the famous scenes on the beaches

1939-45 Star; France and Germany Star; Defence Medal 1939-45, silver; Canadian Voluntary Service Medal 1939-45, with overseas clasp; War Medal 1939-45, silver; General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Malaya (22562028 S/Sgt. L. H. Hodgson. R.E.), mounted as worn, minor contact marks to fifth and sixth, otherwise very fine (6)

Louis H. Hodgson was born in 1919, the son of Harry Hodgson of 60, King Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He worked as Cub Master to the 7th Kitchener Pack of Cubs, before enlisting at Picton for the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment in October 1939. Posted overseas to England a month later, he served with the Canadian Army Medical Corps as an instructor in chemical warfare and anatomy at a time when there was a very real fear amongst the population of British cities that the aeroplane - and later the rocket - gave belligerents the means to use chemical and biological agents for strategic purposes on fixed targets. Despite the fact that all sides in one way or another declared their opposition to such warfare, all pronouncements reserved the right of retaliation, Churchill remarking:

'We are ourselves firmly resolved not to use this odious weapon unless it is used first by the Germans' (Preparing for What Never Came: Chemical and Biological Warfare in World War II, by Stephen McFarland, refers).

Their extensive use during the Great War - and later in Ethiopia and China - made the British population extremely nervous, heightened by the first synthesis of the 'G-Series' nerve agent Tabun in 1936 by German scientist Gerhard Schrader, and the discovery of Sarin in 1939. Hodgson was clearly a busy man at that time.

Dieppe Raid - shrapnel wound

Operation 'Jubilee' - more commonly known as the Dieppe Raid - marked the largest scale combined operation to date against the defences of enemy-occupied Europe. It provided the first test of German defences on the ground, whilst also determining the importance of air power during such an undertaking and the extent to which aircraft might be utilised in any projected cross-Channel assault upon the continent.

In the summer of 1942 the Allies were facing significant challenges in Europe and Asia, and struggling to deal with Rommel's forces in North Africa. From Moscow, Stalin demanded help to ease the pressure from the German juggernaut, whilst in Washington American politicians and military advisors were calling for a 'Second Front' long before the Allies had the capacity to launch one. As a result, Churchill was under pressure; a big raid testing the viability of seizing a defended port seemed the solution.

Departing Newhaven on the night of 18 August 1942, an armada of destroyers, motor gunboats, landing craft and motor launches crossed the Channel and made landfall on six beaches at around 0450hrs. Comprising approximately 6,050 infantrymen - predominantly Canadian - including 1,000 British Commandos and 50 United States Army Rangers, supported by the Calgary Regiment of the 1st Canadian Tank Brigade, the first main landing on Red and White beaches resulted in heavy losses and an inability to clear the obstructions and sea wall (The Dieppe Raid, by Julian Thompson, refers).

Captain Denis Whitaker of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry recalled a scene of absolute carnage and confusion, with soldiers being cut down by fire all along the sea wall, while his Commanding Officer, Colonel Bob Labatt, desperately tried to use a broken radio to contact General Roberts whilst ignoring his men (A Battle Doomed to Fail for all the Wrong Reasons, Arthur Kelly, refers). The late arrival of just 29 tanks heightened the Allied predicament, and only 15 eventually made it into the town, the remainder having been knocked out by German artillery or become bogged down in the soft shingle and steep relief.

Arriving with the third wave, Hodgson's first taste of battle involved witnessing two regiments being driven back before even getting a toehold on the French coastline:

'Then the machine guns went in and opened a way for us.'

Landing with the advance dressing station, he immediately set about tending to the wounded. In an interview given to a local newspaper a few weeks later, Hodgson describes what he witnessed:

'It was absolute hell. You've seen the pictures in the movies that were fakes but looked pretty awful. Well, it was something like that, only worse'.

Struck in the left arm by a piece of shrapnel - likely from well concealed German mortars which were peppering the beach - Hodgson 'slapped a dressing on the wound' and kept on working:

'That's all I could do,' he said.

As the morning wore on, it became clear that the Port could not be held and so evacuation swung into full effect. Crouched down in a barge on the way home, Hodgson witnessed the protecting wings of the air force sheltering his convoy:

'They were just like a complete hood over us. Boy, it was the finest show I ever saw in my life. If it hadn't been for the air force I don't think a man would have been able to get out.'

His words successfully resonated the scale of loss and destruction that morning; of the nearly 5,000 strong Canadian contingent, 3,367 were killed, wounded or taken prisoner, representing an exceptional casualty rate of 68%. The British Commandos lost 247 men, whilst the Royal Navy lost the destroyer H.M.S. Berkeley and 33 landing craft, suffering approximately 550 dead or wounded. The R.A.F. lost 106 aircraft, in contrast to the 48 lost by the Luftwaffe. Mountbatten later justified the Raid by arguing that the lessons learned at Dieppe in 1942 were put to good use later in the war. He subsequently claimed:

'I have no doubt that the Battle of Normandy was won on the beaches of Dieppe. For every man who died in Dieppe, at least 10 more must have been spared in Normandy in 1944.'

Evacuated to England, Hodgson was sent home to Canada within a few days and given orders to report to the Headquarters of Military District No. 2 at Kingston. It was here that he recalled the horrors of Dieppe to a local journalist, being afterwards keen to turn to a lighter and much more pleasant subject; his marriage in England to 'an attractive, dark-eyed brunette', whom he met at a dance in 1940 and hoped to be reunited with soon; sold with a copied contemporary newspaper article bearing a photograph of Hodgson and his wife.


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Sold for
£600

Starting price
£420