What a man he was
This was taken from the November 7th issue of the Vancouver Courier. It was written by Ted Hunt, I was so moved by this article that I felt I had to post it.
Cecil Merritt
I was 11 when my father came home from the Second World War after five and a half years with the Canadian Army’s Port Company. He didn’t say much. Dad kissed my mother Betty and gave me a bone-crushing hug against his khaki field uniform. Then it was upstairs to the bedroom where he took off his cap and medal bar to throw them into the back of a bureau drawer not to be seen again.
Next, he tugged his way out of those itchy olive-coloured clothes and packaged them for swift return to the Beatty Street Armoury, near where GM Place stands today.
Dad never mentioned the war, and discouraged any questions, until one night at dinner my grandfather asked him about the Canadian raid on Dieppe. I was amazed to see my father’s reaction–full of contempt and swelling emotion. He slammed the British generals who ordered Canadian troops into a slaughter reminiscent of the terrible charges on entrenched machine guns during the Great War of 1914-18. “That bastard Mountbatten screwed up. Twenty-eight tanks destroyed. Every bit of equipment lost. He should have known… he had a bloody summer home in Dieppe… the beaches were nothing but pebbles the size of baseballs… a man couldn’t run on them… just slide and sink. Tanks couldn’t move… disaster. Six thousand men… over 4,000 killed, wounded or taken prisoner… a 73 per cent… what waste! Like Gallipoli… send the colonials in… we might learn something… damn them!”
There was never a mention of the war again until July 12, 2000, when an obituary for Col. Cecil Merritt from Vancouver’s Seaforth Highlanders appeared in the newspaper. British Columbia’s oldest Victoria Cross winner, Merritt was 91.
My father, surprisingly, read the full report avidly before handing it to me. With a shake of his head and quiet voice he said, “What a man. What a man he was.” It was then I learned about this Canadian soldier–born to lead and destined to serve, so that the rest of us could enjoy a freedom sorely won by gallant men and women in the face of Adolf Hitler’s noxious folly.
Cecil Ingersoll Merritt was born Nov. 10, 1908 in Stanley Park on the kitchen table of the home occupied by his mother’s family. This residence later became the park superintendent’s, but at the time, Sophie Tupper (now Merritt) brought the first of three children into the world there, wondering if they might follow in the footsteps of her grandfather, Sir Charles Tupper, former prime minister of Canada and one of the founding fathers of Confederation.
Young Cecil attended nearby Lord Roberts elementary school until his father, Capt. Mack Merritt, was killed in April 1915 during the second Battle of Ypres as Canadians faced the chilling introduction of chlorine gas warfare.
His uncle, Reggie Tupper, also a Seaforth officer in the First World War, quickly assumed the role of stand-in father and arranged to have the boy attend University School in Victoria. After that it was the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont. where his life turned toward service to country under the motto: Truth, Duty, Valour. Following graduation, Uncle Reg took Cecil on as an apprentice with the firm of Bull, Housser and Tupper where he became a lawyer. A big man, over six feet and 200 pounds, he played football for the Vancouver Athletic Club on McBride Park at Fourth and Blenheim rivaling my father’s club, the Meralomas from Connaught Park. He also joined the Seaforth Highlanders at their armory near the Burrard Bridge beginning preparation for the most ruinous conflict of the 20th century–which everyone knew was coming.
On Sept. 10, 1939, Canada declared war on Germany. The newspaper boys woke us at dawn with their strident call: “Extra, extra. Canada at War. Read all about it!” My father grabbed a nickel, and with bare feet ran out onto our street (ironically enough named Waterloo). Back in the kitchen, as he read the newspaper, a strange look came over his face; a curious elation, I thought–quite different from the fright in my mother’s brown eyes. Not long after, father was gone along with thousands of other young Vancouverites, including Cec Merritt who, as an officer and captain with the Seaforths, was transferred to the South Saskatchewan Regiment and promoted to lieutenant-colonel. The brass obviously had something in mind for him.
