Thinking about my friend Ted Owens who landed on Sword Beach 80 years ago today with 41 Royal Marine Commando. Over the years we made a number of trips to Normandy with Ted eager to talk to everyone who wished to speak to him.
These are from D-Day70 (2014) when he was spotted by a RM officer and invited to clamber into this vehicle.
I was worried for him but he wanted to do it.
We were driven onto a landing craft where he chatted to the young marines. It was, perhaps, the highlight of the trip for him.
Ted’s gift was being able to make friends. I was often pushing him in his chair so I got to listen (sometimes clumsily translate) as he made their day.
This was a German family who were so bowled over by him they invited him on holiday to their home.
We filmed Ted for D-Day75 (2019) as he shared his philosophy of peace and tolerance with many more people.
It’s impossible to say how much I enjoyed my trips with him – or the fun we had meeting new friends from around the world along the way.
Thinking of you, Ted. I have you in my heart today and we’re travelling, talking, laughing once again…
The programmes we made with Ted in 2019 are still online. Here’s the link to the first episode which includes the D-Day75 parade.
Arrived at a sheltered accommodation complex for older people yesterday. It was all a bit drab outside, but clean and brightly-painted in the hallways, and a very friendly resident who was returning with his food shopping helped me find the door number I was searching for.
The one-bedroom flat was friendly, tidy and smart, apart from a small dresser crammed with ornaments, notes and photos – a long lifetime of memories.
The man living there was straight-backed, smiling, delighted to sit and talk from his favourite chair. In two months time he’ll be 100-years-old. His name is Richard.
I knew he had a remarkable story to tell, knew he was a Normandy veteran, but I wasn’t prepared for what he told me. A stone mason by trade, he’d been sent to the Royal Engineers and then to Scotland to help build sections of a Mulberry Harbour, one of two portable, temporary harbours to be used during the invasion of Normandy.
Richard, also, it turned out, landed on ‘Juno Beach’ early on the morning of June 6, 1944, BEFORE the main D-Day invasion force.
His job was to help clear mines and obstacles on the beach to allow the landing craft to reach the sand.
It was wonderful to spend a couple of hours in his company. It’s the latest interview I’ve done with veterans over about 20 years. Together with my friend, Hugh Morgan, I’m collecting these memories for a book to be published in time for the 80th anniversary of D-Day next year. Hugh has dozens of interviews collected over three decades or more.
I’ve been busy transcribing my interviews over the past week. The man who witnessed the sinking of the Lancastria in 1940 (in which thousands were killed) AND was one of the first liberators of Belsen. The TA sergeant who ended up in North Africa, commanding a gun in the 1000-gun barrage which started El Alamein. He was later at Salerno and Cassino.
Often, these memories become very personal, not about the ‘shooting’ war but the one that plays out in people’s heads. The sergeant talked about the friends who became alcoholics after the war and three men he knew who took their own lives in the years after. Not frontline soldiers, but a few miles behind. Working on the supply line, for instance. “But the sound of battle, imagining what was happening to us, was worse [for them] than being there,” he said.
When I was talking to another veteran, a group of young people walked past the window of his house.
“They wouldn’t imagine the memories you have,” I said.
“They wouldn’t have the opportunity – and I hope to goodness they never do,” he replied.
As time passes we have to grab every opportunity to meet veterans of World War 2. Now, even those who only came of age towards the end of the conflict – from D-Day to VE day – are at least 98 years old.
This week I went to a special event with almost a dozen veterans, including Duncan Hilling and Tony Bird (both pictured).
I’d been honoured to have met Tony several times before. He joined the Royal Navy in 1942 and served on a destroyer on convoy escort duties in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. He then trained as cadet pilot with the Fleet Air Arm in Michigan.
But the pilot training was cut short and he was posted to HMS Clematis, a corvette which provided covering fire for landing craft arriving at the D-Day beaches.
He holds the distinction of shooting down a V1 flying bomb, using one his ship’s Oerlikon guns.
Duncan was a member of an advance party which went into Hiroshima as an Army of Occupation.
He says he did not see one building which hadn’t been damaged. Railings on the ground which had been barriers for the river, had all melted.
They went into a hospital and found women, children, men lying there, unable to do anything. Skin had peeled off faces and arms. Many had been blinded by the bomb blast.
But he speaks again and again today about the kindness he and his comrades received from the Japanese civilian population.
These were just two of the remarkable veterans at the event. All witnesses to history.
Greg Lewis 