Lieutenant-Colonel Denny Bult-Francis
8th Reconnaissance Regiment (14th Hussars)

The Dieppe raid was not a failure, but will go down in history as one of the great battles of the present war, not compared to the African struggle but as a necessary part of the Allied victory.

(quoted in Montreal Gazette, 24 Nov 1942, 4)

Born in Highgate, England on 28 August 1910, Dennis Scott Fead Bult-Francis was a former member of the British Army and the Palestine Police Force. He moved to Montreal in 1939 and joined the Black Watch on the outbreak of war. Overseas in 1941, he transferred to the newly formed 8th Reconnaissance Regiment. He participated in the Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942 as a liaison officer to Major-General Ham Roberts.

I landed with the Fusiliers de Mon Royal and the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry. My job was to report on the progress of the battle but before I could get from the beach I was hit—not much of a wound but enough to make me wonder whether I would get out alive.

During the operation, he was shot in chest and maimed by a shell explosion, but a French woman named Jeanne Domis bandaged his wound. He managed to escape the beach and evacuate to England, though was not expected to survive. After a year in hospital in Canada, he requested a return to duty overseas. He rejoined the 8th Recce during the Normandy invasion and personally commanded the squadron that liberated Dieppe in September 1944.

“It was a day like this when we landed—clear and warm and there were hardly any clouds,” he told the press on entering the town. “But in one way it was not like this. We were pushed out and many of us were killed.” He took the opportunity to thank Jeanne Domis for her heroism two years before. “I never forgot her,” he told a reporter. “She was kind and brave. Besides she was blonde and attractive.”

He became second-in-command when Major J.F. Merner succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel B.M. Alway at the end of April 1945. One month later, Bult-Francis took over from Merner who assumed command of the 2nd/7th Reconnaissance Regiment in the occupation army. By September Bult-Francis also joined the occupation forces and turned command of the 8th to Major Gordon Good, who led the unit home to Saskatchewan at the end of the year.

Bult-Francis remained in the postwar army and served with the adjutant-general’s branch in theatre during the Korean War. He retired to England in 1961 where he worked for the Red Cross and as UK director for UNICEF. He was recognized with an Order of the British Empire in 1969

Bult-Francis died in Peterborough, England on 29 November 2005 at the age of ninety-five.