RED BEACH: World War II Veteran Harold Scharfe was with the Royal Canadian Army's Essex Scottish Regiment and participated on the ill-fated raid on German-held Dieppe, France in 1942. He died Sept. 26.








Thursday, October 9, 2008
WWII vet, remembered for raid on Dieppe, France, dies

Harold Scharfe, 86, had his role in WWII and years as a POW documented on national TV.

By MICHAEL MELLO
The Orange County Register
Comments 0| Recommend 0

ANAHEIM HILLS – Harold Scharfe, who participated in the disastrous raid on Dieppe, France, during WWII, died Sept. 26.
He lived in Anaheim Hills and had been interviewed many times about the raid, whose lessons were used to make the D-Day invasion more successful, and his years as a POW in Germany.
"I landed right in the middle of the thing," Scharfe said in a Register story that ran last year.
The morning of Aug. 19, 1942, saw one of the Allies' worst defeats during World War II: About half of the nearly 6,000 servicemen who stormed the beaches of Dieppe, France, were killed or dragged away by the Nazis to languish in prison camps until the end of the war. Scharfe served that day as a member of the Essex Scottish Regiment of the Royal Canadian Army.
Scharfe was still in high school when he enlisted.
In the POW camps, Scharfe took a diary given him by the Red Cross and carefully sketched the details of his surroundings; the barbed wired fences, the warning signs in German and slightly-broken English.
In 2006, he returned to France with some of the few other raid survivors to dedicate a memorial in Dieppe.
"That was the biggest thing in my life," he said. "I was lucky enough to have missed the bullets and mortar shells."
He often spoke at local schools about his experiences during the war. Last year, he also recounted his experiences on national television for Oliver North's show, "War Stories."

News: Dieppe raid veteran passes | scharfe, war, raid, dieppe, france - OCRegister.com

__________________


For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

R.I.P. Sir, we will remember your dedication through the 2006 Dieppe Memorial

__________________

R.I.P. Harold!

__________________

Sounds like a great man, and this is a great loss. R.I.P.

__________________
My Grandfathers Uncle: Stanley Halldin, 981st Field Artillery Battalion.

Dieppe Raid veteran Harold Scharfe

A Windsor-born war veteran who lied about his age to go fight Hitler, then survived the disastrous raid on Dieppe only to spend the next three years in concentration camps, has died.

Harold Scharfe died Sept. 26 in California, where he moved 40 years ago, at the age of 86. Despite moving his family to California, Scharfe was still involved in veteran affairs in Canada. He represented the Essex Scottish Regiment when he returned to France in 2006, with some of the few other Dieppe survivors, to dedicate a memorial there.

Scharfe was a member of the Essex Scottish on Aug. 19, 1942 when he and 6,000 other soldiers stormed the beaches of Dieppe under heavy fire from German troops.

Of the 553 Essex Scottish soldiers to hit that beach, 105 were killed in action and 16 later succumbed to their injuries. Only 52 escaped the bloodbath aboard rescue vessels that took them back to England. The rest were marched off to German prison camps, where they lived in deplorable conditions until the end of the war.

"I spent 13 months in chains and I marched all the way across Germany in a death march," he told The Star in the early 1990s. "Let me say I don't have the greatest memories of Dieppe."

Scharfe kept a war log during his time as a prisoner of war. In it, he described how he bribed German guards with cigarettes and shaved with hot tea because there was no running water.

Scharfe often returned to Windsor over the years to mark Dieppe anniversaries and other military milestones. He was a 17-year-old student at Patterson Collegiate when he lied about his age and enlisted, eager to help stop Hitler's advance into Europe.

"I would come home every day and change into civilian clothes for dinner, pretending I was still in high school," he once told The Star. It worked until a family friend saw him on parade on Ouellette Avenue. But his family couldn't talk him out of heading off to war. He shipped overseas in 1940 for commando training. A year later, he was asked to be part of the Dieppe raid.

He called it "the biggest disaster of the war," but still believed it made a difference because it taught the Allies valuable military lessons that helped make the D-Day invasion a success.
"Freedom is not free," he told The Star in 2006. "Someone had to pay for it and we all need to remember that."

http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/ne...c-da2f3c2bf013

__________________

American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!