Terence Otway

Otway was born in Cairo, Egypt, on 15 June 1914 at the American Hospital, he returned with the family to England in 1915, where he stayed while his father served in France. From December 1918 to autumn 1921, he lived in Rushbrooke, County Cork, Ireland. The family returned to England, where Terence attended the local Council school at Thame, Buckinghamshire, followed by Watford Grammar School. In the last 6 months of 1923, he became severely ill with whooping cough. As a result, on medical advice he was sent to Dover College, where the sea air would help lungs that were in a poor state. He was at the Junior school until 1928 and the senior school until 1932.

Military career

In January 1933, Otway entered the

In the summer of 1935, Otway required a serious middle ear operation at The Royal Naval Hospital,

In August 1939, during three months leave, Otway married Stella Whitehead, daughter of Basil Whitehead of Bovey Tracey, Devon, a retired Colonial Police Officer, who had been Chief of Police in Penang, Malaya. Otway and Stella returned to Rawalpindi, but Stella flew home in April 1940, while the battalion returned by sea to Oxford for conversion to mechanised infantry (from the camels, mules and horses they had been using in India.)

In December 1940, Otway was promoted to

Normandy

In August 1943, Otway transferred to the Parachute Regiment to become Second-in-Command of the 9th (Eastern and Home Counties) Parachute Battalion. In March 1944, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and took over as Commanding Officer (CO).

The Normandy landings - the invasion of Europe took place in June 1944. The 9th were dropped in the night before to secure vital objectives, particularly to neutralise the Merville Gun Battery.

In spite of severe problems in the landing, his battalion took the Merville Battery. Otway started with about 750 men, few of whom had seen action before; of the 150 who took part in the attack, 65 had been either killed or wounded by the end of the action, which saved a great many Allied lives.

His numerically weak and all but exhausted battalion then pushed into Le Plein, where they encountered stiffening resistance and, despite their depleted numbers, took Château St Come on the ridge, and succeeded in beating off two enemy attacks, each of several hours duration, by a regiment of 21st Panzer Division.

Two days later during a routine tour of his positions, a stray shell landed close to Otway. He was diagnosed with severe concussion and on 19 July 1944 was subsequently evacuated^[1] to hospital in Cardiff, then graded unfit for a return to active service, and was posted as a Staff Officer to the War Office.

Otway was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in October 1944 for his outstanding leadership in the actions at Merville and Le Plein. The citation for his DSO stated that his utter disregard for personal danger had been an inspiration to all his men.

Service in Asia

He was regraded category 'A' in May 1945 and posted as Commanding Officer of the

During retirement, he continued to remain active particularly in areas relating to the welfare of soldiers and their widows, as well as historical aspects of The Parachute Regiment, especially in respect of monuments in Normandy, France. He became known as 'Colonel X' when fighting for the rights of serviceman's' widows and their pensions. He was instrumental in persuading the Government to change their miserly attitude. In 1991, aged 76, he still had the energy to take up the cases of three guardsmen seriously injured during a training exercise in Canada, publicising the issue and successfully putting pressure on the Government for adequate compensation for the men.

In 1995, his health and energy undiminished, he was still pruning branches, perched on a ladder, from a tree in the garden of his home in Tadworth, Surrey, to some consternation of his third wife Jeannie. He was also involved on the fringes in the case for the release of Lee Clegg, a paratrooper imprisoned for murder after a shooting in Northern Ireland at the time of the troubles.

Honours and awards

When he met the German commander of the battery in 1993 he admitted that he did not have the guts to refuse the proffered hand, but said afterwards that he could not forget his men, shot by the Germans as they hung helpless in trees. He shooed away picknickers from the battery, which is now a memorial and museum, declaring: "I don't like people eating and drinking where my men died."

The citizens of

For the 50th anniversary, Mark Fielder produced a documentary called 'D-Day: Turning the Tide' in which Charles Wheeler, a D-Day landings veteran, visited the area of the Merville Battery and interviewed some of the protagonists, including Lt. Col. Terence Otway, and Raimund Steiner - the commander of the battery at the time of the assault. The documentary also features Maj John Howard who led the glider-borne attack on Pegasus Bridge.

In 2004, for the D-Day 60th Anniversary programming, the BBC commissioned a drama-documentary entitled D-Day 6 June 1944 which included interviews with members of both the Allied and German armed forces, along with dramatisations of some of the key scenes. Otway described the battle, and his character was played by Philip Rham. The film was later released on DVD.

Notes

Citations

External links

• The 6th Airborne Division in Normandy
• The Merville Battery museum
• Obituary in the Telegraph
• Obituary in the Times
• Otway Family Tree maintained by Mark Otway
• Roll call: Lieutenant-Colonel Terence B H Otway, DSO
• Imperial War Museum Interview from 1989
• Imperial War Museum Interview from 1991
• 9th Parachute Battalion Reunion Club Website