It was with this simple phrase that, right up to his death, Terence Otway told the epic story of the victorious assault on the Merville Battery by the paratroops of the ninth Battalion the Parachute Regiment, at dawn on the sixth of June nineteen forty four.
“We were given a job, we got on with it”
Ten words, ten small words to sum up weeks of preparation, a plan that was long time in the making, a training régime that left nothing to chance.
Ten words, only ten words to recount a night of blood and fire, lost aircraft, paratroops drowned in their hundreds, in all a tragedy where nothing happened as planned.
Ten words, ten simple words to explain that in spite of all setbacks, the complications, the absence of equipment, that only one fifth of his troops had made it to the rendezvous, Terence Otway took his toughest decision, to launch the unimaginable assault.
Ten words, ten words to explain that after half an hour of fierce fighting, some of it hand to hand, the Battery fell, reduced to silence just at the time that the first landing craft arrived on Sword beach to disgorge the soldiers ferried within.
I had the good fortune and the privilege of meeting Terence several times, and we spoke about the attack on the Merville Battery. And today I ask myself what was the most difficult for him to bear; was it that dawn on the sixth of June when he had to take tough decisions, or was it the sixty two years that followed?
For sixty two years Terence, you would be the ninth Battalion of the Parachute Regiment incarnate, seven hundred and fifty brave young men on whom an inexorable destiny had been placed.
For sixty two years you would be the voice of those no longer able to speak, for sixty two years you would be the gaze of those no longer able to see.
Always and everywhere in your life, you would carry with you your comrades in arms who had been taken in the flower of their youth, a battalion of phantoms whose memory you would preserve, and which would haunt your nights all too often.
Some months ago Terence, on the eighth of May two thousand and five, when you came to Merville for what would be the last time, to inaugurate the road bearing your name, you concluded your thanks by turning to the people of the village, there in their numbers to welcome and congratulate you, saying “Dieu vous protège – God bless you”.
Today the old chief is dead.
Merville has lost its hero.
But over there, in the shadow of the great bunkers, the gaze of the bronze bust of Colonel Otway continues to look out over the Merville Battery.
Forever.
Dieu vous protège Terence - God bless you Terence.
Olivier Paz
Maire de Merville
French version
