Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway

Terence Otway was commissioned into the Royal Ulster Rifles in 1933, and during peacetime he served with this Regiment in the Far East, in India, China, and Hong Kong:
"We spent four months in Shanghai, and we were bombed, shelled and machine-gunned almost every day by the Japanese, whilst guarding the International Settlement. We then moved to India. We'd hardly arrived before we were involved in putting down riots in Rawalpindi. Then we moved up to the North-West frontier and we were there for a year on active service. Not a week passed without us having a scrap with the tribesmen, and some of the scraps were hand-to-hand fighting with knives and swords. So that was so-called peace!"

Otway was given command of the 9th Parachute Battalion in 1944. Sergeant Les Daniels said of him, "Colonel Otway was a very hard man, very stand-offish, naturally as you'd expect your Commanding Officer to be. No tolerance for a fool whatsoever. You daren't make a mistake with the Colonel. Otway's own philosophy on command was straight-forward, he wrote, "I wanted to be respected and I wanted to be considered to be a fair person, but I wouldn't go out of my way to get popularity. I wanted an efficient, well run, happy Battalion, and I reckon I had it"

During the first few months of his command, Otway was informed of the invasion plan and the role that the 9th Battalion would play in it. "I was taken to a farm house near Amesbury, in Wiltshire, by the Brigade Major, and nothing was said. I was taken up to the first floor and there was a model, and he said "you see that, that's a battery" I said "Yes I can see that" and he said "You have got to take it" They {the guns} were sited to fire straight along the Normandy beaches over which the British troops were due to land in Operation Overlord.

The assault upon the Merville Battery was to be the most risky venture that the 6th Airborne Division was to undertake on D-Day.If the German Guns had fired when the troops were landing from their landing craft it had been calculated that probably the operation would have failed.

This picture was taken by a buddy of mine during his recent visit to Normandy. Mr K Graham