Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway died on July 23, 2006, aged 92.  In the History of British Airborne Forces his name will live on, for the capture of the German battery at Merville on D-Day.

It was believed by Allied intelligence to comprise of four 150mm guns able to fire on Sword Beach, where the British 3rd Division was to land, and it was essential that it be silenced beforehand. This task was allotted to the 9th Parachute Battalion commanded by Otway.

  Air reconnaissance had detected the gun position while it was being constructed and fortified well in advance of the landing, and its significance had been carefully noted. Together with others in the area, it was attacked from the air on March 20 and on subsequent occasions, culminating in a bombardment by 56 RAF Lancaster bombers on the night of May 9-10. The German summary of this raid, published after the war, reported “Out of 1,000 bombs only 50 landed near the battery and of these only two hit a casemate, though without penetration. A rabbit warren suffered a direct hit.” A follow-up air reconnaissance by the RAF confirmed that none of the gun emplacements had been damaged.

The position, roughly 500 metres square, was protected by an all-round minefield, an anti-tank ditch and a 5ft-high concentration of barbed wire estimated to be several yards deep. The battery strength was 180 men with machineguns covering the barbed wire and anti-tank ditch. A battalion of infantry was responsible for local protection outside the perimeter.

Aware this would be a hard nut to crack, Otway rehearsed his battalion on a scale model of the Merville battery built near Newbury, so every man knew precisely what to expect and how to get to the guns. His plan was to land three gliders, each carrying 30 men, inside the battery perimeter immediately before the rest of the battalion, landing nearby by parachute, would blow gaps in the wire with bangalore torpedoes and storm the position. Once the defenders had been either killed or overcome, a small party of Royal Engineers were to destroy or disable the guns with explosives. But on the night of June 5-6 the weather intervened.

The assault upon the Merville Battery was to be the most risky venture that the 6th Airborne Division was to undertake on D-Day. Otway summed up the extent of the challenge most successfully: "The Battery contained four guns which were thought to be 150mm, and each gun was in an emplacement made of concrete six foot thick, on top of which was another six foot of earth. There were steel doors in front and rear. The garrison was believed to consist of 150-200 men, with two 20mm dual-purpose guns and up to a dozen machine guns. There was an underground control room and odd concrete pillboxes dotted about. The position was circular, about 400 yards in diameter and surrounded by barbed wire and mines. There was a village a few hundred yards away which might have held more German troops. There were only two sides from which we could possibly attack. On the north there was a double-apron barbed wire fence, outside which was a minefield about thirty yards deep. Outside this again was an anti-tank ditch fourteen feet wide and sixteen feet deep, which we assumed would be full of horrors. On the south side there was the same double-apron fence and the same thirty-yard minefield, but instead of the ditch there was another barbed wire fence some twelve to fifteen feet thick and five to six feet high. The whole Battery was then surrounded by a minefield 100 yards deep which was protected by a barbed wire cattle fence, possibly electrified. Such was the nut to be cracked. As we were to land to the south of the Battery I decided to attack from the south."

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High winds and low cloud seriously disrupted the airborne approach. Tow ropes to five of the gliders snapped, causing them fall into the Channel and taking with them the battalion’s anti-tank guns and most of the explosives intended for the destruction of the German guns. The preliminary RAF bombing attack missed the battery by several hundred yards and half the parachute troops landed in the flooded fields astride the River Dives — three miles east of the intended dropping zone.

Otway and his tactical HQ landed almost on top of a German unit headquarters, and he reached his assigned battalion rendezvous point at 0230 hours, together with about 150 men.

His orders, issued by GOC 6th Airborne Division, were to ensure the battery was silenced 30 minutes before the naval bombardment was due to start, and then secure and hold the Le Plein road junction two and a half miles to the southwest. Short of the rendezvous, Otway met the leader of the battalion reconnaissance party, dropped ahead of the main body, who reported that he had cut the outer wire of the Merville Battery and there were no booby-traps or anti-personnel mines in the perimeter defences.

Otway decided to attack at once with the eight officers and 150 men assembled. They had recovered one Vickers medium machinegun and some plastic explosives, but would be unable to illuminate the site for the glider landings, as their mortars and flares were either lost or scattered because of the dispersed nature of the drop.

Two gaps were blown in the wire and, led by Major Allen Parry, four assault groups charged through to storm the four gun positions. Two groups became engaged in hand-to-hand fighting but the other two fired through the open steel doors behind the gun casemates, killing the crews or forcing them to surrender. Plastic charges were detonated in the gun breeches, Otway sent the success signal 15 minutes before the naval bombardment began. Then he and the 80-odd unwounded survivors of the assault set off for the Le Plein road junction, taking with them all the wounded they could carry.

It was later established that the guns of the Merville battery were 100mm howitzers, not the expected 150mm coastal guns and, while landing on Sword beach on D+1, the 51st (Highland) Division was fired on, apparently from the battery position. It was thought possible that some of the German gunners might have escaped Otway’s attack and re-entered the position to find that not all the guns had been disabled, and opened fire on Sword beach. The battery was silenced for a second time by 45 (Royal Marines) Commando and two troops of 3 (Army) Commando.

Collecting further men of his battalion as he went, Otway reached Le Plein and held the nearby Le Mesnil feature with his badly depleted force until joined on the feature by troops of 1st Special Service Brigade under command of Lord Lovat. His numerically weak and all but exhausted battalion was then ordered to hold Château St Comb, to the southeast, which it succeeded in doing, beating off two enemy attacks, each of several hours duration, by a regiment of 21st Panzer Division.

Otway was wounded in this action and evacuated to England. He was awarded the DSO in October 1944 for his conspicuous bravery and outstanding leadership during the actions at Merville and Le Mesnil.

Recovered from his wound, he was sent to India to take command of a battalion of The King’s Regiment, which was about to convert to the parachute role. After various staff appointments in India and England, he left the Army in 1948 to join the Colonial Development Corporation, with which he served in The Gambia and Nyasaland. He later undertook a varied and successful business career in England.

He is survived by his third wife, Jean.

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