IT was in this week 75 years ago that one of the great military disasters for the Allies in the Second World War took place on the north-west coast of France. The Dieppe Raid has become synonymous with everything that could go wrong in a military expedition.

Yet within the overall catastrophe – and the needless loss of hundreds of lives was indeed both catastrophic and tragic – there was one superb piece of soldiering carried out by a force led by one of the most remarkable of all Scottish military officers, Simon Fraser, the 15th Lord Lovat, or 17th Lord if you count his Jacobite ancestor who was the last man in Britain to be beheaded and is now a character in Outlander.

The Lord Lovat of whom we write was also a screen favourite. He is best known now for his remarkable courage and leadership on D-Day, June 6, 1944, when he led his commandos inland from Sword Beach to secure the captured Pegasus Bridge which was such a vital installation for the Allies on that most crucial of all days during the war. And yes, Lovat did have his personal piper Bill Millin beside him.

Lovat was tall, dashing and handsome, and Hollywood got it right when one of the best-looking actors on the screen, Peter Lawford, played Lovat in The Longest Day dressed exactly as the 25th chief of Clan Fraser had been on that day with a white jumper and a beret.

Lovat’s success on D-Day had been presaged at Dieppe where “Shimi” – the Gaelic form of Simon – proved conclusively that well-trained and battle-hardened commandos could pull off quite stunning feats. His actions and the courage of his men on that terrible morning in 1942 showed that given the correct leadership, the proper tactics and trained men willing to battle against the odds, Hitler’s Fortress Europe could be challenged and beaten.

The trouble with the Dieppe Raid was that, in general, leadership, training and tactics were largely absent and that is mainly why it was such a disaster. The raid was supposed to be a morale booster to show that the Nazis on mainland Europe were not impregnable.

It turned out to be a propaganda coup for Hitler, especially when the Vichy government of Marshal Philippe Pétain wrote an unctuous and toadying letter to the Führer condemning the raid and offering French forces to back up the Germans in the defence of the occupied territory. Indeed that letter was to be cited as evidence when Pétain was brought to trial for treason after the war.

It is worth examining the raid if only to counter the absolute nonsense claim that the Canadian infantry, who made up the vast majority of the attacking force, were deliberately sent to their deaths.

With America only in the war some eight months – they contributed some of their vaunted US Rangers to the raiding party – there was a genuine feeling among the Allied leadership that something should be done to show that they could strike back. It was also vital to show the Soviet Union that a second front would eventually be opened as Stalin’s forces were suffering massive losses on the Eastern Front. As it happened, the failure of Dieppe probably put the actual Second Front back by a year.

It was also hoped to gain intelligence on German forces and – as has been a popular theory of late – to capture an Enigma machine to assist the codebreakers at Bletchley Park. On all those counts, the raid was a failure.

Still, given the various reasons advanced for the raid, it must have seemed a good idea at the time, and Operation Rutter, later renamed Operation Jubilee, was given the go-ahead by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt.

On the morning of August 19, 1942, the force of some 6000 infantrymen from Canadian regiments, with Scottish-Canadian regiments to the fore, went ashore at Dieppe backed by tanks from the Calgary regiment of the first Canadian Tank Brigade, a large contingent of Royal Navy vessels, and RAF fighters and bombers. In total there were 5000 Canadians, 1000 British troops, and 60 US Rangers. There were 237 ships and landing craft and 74 squadrons of aircraft, of which 66 were fighter squadrons.

They weren’t entirely without training, as there had been a rehearsal for the raid at Bridport on the Dorset coast some weeks earlier – it had ended disastrously with the force scattered by a high wind, but a second rehearsal went much better and the raid on Dieppe was given the go-ahead.

In overall command was the Allies’ chief of combined operations Lord Louis Mountbatten and it was to prove the nadir of his otherwise glittering career. General Montgomery had been involved in the planning but he suffered no damage to his reputation as he was transferred to command the Eighth Army in North Africa before the raid took place.

The Canadian generals had demanded that their soldiers be given the chance to show what they could do, and their request was granted by Montgomery.

Lovat would take No 4 Commando that he had founded to raid the massive German emplacements west of Dieppe.

