Pictures
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Pictures
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Lance-Sergeant Archibald Owen
Unit : 1st Border, attached to Defence Platoon, 1st Airlanding Brigade
Army No. : 3852653
Archibald Owen, a 35 year old Liverpudlian who had served in the Indian Army before being called up as a reservist at the outbreak of war. Educated at the Upper Park Street Board School, he had been working as a tram conductor in Coventry, but during the first big raid on the city the family home was destroyed and so they returned to Liverpool. here again their home was again a victim of the bombing, and so a final move to Seacombe followed.
At Arnhem, Owen served with the 1st Border but was attached to the 1st Airlanding Brigade's Defence Platoon at Arnhem. He was killed on Sunday 24th September 1944, and the following is an account sent by a Major of the 1st Border to Owen's wife, to explain how during an attack by German tanks, her husband had laid down his life to divert them so that his comrades could get away.
'In the last hour of our stay, headquarters were being attacked by three enemy tanks which ventured to within 100 yards of our escape route. Your husband immediately seized a Piat anti-tank gun and with two other men went out to stop them. He succeeded in turning them aside, but in the ensuing action was badly hit. Darkness fell almost immediately and the evacuation took place then. Your husband will be missed here, as nowhere else, for his cheerfulness, gallantry and example. It was only thanks to such men as he that so many of us got away.'
My thanks to Ian O'Rourke for sending this in.