261395 Cpl. Alonzo Wright Comfort Canadian Army 1st Battalion Royal Hamilton Light Infantry from:88 Bay St. S., Hamilton, Ont Tenacious in his duty was Corporal Al Comfort. Despite being shot in both legs shortly after the landing and since suffering two chest wounds, Comfort still managed to take care of the wounded. He refused to be looked after himself, but insisted on having as many wounded as possible brought somewhere near so he could attend them, Private Al Oldfield recalled, in Tragedy at Dieppe: Operation Jubilee, 19th of August 1942, By Mark Zuehlke
Names of privates and acting non commissioned officers of a Central Ontario regiment and of a Quebec regiment listed as missing following the action at Dieppe are given below, as released by the national defense department. The names of next of kin are also given:
MISSING Central Ontario Regiment: Comfort, Alonzo Wright, Cpl., Mrs. Jean Comfort (wife), Apt. 4, 88 Bay st, S., Hamilton. The Winnipeg Tribune, Friday, Sept 18, 1942 Men From Ontario And Quebec Listed As Missing Following Dieppe Page 14
After the brutal battle, the prisoners were surprised to be treated with respect, even kindness, by German soldiers, as some recalled in Dancocks In Enemy Hands. “I expected they would kill us,” said Corporal Al Comfort of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry. “But the Germans were not antagonistic at all. No one was abused.” A German even took his own field dressing and applied it to Comfort’s thigh wound. At hospital in Rouen, France, said Comfort, no anesthetic was used as the German doctor removed shrapnel, then forced forceps through his leg back to front “and drew a gauze bandage through and cut both ends off.” The wound festered. “The infection soaked through my mattress and dropped on the floor. I remember holding the sheets down tight to keep the stench from choking me.”
A hospital train took him to Obermassfeld, Germany, where British prisoner doctors properly dressed the wound.
He was held as POW in Stalag IXC.
Dieppe Men Liberated: Taken prisoner in the Dieppe raid of August, 1942, Capt. John McGill Currie, 9 Ravenscliffe Avenue, and Cpl. Alonzo Comfort, 88 Bay Street South, have been liberated by the advancing Allied armies. Both men were members of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and enlisted in September 1939, and were seriously wounded at Dieppe.
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