Until that disabled veteran said he'd been wounded at Dieppe, the Canadian Army's first major battle in WW2, which, I believe, did not feature that many Americans.
Later, Scott Speedman says "zed" instead of "zee", and that clinches it. It's Canadian! How about that! I didn't think Canada "did" fedora-wearing gangsters of the 40s/50s.
Oh yes, The Boyd Gang was Canada's version of the fedora-wearing gangsters that were prevalent in the United States fifteen or twenty years prior.
Boyd actually had not been at Dieppe. He had however taken part in the Dover Dash of 1940. (That was an attempt, after Dunkirk, to try and establish a second front in Western France. Units were sent from England to St. Malo, among them the 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade -a part of the 1st Canadian Division which had been in the U.K. since the previous December. Boyd, then a private in the Royal Canadian Regiment, was part of that brigade. After about twelve hours, wiser heads prevailed and realized all they would be doing was throwing away men. So, the landed units in France were turned around and re-embarked for England.)
The image of the American gangster was in many ways the gang's downfall. Steve Suchan was enamoured of the image of the gun-toting American hold-up men. Boyd later said his biggest mistake was taking Suchan and Jackson on. After the two of them fatally shot Detective-Sergeant Edmund Tong, it was really game over for the gang.
I had heard, to my surprise, that some Allied forces had been re-landed in France after the Dunkirk evacuation. An extreme case of reinforcing failure. Thank heavens they did not linger long there.
share