Veteran of ill-fated raid on Nazi-occupied port

Born: January 6, 1920;

Died: March 5, 2017

LESLIE Tetler, who has died aged 97, was the last survivor of Canada's Essex Scottish regiment which took part in the ill-fated allied Second World War raid on the Nazi-occupied French port of Dieppe on August 19, 1942.

Mr Tetler was captured within hours and spent the rest of the war in the Stalag Luft V111-B prisoner-of-war camp near Lamsdorf in Silesia (now Lambinowice in Poland) until liberated by US forces in late May 1945. Although he was English-born, Mr Tetler's kilted Canadian regiment was based on its historic Scottish equivalents and Scotland became a massive influence in his life.

"He just loved the pipes, reminding him of the camaraderie among his fellow soldiers," his daughter Betty told The Herald. "He went to the Scottish Club here in Windsor (Ontario) to raise a pint or two, or a wee dram, and dance with my mother Susan until her death in 2006."

The Dieppe raid (Operation Jubilee) was widely seen as a disaster at the time, but it taught the allies a costly lesson which became crucial to the success of D-Day almost two years later.

Unlike D-Day, the Germans knew the allies were coming for Operation Jubilee, and exactly where and when. The allied force, mostly Canadian and British with the support of 50 US Army Rangers, were sitting ducks and were forced to retreat within six hours: but not before more than 3,000 allied troops - the majority Canadian - were killed, wounded or, like Private Tetler, captured as PoWs.

Private Tetler and his Canadian comrades later felt that they had been used as Churchill sought to test German defences on the French coast while knowing a successful invasion was impossible. “They called us guinea pigs,” Tetler recalled. “They knew we were coming. We were still three miles out when we got it.”

Of the 521 men of the Essex Scottish who had sailed from the Isle of Wight, only 51 made it back to England that day. In addition to 3,367 Canadians killed, wounded or captured, the 1,000 British commandos lost 247 men, the Royal Navy 550 dead or wounded, and the 50 US army Rangers saw six killed, seven wounded and four captured.

Yet both Churchill and the man who pushed for the raid, Lord Louis Mountbatten, claimed it was worth the loss. "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," Mountbatten insisted.

Private Tetler had landed on Red Beach at 0525 hours on August 19. His landing craft, No. 5, fired on by the Germans, dumped its soldiers 500 yards from the beach and Tetler had to swim ashore, abandoning some clothing, equipment and weapons. On the beach, he felt a rifle against his back, was told to drop his weapon and put his hands in the hair. His war was over. The fear was there the moment I stepped on the dead," Mr Tetler said.

In Stalag V111B, an overspill camp from the one made famous in the film The Great Escape, Mr Tetler recalled eating insects to stay alive when he slept on a cement floor without blankets, even during three harsh, snowy winters.

Many of his fellow PoWs perished from malnutrition. After a huge boil grew on his face, a Nazi "doctor" cut it out with a penknife, without an anaesthetic or sterile instruments, leaving him with a facial scar for the rest of his life.

Most days he worked 12 hours either in potato fields, coal mines or Nazi munitions factories as part of the Germans' forced labour Arbeitskommandos (Work Commandos). On one winter march across snow, he recalled carrying a Canadian comrade who had collapsed. A Nazi guard knocked Tetler down with his rifle butt and forced him to leave his friend to freeze to death. That image never left Mr Tetler until his dying day.

Leslie Tetler was born in Stockport, Greater Manchester, on January 6, 1920, to Fred and Annie (née Green) Tetler, who died during childbirth. When Fred emigrated to Canada in 1922, Leslie's aunts in England looked after him until his father got organized in Canada and brought young Leslie to Windsor, Ontario, when he was six. He became a Little League (junior) baseball coach, a golfer and, according to his daughter Betty, the Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey team's biggest fan.

After enlisting with the Essex Scottish, Private Tetler was given his dress uniform - a Clan MacGregor tartan kilt, scarlet doublet with sporran and a balmoral bonnet with red-and-white diced border.

After spending most of his war in the PoW camp, he felt lucky to be liberated by US troops rather than the Red Army which was moving in from the east. He had been placed on an often-fatal "Death March" by the Nazi camp's commanders in early 1945, when he painted P0W on his hat to avoid being targeted by allied warplanes. The Americans liberated him in late May, 1945.

In later life, he became a "snowbird," escaping the Canadian winters with his wife Susie in Pinellas Park near Tampa, Florida. "It’s very hard to believe that I’m the last one from the Essex Scottish at Dieppe," he said recently. “Why me? Other guys did the same thing I did. I think about my friends a lot, maybe every day. I watched a major get killed, my friend. A mortar fell in front of us. It was a rough day.”

"He was a fighter,” his daughter Betty told The Herald. "He fought through the PoW camp. He fought through a broken shoulder. He fought through a broken hip. He came back and still walked. He was just a fighter. He had such determination.”

Back in Canada after the war, he started a family and worked first as a car assembler for General Motors and later in the parcel delivery departments of several department stores. He was working for Sears department store until he retired in 1985.

When it became clear he was the last of the Essex Scottish Dieppe raiders, he was honoured by Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and in a song by Charlie Horner titled Last Man Standing.

Mr Tetler died in Windsor Regional Hospital, Ontario. His wife Susie (née Jackson) predeceased him. He is survived by his children Leslie, Roy and Betty, seven grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren.

PHIL DAVISON