Today marks the 82nd anniversary of the Dieppe Raid, a tragic event in which 946 Allied soldiers lost their lives, 839 of whom were Canadian. Of those, 531 are buried at the Hautot-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery.
Among the 181 soldiers with no known grave, commemorated at the Brookwood 1939-1945 Memorial, is Signalman Keith Lloyd Marsh, the son of Frank and Ellen Susan Marsh of Ottawa. He is also memorialized on his parents’ gravestone at Beechwood Cemetery.
His entries in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) and the Canadian Virtual War Memorial note that he was an “Exhibitor, Canadian National Exhibition, Ottawa.” This intriguing detail is further illuminated by newspaper records, which highlight his talent in building bird nesting boxes, a skill recognized at the Annual Hobby Show, part of the 1936 Exhibition.
Keith Marsh graduated from Ottawa Technical School in December 1937 and enlisted the following year.
Two others with Ottawa addresses who died in the Dieppe Raid were Thomas Dean, the son of Thomas Malcolm and Rachel Manson Dean, born in Ottawa, and Antonio Gariepy, the son of Edward U. and Marie Louise Gariepy, born in Quebec.