Merritt recounted during a Veterans Affairs interview in 1946 how his mother reacted when her three children left in uniform. Cec was sent to the wind-swept Isle of Wight. Bill went off to the invasion of Sicily, and Beatrice drove lorries in England with the Canadian Women’s Army Corps. Before leaving Cec said, “I want you to know, mother, that I realize what you must feel about losing your family again.” She replied, “I don’t want you to go, but I’d kick you out of the house if you didn’t.”
The three Merritts endured a fearful nine day troop-ship voyage across frigid North Atlantic waters and the U-boat network, to land in an England preparing to repulse the expected invasion by Nazi Germany. There was desperation in the minds of the Allied military leaders to somehow strike caution–if not fear–in the path of Hitler’s unhindered Blitzkrieg advances across Europe.
Hitler held a romantic notion about the brotherhood of Anglo-Saxons believing that Britain might join him. However, Winston Churchill’s famous speech to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940, just after the dramatic Dunkirk rescue of 338,000 English and French troops by 1,000 little English ships must have convinced Hitler just how wrong was his assumption. Churchill promised Parliament: “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
With that complete rejection of his fantasy, Hitler ordered his generals to proceed with “Operation Sea Lion” to eliminate the British homeland as a base for carrying on the war against Germany. The watching world had no doubt that Britain was the last bastion of hope as a launching pad for massive retaliation one day. But that day was far off, and the date of invasion was scheduled for Sept. 15, 1940.
It must be difficult for young men and women of today to imagine the fear, and feel the dread of those years, especially if parents had been so affected by the predicament of the free world, that they could not bear to discuss it. Things went from bad to worse. Fear was a constant, nagging distraction from everything normal and comforting. Consider for example, the impact on a class of eight year olds at Bayview school when issued brown bakelite numbered discs to hang around our necks. Asked what they were for, the young teacher answered, “So they can identify bodies after an air-raid.”
Paris had fallen, and Nazi guns were 25 miles away across the English Channel. Morale hit rock bottom as nightly bombing raids pounded Britain’s docks, cities, and factories for 57 consecutive nights. But Lt.-Col. Merritt had listened to Churchill’s promise that: “We shall not be content with a defensive war,” and therefore settled in for the long months of commando training on the Isle of Wight–just waiting for the day when his South Saskatchewan Regiment would be called upon.
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Hope was nothing more than a faint glimmer, but on one sunny afternoon in September, days before the dreaded onset of Operation Sea Lion, Hermann Goering–commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, which boasted an advantage of three to one–sent a daylight bombing raid of 600 Heinkel bombers accompanied by Messerschmidt fighter planes. In heroic and desperate action, Spitfire fighters of the Royal Air Force along with Hurricane aircraft of the Royal Canadian Air Force hurled themselves at this menace and shot it from the sky.
Allied pilots–many only 19 years of age–flew flight after flight, without sleep, without pause–returning for new ammunition and petrol as they drove the enemy back. It was the first victory of the war for the Allies.
Hitler’s Operation Sea Lion was delayed until spring 1941, giving the Allies time to plan. Hitler had made a mistake, and then he erred again when he attacked Russia and created a second front. How should the Allies capitalize on these blunders?
The Allied generals under the command of Lord Louis Mountbatten knew they must invade Europe to beat the Nazis back into Germany to make Europe free again. There would have to be trials–with errors–to test German defenses on the north coast of “Fortress Europe” and to rehearse the inevitable massive invasion of Normandy. It was decided that a reconnaissance commando raid named “Operation Jubilee” would answer many questions, and it was concluded that 5,000 Canadians would test the strength of Nazi defenses while supported by 100 U.S. Rangers and 50 British commandos. There were five beaches to be taken before link-ups could occur.
After a 10-mile ride in a landing craft on Aug. 19, 1942, Merritt stepped onto French soil at “Green Beach” near Pourville, only to find that the main body of his men had come ashore on the wrong side of the Scie River that separated the South Saskatchewan Regiment from Merritt to the west. The only bridge across was later named Pont Claude-Monet on the east side honouring the French Impressionist painter, and the west side of the same bridge to be named Pont Cecil-Merritt for the Vancouver football player, who led his men through the brutal defensive fire sweeping the 200 metre bridge.