There is no evidence that the Germans knew exactly when the raid was coming, but they had suspected Dieppe was a target and from the outset, as soon as the Allied force was spotted, the defenders were on top and poured artillery, machine-gun fire and anti-tank rounds at the attackers. The slaughter as the landing craft disembarked on the beaches was horrendous and it is testament to the courage of the Canadian soldiers that they actually got into Dieppe and did considerable damage to the port.

It was all over in less than six hours, however, as the losses were simply too great to be sustained and German reinforcements were pouring into the area at a rapid rate of knots. Overhead, the Luftwaffe was having a field day with the new Focke-Wulf 190 fighters more than a match for the Spitfires and Hurricanes of the RAF. Without the air cover, the day was lost very rapidly, and with many landing craft destroyed, some 33 in all, there was no alternative but to surrender for a large portion of the force as the Navy simply could not get the infantry off the beaches.

Casualties from the raid included 3367 Canadians killed, wounded or taken prisoner, and 275 British commandos. As well as the landing craft, the Royal Navy lost a destroyer and suffered 550 dead and wounded. The RAF lost 106 aircraft to the Luftwaffe’s 48 while the German army casualties were 591.

As a rehearsal for D-Day it was disastrously expensive. Yet one unit achieved all its objectives and was able to retreat from the raid largely intact – No 4 Commando, led by Lovat.

Fighting in a loose formation, Lovat’s commandos were split into two groups in a pincer movement and they quickly overwhelmed the Varengeville battery of guns. Lovat’s men wiped out all but a few of the enemy in vicious hand-to-hand fighting in which the commandos excelled. Lovat led them in as they destroyed the guns and then organised a masterly retreat to the beaches. Of the 252 men he led ashore, just 12 were killed, while Captain Patrick Anthony Porteous, who was the liaison officer between the two groups, won the Victoria Cross for his courage after being wounded yet still leading his men to victory.

Many a military historian has speculated about how much worse the Dieppe Raid could have been had Lovat and his men not silenced those guns.

Lovat had already led his men in the successful raid on the Lofoten Islands in captured Norway, and then took a contingent to attack Hardelot in France in April, 1942, for which he won the Military Cross.

After Dieppe, Churchill listened to Lovat – he once called the tall Scot “the handsomest man that ever cut a throat” – about the need for training, practice and special operations, and gave the go-ahead for the formation of the 1st Special Service brigade with Lovat as Brigadier. Interestingly, Shimi’s cousin was up to something similar – David Stirling, founder of the SAS.

So it was on D-Day that Lovat led his men off the beach and four miles inland to Pegasus Bridge, as is immortally confirmed on the screen. And he really did apologise to the Paratroopers for being two minutes late.

Lovat led his men in fierce battles across Normandy until June 12 when a stray shell wounded him seriously. Lt Col Derek Mills Roberts of No 6 commando recalled later: “He was in a frightful mess; a large shell fragment had cut deeply into his back and side: Peter Tasker, No 6 Commando’s medical officer, was giving a blood transfusion. He was very calm. ‘Take over the brigade,’ he said, ‘and whatever happens – not a foot back’. He repeated this several times. And then, ‘Get me a priest.’”

A devout Roman Catholic, Lovat survived the war and a brief spell in the House of Lords as a minister in the Government of Churchill before the General Election of 1945 changed Britain forever.

Lovat went home to Scotland, stayed in the services until 1962, and continued in politics in Inverness County Council, which he would serve for more than 40 years.

At the age of 22, he had inherited Beaufort Castle and 200,000 acres of Inverness-shire, and he turned his attention to the estate and forestry.

Lovat had six children in all with his wife Rosamund, and they suffered a double tragedy shortly before Lovat himself died at the age of 83 in Beauly in 1995, when his son and heir Simon, father of the former model and art dealer Honor, was killed on safari in Africa, while another son, Hugh, died of a heart attack. The family also had to sell Beaufort Castle due to financial problems.

At his funeral at St Mary’s Catholic Church in Eskdale, a lament was played on the bagpipes as Lovat was laid to rest. The piper was Bill Millin, the same man who piped Lovat and his men through Normandy more than 50 years before.