Who was Terence Otway? And why was he chosen to capture one of the biggest German bunkers in the early hours of D-Day? Turns out that he was one of the most extraordinary Allied commanders to fight against the Germans on June 6, 1944.
Welcome to Season 3 of Unknown History: D-Day Stories. I'm your host, Giles Milton, and today we're talking about a top secret mission that took place just a couple of hours before the Allied beach landings.
It was still night when a young German officer named Raimund Steiner took a look outside his observation post on the coast of Normandy. There was drizzle in the air and a white crest on the waves. “Bad weather,” he muttered to himself. “Not the kind of weather for an invasion.” He stepped back inside his bunker and decided to return to bed.
Steiner was the officer in charge of Merville Battery—a giant gun emplacement that was situated just inland from the beach. It was one of the key defences in the Atlantic Wall, the string of fortifications that the Germans had built all along the coast of Normandy.
Merville was among the biggest gun batteries of all: a massive fortified bunker whose 160 gunners were under Steiner’s command. Its four gun emplacements were buried in 18 feet of concrete and were positioned to dominate a huge length of Normandy foreshore. As such, it represented a very real threat to the Allied beach landings.
They had one order: destroy the big guns.
Eisenhower knew this and ordered that Merville be destroyed. In early hours of June 6, before the troops poured ashore from their landing crafts, a small group of specially trained soldiers were to be dropped into the countryside around Merville. They had one order: destroy the big guns.
Raimund Steiner knew none of this. He had fallen into a deep sleep in his coastal observation post and had no idea that thousands of paratroopers were already landing in Normandy.
The first he knew something was wrong was when he was abruptly woken by the ring of his telephone. He glanced at his watch: it was 12:25 a.m. local time. He lifted the receiver and heard a frantic voice at the other end.
“Herr Leutnant,” said a breathless voice, “a glider has come down at our battery and we are in close quarters fighting.”
Steiner was so alarmed that he immediately got dressed and stepped outside. When he glanced towards the Merville battery, he saw dozens more gliders swooping towards it. Merville was indeed under attack.
For those involved in the mission to destroy the battery—British paratroopers—it had turned into a mission from hell. The landing had been a disaster, with men scattered so widely that they were unable to form any sort of coherent fighting...
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