Legislative 1 Parliament BL Victoria, V8v 1x4

lorary,

Ca:

Vol. 40, No. 66

ws ©

CASTLEGAR) BRITISH COLUMBIA, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1987

3 Sections (A, B &C)

Veterans remember Dieppe

DIEPPE, FRANCE (CP) — Georges Giguere stood silently on the bow of the English Channel ferry Versailles on Tuesday and watched the high brown- and grey-flecked cliffs of Dieppe slowly grow in the distance.

A seagull cried mournfully overhead as the 66-year-old Montreal resident remembered that day 45 years ago today when about 5,000 Canadians stormed ashore in an ill-fated Second World War raid.

Nine hours later, more than 3,300 of them were dead, wounded or prisoners of the Germans.

As the ferry approached the French port Tuesday, Giguere finally said, slowly, haltingly as the memories rushed back?

“When I landed in Dieppe (45 years ago), I asked one of my comrades on my left: ‘Is it raining?’

“It was (actually) bright sunshine.

“He said: ‘No, it’s bullets (blackening the air).’ "

Giguere, president of the Dieppe Veterans Association, added: “How I didn’t get hit, I don’t know. I guess God was

de f

THE HUDDLE . . . Viviana Abenante and some of the children from the Castlegar Library's summer reading program put their heads together to devise a plan to

Three of his close Montreal school buddies were among the more than 900 Canadians killed that day on the 1.5-kilometre-wide strip of shale and rock.

Giguere remembers the horror well.

Within minutes of janding, the Allied boats were destroyed by German shore batteries and the Canadian troops, who made up five'sixths of the attacking force, were pinned down by massive German firepower on the surrounding cliffs.

“We were just like a bunch of rats (caught in a trap),” h said. “The last order I heard was: ‘Every man for himsel!

WAS CAPTURED

Giguere spent five or six hours hiding under what scant cover he could find on the beach before being captured.

He spent the next 33 months as a prisoner of war — a situation he still recalls as horrible.

“We had our hands tied for 54 days,” he said. “On no occasion were we untied. To go to the washroom, we had to undo the fly of our comrades and they would do the same for us. It was degrading.”

Earlier on the ferry, Veterans Affairs Minister George Hees rekindled old arguments about the raid by accusing the top Allied generals who planned it of “stupidity of the highest degree.”

Hees, who was serving in England at the time with the Canadian Army but who did not participate in the raid, said his first visit to Dieppe years later left him

invasion of German-held Europe, two years later.

“But it was a very, very sad thing that so many men had to be killed and such a disaster take place to learn what not to do.”

It was a far different reception for the Canadian war veterans who returned to these-shores Tuesday.

Once he saw the naked, isolated beach wide open to the big German guns on the heights, he said, he couldn't believe anyone would have ordered such an attack.

“It is unbélievable that any sane person could send troops against a beach like that,” Hees told reporters hours before the ferry landed at Dieppe. “There never was a chance.”

Hees praised the men who died and who survived for trying to carry out “impossible” orders.

LEARNS LESSONS

Hees agreed with the Allied planners who ordered the raid and their latter-day defenders who say it taught them lessons important to the success of D-Day, the Allied

Dieppe waving Canadian flags leaned from balconies of shops and homes overlooking the port, and thinly lined barricades surrounding the ferry terminal.

yy clapped as the green- and blue-jacketed former soldiers, sailors and airmen, many bedecked with rows of medals, walked down the gangway to the shore.

The welcome was hospitable, and the memories of so many Canadians dying were uppermost in the minds of the visiting veterans.

‘You know, in battle, you never believe that it (being killed) is something that will happen to you,” one grizzled veteran on the ferry said as Dieppe came into view.

“(But) that wasn't true over there,” he said, pointing. “I was sure I was going to die.”

beat their opponents in a

summer-time game of “Wizards and Giants.”

Cosews Photo by Mike Kalesniko

never regret. help of a “It’s bringing

something $40,000 grant from the City of _ that: alot of people have, been

z

es $

= uesday night, z ysically moved"

od and lot at the north end of the ish » street parking lot.

John Charters, Heritage Advisory Committee, spoke to council and said delighted with the news. al

“I think it's excellent,” be ay

of the «py

a alpine said Charters, “It

the responsibility, toa greater have tmayed.

degree, on Castlegar and its citizens ‘The $40,000 is expected to cover he is asa whole, rather than acting as an aspects

bod

News good and bad

By CasNews Staff

An agreement to defer interest payments on a $2.4 million Industrial Development Subsidiary Agreement could mean both good and bad news for the City of Castlegar.

According to a letter presented at Castlegar city council Tuesday even. ing, Municipal Affairs Minister Rita Johnston has agreed to waive interest payments on Castlegar’s loan for five years starting last July 31. The agree ment will then be subject to review

“We expect that all IDSA clients will be relieved to know that all money paid

later with details of the loan agreement amendments.

