War book writer says 'my hero grandad was why I joined the military'

He helped to train an elite team of highly-skilled soldiers to fly huge engineless aircraft carrying troops, jeeps, artillery and even tanks behind enemy lines.

Harry Southall-Owen, from Bilston played a crucial role in the formation of the specialist Glider Pilot Regiment during the Second World War.

He was responsible for the ensuring the men were ready to fight once they had landed in enemy occupied territory, training them in weapons, map reading, and fitness.

“These future glider pilots needed to trained to a very high soldiering standard because as soon as they had landed the glider, or in some cases crash landed the glider, they would be part of the ground force.

“On their initial interviews, they were told they would be flying into enemy held territory and what could be a ‘one-way’ ticket.

“It took exceptional courage to fly a glider with no engine, being shot at,” recalled Harry in his memoirs, which have now been published by his grandson and former Royal Marine Commando Geoff Southall-Owen.

But his adventures with the Glider Pilot Regiment weren’t the only ones he had during his army career.

One of eight children, he was born Harry Owen in Bilston in 1908. His fascination with the army began from a young age. When the First World War broke out, he was just seven but he still told his mother he wanted to sign up.

She told him he was obviously too young but his father, Joseph Owen, signed up with the South Staffordshire Regiment.

Often Harry would run away from home and sleep out at night which led to him being brought back home by the local police.

He would play truant from school which landed him in hot water with the headmaster and sometimes he would go missing for two or three weeks at time. His favourite place to visit was the Brocton and Rugeley Army Camps where soldiers were being trained in readiness for combat.

“I would sit for hours watching them march around the barracks doing musketry drill and watching the soldiers on horses, I couldn’t wait to leave school and join up but I was still only 10, the war would be over by the time I grew up,” said Harry.

His escapades often ended up with him appearing before local magistrates, who warned he would have to go a reformatory school if he didn’t alter his ways. A story about one of his disappearances appeared in the Star with the headline ‘boy wanderer returns’.

One day he decided he was going to run away to the Rugeley camp because he wanted to ‘be a part of this great adventure that they called a war’.

But he was caught by police after stealing a horse and ended up back in court. He wasn’t sentenced for this offence but was sent to industrial school in Stoke-on-Trent for ‘being out of control of his mother’.

He was there until his 16th birthday when he started working at a moulding foundry and later a haulage firm before enlisting with the army.

It took several attempts as he was turned down for not being tall enough as he was an inch too short.

He was finally accepted and became a private with the South Staffordshire Regiment and stationed in Folkstone in Kent.

Harry went on to serve in Malta and later Palestine but while they he decided that army life wasn’t for him and in 1929 he became a deserter.

“I could not take any more of army life. I was 21-years-old, I had had enough and I wanted to get back to England,” recalled Harry.

But it turned out not to be as straight forward as he hoped and spent six months roaming the desert living off the land.

Things took a turn for the worse when he was captured by a dozen Bedouin tribesman. At first Harry thought he was being turned over to the British military police but he soon discovered he was being sold to the French Foreign Legion for 20 Palestinian pounds.

Being a Legionnaire was a tough life. “We rose each bitterly cold morning at 4.30am ready for action. Food was poor and for me the meat was indigestible.

“Water was, of course, scarce, and it was more agonising on route-marching to know the cask at your belt was full of water but that you cannot drink without permission, water was to be drunk only in dire emergency and when ordered,” Harry recalled.

After a few months, he decided to it was time to go on the run. But this time he went straight to the British Consulate who handed him over to the military police.

He was found guilty of desertion whilst on active service and sentenced to imprisonment in the citadel in Cairo, Egypt. After serving time here, Harry returned to Britain during the Great Depression when world trade fell by half between 1929 and 1932 with high numbers of unemployment.

Times were hard but Harry met his wife Lilian, started a family and began working at Sankeys in Bilston.

When the Second World War broke out, the now 31-year-old enlisted again. “I thought it would be a dereliction of my duty if I did not sign up for King and country, especially with my previous army experience,” recalled Harry.

He was assigned to the Royal Army Ordinance Corps (RAOC) and travelled to Brittany, France where his regiment was building ammunition dumps and unloading ammunition that was being sent over from England.

Later he was promoted to the rank of sergeant and was sent on a passive air defence course which saw him trained on how to use anti-aircraft machine guns and barrage balloons.