After fighting his way that far on a hot and furious morning amid pounding mortar and artillery fire, Merritt arrived at the bridge to find survivors bogged down with many casualties. He took off his helmet, dragged a sleeve over a sweaty forehead then waved the helmet toward the east calling, “Come on over. There’s nothing to it.”
Remarkably, he led at least four groups across the bridge (some swinging above the water on the under-girders) and organized them into raiding parties against Pourville’s high fortifications on the cliffs above the beach. “Follow me. Don’t bunch up. Here we go.”
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Merritt himself tossed grenades through the firing ports of one concrete pillbox to silence that obstacle. Although wounded twice, the lieutenant-colonel took over for communication runners when they were downed, so that he could keep the other companies going.
His son, Cecil Jamieson Merritt, recalled that although their father never spoke of his injuries, his family could see the entry wounds at the shoulder, and another in the abdomen, noting that the front scars were far smaller than the exit scars. When asked how his father could have continued when wounded, he said, “That’s the way he was. Dad knew it was his duty to serve. It was his heritage. William Hamilton Merritt, his great, great grandfather defended Canada in the war of 1812; his uncle Reggie was wounded with the Seaforths in World War I; his father, also with the Seaforths, had been killed at Ypres. It was only natural for him to carry on.”
Harassed by a sniper, Merritt tracked the concealed man down and silenced him with a Bren gun. Then, as the nine-hour battle was up, Merritt received orders to withdraw. He armed a squad of eight officers with the army’s best weapon: Bren light machine-guns–”reliable, robust and accurate”–to cover his men off the beach and to “get even” with the enemy. His rear-guard action held back German troops until the boats were clear. When out of ammunition, Merritt sent a German prisoner to announce their surrender. (”It was just target practice for the Germans by this time,” he explained in his Veterans Affairs interview). Of his captors, he said, “They were soldiers. Just soldiers, and they treated us properly.”
Merritt was sent to POW camp Oflag VIIB in Bavaria where many of his South Saskatchewan troops were waiting for him with the news that he had been awarded the Victoria Cross–posthumously–for “matchless gallantry.” But Merritt was far from dead. He organized an escape for 64 men through a 120-foot tunnel. There was a moment of claustrophobic panic when he became wedged in a turn between two rocks while crawling through the tunnel in the dark–and there was no backing up with men pushing up behind him. Although soon re-captured and sentenced to 14 days of solitary confinement, Merritt organized another escape, which immediately earned him a transfer to Colditz Castle, the stern medieval prison reserved for “incorrigible Allied Officers.” Colditz was located in Leipzig near the mountains of south Germany and was considered by the Gestapo to be escape-proof. Merritt was finally released by American soldiers in 1945. Of his two years and eight months in captivity (or by a POW’s reckoning: three Christmases away from family), Merritt dismissed any praise of his actions, stating, “My war was only nine hours long. For some, it was all the way from Sicily to Berlin. Prison was an enforced idleness. It cannot be translated into virtue.” He also let it be known that if it had not been for the Red Cross parcels and the Cowichan sweater his family sent, he might have frozen or starved to death.
In 1945, Merritt returned home to his wife and two boys Cecil and Peter, to find a nomination from the Progressive Conservative Party waiting. They wanted him to represent Vancouver-Burrard in the upcoming federal election, and this he accepted for a three-year term from 1946 to 1949. He also agreed to act as the colonel in command of Vancouver’s detachment of Seaforth Highlanders.
Historians argue over the benefits of the Dieppe raid in which Cecil Merritt and 5,000 Canadians participated with only 2,000 returning. Experts say the raid failed because tanks could not function on the pebbled beach, the pre-landing air and sea bombardment was insufficient, and that the entrenchment of the German defenses had been greatly under-rated. Military experts asked, “How many lives does it take to examine a defensive position? Does reconnaissance require a debacle?” It was small satisfaction to survivors that these lessons proved useful in Normandy’s Operation Overlord success two years later, on June 6, 1944.
Those men who, to ensure our freedom, willingly charged into the devastation of Dieppe 66 years ago deserve our sober thoughts today as we review the obligations required to sustain freedom. As my father said of Cec Merritt: “That was one hell of a man.” We can only stand in awe and agree, what men were they all.
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