In other news, if you are in the market for a good used fire truck, the City of Castlegar has one for sale.

The fire truck, which is almost 30 years old and no longer good for city use, is among dozens of objects up for grabs in a giant surplus sale.

Other items include 10 speed bi cykcles, typewriters, gun cases and even a hooked rug.

Some of the items had been turned over to the RCMP but were never claimed and others are the city's office

Those objects not sold will be sent to an auction sale. A tender date will be released.

Also, the B.C. Health Association is asking the City of Castlegar to help persuade nurses to move to the area.

The association wants Castlegar to prepare a presentation to be shown ata nursing Recruitment Fair held in the fall in Vancouver which would “demon- strate the attractiveness of your region as a place to live and work.”

Council will forward the letter to the Chamber of Commerce and the Castle- gar Development Board to prepare a

Kidnapped journalist wrote with blood

WASHINGTON (REUTER) — Kid. napped American journalist Charles Glass said Tuesday he wrote messages in his own blood asking for help before working out the escape plan which freed him from two months of captivity in Lebanon.

Glass said his escape early Tuesday from a seventh-floor Beirut apartment while his captors slept was a near last-ditch bid for freedom because his kidnappers were becoming impatient with him

In an inteview with his former employers, the ABC television net work, Glass described for the first time in 62 days of captivity during which he said he was chained, blindfolded and threatened.

Glass said the first death threat was made within eight hours of his kid napping on a Beirut street by four men who also took as hostages the son of Lebanon's defence minister and their driver. They have since been released.

“I asked for water and one of the guards said ‘why water? You death. You no need water.’ ”

Glass said that for the first week he was left alone, blindfolded and chained top a bed.

“j just lay there most of the time, quietly. And waited for them, occa sionally to bring me meals, or go to to the bathroom.”

MADE CONFESSION

Glass described how he was forced to make a false videotape confession of working for the Central Intelligence Agency while a gun was held at his head throughout the filming.

“There was a gun pointed at my head a few feet away during the entire time that I was reading it,” he said. “And they assured me if I didn’t read it word for word I would be dead.”

Glass described ploys he used on the videotape to let the world know the confession was false

He said he crossed his fingers while holding the statement prepared by his kidnappers, read it as ungrammatically as possible and spoke in a southern ac cent to indicate he was held in south Beirut.

Glass said during the month spent at

the first location he was held he worked out a way to get messages to the outside world by pushitg seraps of paper through a window fan when he was taken to the toilet

“Over a period of a couple of weeks any opportunity I had I was pushing these notes out of the window. I began writing the notes in my own blood because I didn't have a pen,” said.

In the messages, which were written in Arabic, French and English, he said he wrote: “I am Charles Glass, I am a hostage. Please call such and such people at such and such numbers

“Help me. I have a wife and five children in London. If you ean help me I will give you $10,000.”

FINDS NOTES

Until his captors gave him a pen to write to his wife, Glass used sticks, pins and nails, cutting himself with a razor to use his blood for ink. After two weeks, Glass said, a guard found one of the notes and he was moved to

Glass

continued on page A2

to service these development loans will now go entirely to reducing indebted. ness,” Johnston states, “rather than, in the main, merely meeting charges.”

But City Administrator Dave Gairns later explained that though the loan deferrment is good news, he said the letter leaves “a lot left unsaid.”

He said the letter seems to indicate an “obvious extended loan agreement” and the letter also implies that the government still wants to be paid up until July 31

The Ministry of Economic Develop. BI ment will be contacting city council

FOR THE RECORD

story in the Aug. 5, 1987 Gain News reported that 483 people died as a result of drinking and driving in the central Kootenay area in 1985. In fact, 483 was the total number of deaths for all of British Columbia. Thirteen people were killed in the central Kootenay area while three died in the Castle- gar area. This information was con tained in the 1986 annual report of

supplies.

interest

BIG REDS:

performances

the Central Kootenay Health Unit.

inside

B-BALL CAMP: The ninth annwal Rockettes basketball camp is, being held at Stanley Humphrie:

secondary school all this week .

TOP NAZI: The man who caught Hitler’s deputy Herman Hess would have shot him if he had known

Tomatoes are growing bigger than ever before in Castlegar gardens with some reaching up to 2 Ibs

WIN MEET: The Castlegar Aquanauts won the swim meet last weekend in Greenwood and Robson River Otters also had some top

TENT SHOW: WINNIPEG (CP) evangelists on the straight and narrow, suggests Claude A. Gagnon as he practises what he preaches out of a condy-striped tent pitched in the middle of downtown Winnipeg

“All those TV preachers, they all started out in the street like me, but now they've got multi-million-dollar buildings ond look what it's done to them,” he sald in a recent interview

“want to keep this tent ministry going because this is old fashioned religion.”

suitable presentation.

A2

A3

B2

Working out of a tent can help keep