Orders, Decorations and Medals

A fine Second World War Dieppe raid D.S.M. awarded to Sick Berth Attendant E. W. Foden, Royal Naval Auxiliary Sick Berth Reserve, who, with a Surgeon, R.N.V.R. as his only qualified assistant, had to deal with over 300 casualties brought aboard the destroyer H.M.S. Calpe: surrounded by small craft delivering their wounded from the beaches, she quickly attracted the attention of enemy shore batteries and the Luftwaffe - Foden ‘one time being blown across the ship by the blast of a near miss’

Distinguished Service Medal, G.VI.R. (X. 6085 E. W. Foden, S.B.A.), good very fine £3500-4000

D.S.M. London Gazette 2 October 1942:

‘For gallantry, daring and skill in the combined attack on Dieppe.’

The original recommendation states:

‘For untiring devotion to duty in assisting the Medical Officer with 306 casualties. Foden was at one time blown across the ship by the blast of a near miss. Despite this he carried on without rest.’

Ezra White Foden was undoubtedly at the very centre of events off Dieppe in August 1942, his ship, the Hunt-class destroyer H.M.S. Calpe, carrying the Headquarters Staff of the Naval Force Commander, Captain J. Hughes-Hallett, R.N., and the Military Force Commander, Major-General H. Roberts, in addition to Air Commodore Cole overseeing Fighter Control Operations with a mass of newly installed radio equipment - the latter was to be seriously wounded when Calpe’s bridge was strafed by enemy fighters. And because Combined Operations H.Q. under Mountbatten was in its infancy, and “Jubilee” shrouded in secrecy, the medical arrangements for the raid were largely of a short-notice nature - indeed Foden may well have been one of the Sick Berth Attendants called way from the R.N. Hospital Haslar just a few hours before the operation commenced.



In the event, having closed the shore to engage shore batteries and lay smoke, Calpe’s communications largely failed, and she ended up acting as a hospital ship, harrowing accounts of her decks strewn with dead, dying and wounded bearing testament to the horrific cost of operation “Jubilee”. In fact, by 0700 hours on 19th, less than two hours after the initial landings, she had taken on board some 200 wounded Canadians, yet the procession of small craft continued, their decks awash with blood, and their human cargo in need of urgent medical attention, among them seven men transferred from one of Commando C.O. Lord Lovat’s landing-craft - in his own words ‘a mistake, because she was already full of wounded men and very lucky not to be sunk’. Prophetic words indeed, for the ever growing flotilla of small craft lying-off Calpe gained not just the attention of the enemy shore batteries but also the Luftwaffe. On board, the scenes confronting S.B.A. Foden were simply horrific, one of the recently embarked Commandos - in fact “Pat” Porteous, V.C. - takes up the story:

‘The destroyer I was on went on trying to pick up all the awful mess that was going on outside Dieppe, the wounded and landing craft being sunk, absolutely appalling shambles. We were loaded with wounded, we had one bomb very near us from a Junkers. I was on a stretcher in the wardroom and all the lights went out and it was all rather frightening. However it didn’t seem to do any serious damage to the destroyer and we eventually returned to Portsmouth at about one o’clock the following morning having started off 24 hours earlier.’

In his history, The Battle of the Narrow Seas, Peter Scott relates the events of further attacks mounted by the Luftwaffe, one of which sunk the Berkeley:

‘We suddenly saw a bunch of three or four Fw. 190s coming at us with their nasty little bombs hanging underneath them. We were close to Calpe at the time, stern to stern, and one of the bombs fell between us - 30 yards from us and 15 from Calpe, but it must have been a small bomb. Calpe lurched but was none the worse, nor were we ... [then] we watched Calpe go off to the S.E. in response to a Spitfire which was circling low and tipping its wings to indicate a pilot in the water. She made smoke as she went. A Dornier spotted her away from the Spitfires and did a shallow dive attack. We couldn’t see Calpe at the time, only the pinnacles of the bomb splashes. A few minutes later another Dornier came out of the thin grey clouds which were now forming overhead. We fired a round from our 3-inch to warn Calpe. But the Dornier dived down unopposed by our Spitfires, which were all circling over the convoy of retiring craft three or four miles to the northward. Again the spouts of brown water appeared above the white smoke-screen. Surely the Calpe must be hit and if she was hit there was only us to go to the rescue, and we knew she had many hundreds of wounded soldiers on board as well as the Headquarters Staff.

We increased speed and headed towards the smoke. There was no sign of the destroyer but a breaking wave came out of the smoke across the glassy sea. That wave might have been started before the last bombing attack, the Calpe might still be sinking in the middle of the “fog bank” in front of us. Should we creep into it or skirt round it at high speed? I turned to port to keep to the north of it - the side on which the destroyer was most likely to emerge, and there at last she appeared steaming at 25 knots. We all heaved a deep sigh of relief and made: “Interrogative O.K.,” to which came back “Yes, thanks - please search two miles astern of me for five men in the water.” Two miles! And we were little more than three miles off shore - with hardly any smoke left between us and Dieppe. We turned on to an opposite course and set off at 25 knots. Two miles back we still saw no sign of the missing men. The last of the smoke had gone and the sea was so completely smooth that I thought we could not possibly miss them. We turned to starboard in a wide sweep and suddenly something caught my eye - a flock of gulls on the water? No - five heads! As we approached, the swimmers waved and cheered from the water. We stopped amongst them and they were all on board in a surprisingly short time. It appeared that the first attack on Calpe in the smoke had caused a cordite fire in No. 2 gun-deck (the upper after mounting). Some of the men had been blown overboard, others had jumped to extinguish their burning clothing. The five were none of them more than slightly injured.’

Here, then, possibly, the same explosion that blew Foden across the deck, although given the number of near misses and damage sustained by Calpe that day, it would be difficult to be certain. In all likelihood, however, he must have spent a good deal of time on deck, helping the wounded aboard from the landing craft, and then assessing those who most needed medical attention at the hands of his only qualified assistant, Surgeon Lieutenant T. P. Storey, R.N.V.R. Perhaps, however, as Calpe turned for home, the last ship to depart Dieppe, he found time to assist Storey below deck - even so, he would have been painfully aware of the ongoing attacks that were inflicted on Calpe virtually all the way back to Portsmouth.

Surgeon Storey - who was lost in the escort carrier Dasher in March 1943 - was awarded the D.S.C., while Foden received his D.S.M. at a Buckingham Palace investiture held on 24 November 1942; sold with original letter of congratulations from Mountbatten, dated 2 October 1942 at Combined Operations Headquarters.