World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF EUROPE: Rehearsal

The attack was scheduled for daybreak. In the close-packed boats moving toward the Continent, men loaded the magazines of their Bren guns and checked equipment. It was a hot, muggy night on a lifeless Channel.

Before dawn His Majesty's destroyers, transports and launches, chasseurs of the Fighting French Navy, a Polish destroyer and a mile-long string of invasion barges laden with troops and tanks were off Dieppe, hidden in the night's retreating skirts.

The strategy, long planned, was comparatively simple. The Commandos were to land by stealth and distract German forces in Berneval, four...

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