Darren baker takes a look at a no holds barred book from Frontline Books titled ''The Dieppe Raid the Combined Operations Assault on Hitler''s European Fortress, August 1942''.

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Thanks for the review of this Darren. I just finished reading "A Day in August" by David O'Keeffe. I have a Calgary Regiment Dingo in the pipeline. I think I am going to have read this one as well. The whole operation is both extremely interesting as well as devastating.

It is a very interesting operation to read more about.

There has been a theory put forward that Dieppe was a mission to capture an enigma coding machine. Regardless of that being truth or fiction, one thing is certain - The success of the D-Day landings was largely due to lessons learned on the beach of Dieppe.

Lastly, without a doubt memories of the heavy Canadian losses at Dieppe served to fuel soldiers of the 3rd Canadian Infantry as they pushed farther inland than any other landing force on D-Day.

Regardless of the fiction that this book helps to perpetuate the actual tasked mission of the Commando unit sent in with the Canadians was to capture the two-rotar version of the Enigma machine. The Canadians were only there to provide cover while the Commandos searched -largely in vain- for the Naval commander's headquarters building which had been misidentified. For the life of me I can't recall if that part was a success when the Commandos withdrew but the Canadians were left holding the bag and ended up IN the bag, as it were. The mission was declared Top Secret as part of the Ultra program and only recently was that section declassified so I'm honestly startled that this book makes no reference to the REAL mission. Churchill hated Stalin and wouldn't cross the street to you know what on him if Stalin was on fire. And the target was otherwise a poor choice unless you had other plans in mind...