Based in Rennes, he had responsibility for administration of all intakes as regiments were being made up to strength so they could be sent to the front line.

One night intelligence was passed on that a military train full of German troops was heading to the city. Harry was ordered to select five other men and blow up the track.

As they heard a train approach they pulled the wire to trigger bombs they had placed underneath the rails.

“There was a five second pause which seemed to last forever then an almighty flash followed by a bang. The earth shuddered. Stones and dust rained down on us with bits of debris pinged off our tin helmets.

“My hearing was now reduced to a single high-pitched tone,” recalled Harry.

“How many Nazis were injured or killed? It played on my mind throughout the rest of the war until the near the end when the British troops found the first of many concentration camps,” he added.

His past with the South Staffordshire Regiment caught up with him when he was told that from now on he would be signing as Sergenant H Southall-Owen on all war records – Southall was his middle name – and was given a new number – 7605842

“I think they had found out that Private H Owen 4910683 who had been discharged from the army with ignominy 12 years previously was the same man who had been promoted to sergeant. They could not really kick me out now, hence the hyphen in my name,” explains Harry.

In June 1940, he was involved in Operation Aerial – the evacuation of British and Allied troops from the ports of north west France.

After dodging the Luftwaffe, Harry made it safely back to Southampton and was put into the 30th Battalion Suffolk Regiment where he began training at the firing range and with handling hand grenades, spigot mortars and different small weapons.

Then in 1942 he was recommended for the new Glider Pilot Regiment that was created after Winston Churchill, directed that an airborne force of at least 5,000 men was to be formed. Due to his experience, he was selected to help train the glider pilots.

“On many occasion I was in the back of the gliders flying at 2,000 feet with just the sound of the wind and in the winter it was bitterly cold.

“Sometimes I would travel in the back of a glider with loads of sandbags providing ballast which sometimes would slide all over the place with the pilots struggling with the controls and me in the back trying to readjust them, but I would receive extra pay for this and good training for the pilots,” recalled Harry.

After a trip home to support his wife through a difficult pregnancy he was asked to report back to the Suffolk Regiment as there were short of senior non-commissioned officers.

He was drafted in to help guard warehouses and other buildings that had been bombed in the then London borough of West Ham before returning home again to be by his wife’s side.

Later he was deployed to north Africa to help the advance of the British and American forces as the German troops began treating and before moving on to Italy where he saw first hand the impact of the war on the communities.

“At meal times when the troops lined up for their meal it was terrible to see the small children begging them for food. Not many of our troops saw these children go without,” recalled Harry.

When news broke that Adolf Hitler had taken his own life in a bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945, Harry and his comrades knew the end of the war was close.

A week later the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender, marking the end of the war in Europe. Then on August 15, 1945, Japan formally surrendered, ending the fighting throughout the rest of the world.

It was time for Harry, who declined the offer of staying in the army, to go home to his family.

As Britain began rebuilding after the war, he worked at Stewart & Lloyds steelworks.

The father of 12 then branched out to run a mobile grocery business and shop on the Stowlawn estate and later the Globe Inn on Mount Pleasant, Bilston.

In his retirement, he wrote poetry and was active in the community becoming known as ‘Mr Bilston’ for his knowledge on his hometown. Harry, who died in 2000 aged 91, first wrote his memoirs in the 1950s.

His handwritten and typed notes were then used by his proud grandson Geoff, who served for more than 20 years in the Royal Marines, to write the book, titled Harry’s War.

“I grew up listening to countless stories of years gone by and my grandfather’s time serving in the military and was no doubt one of the contributing factors of why I ended up joining the military.

“It’s not until the years have passed that you appreciate the hardships endured by the older generations.

“He lived through the Great War, the Great Depression and then served in the Second World War, struggling with post-war rationing while trying to bring up a large family. He documented everything and had a passion for writing,” he says.

Geoff, who served in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, initially began writing the book for family and friends before realising that he wanted Harry’s story to be shared with a larger audience.

“Later in his life Harry and I would sit for hours discussing my military career and swapping war stories although Harry’s war experiences were very different to mine,” says Geoff.

“He kept canaries and he would be in the shed for hours maybe just reflecting on the life he had led over the years. He was just a matter of fact sort of man.

“Looking back on his life, it was more than ordinary, it was very extraordinary.”

l Harry’s War is available in paperback or e-book from Amazon as well as from Hugs & Kisses gift shop in Tettenhall.