Obituary: Norman Warden Owen

Sep 16 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

“THEY came away like two pegs from a cribbage board,” he said later.

Expressed in mere words, in the old British style, it was always possible for our heroes to accept their acts of almost unimaginable bravery, with a modest shrug.

And it had been a straightforward decision. If he wanted to live, he had to cut off two fingers on his right hand with his sheath knife. Otherwise, he could drown and keep his fingers.

Norman Warden Owen’s great courage had been much in evidence during one of the most dramatic missions in World War II.

So, years later, in the depths of the waters swirling around a pier under demolition at Holyhead, he drew his knife and cut through the bones.

His job as a diver had been to cut notches in the pier’s piles, so that wire-hauling-hawsers on a crane could be attached to their 18ft stumps. When a wire snagged, he went down to investigate. During this work, his right hand became trapped, as oxygen began to run out. Unable to convey a message to his colleagues, Owen had a choice.

Blood coloured the water as he swam to the surface.

Once there, he had to walk 500 yards to the hospital. In 1952, the old Daily Herald awarded him its Order of Industrial Heroism, popularly known as the workers’ VC.

Owen was the sixth of 10 children born to a steward on the Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire ferries. After a local apprenticeship, he became a carpenter at Cammell Laird’s shipyard in Birkenhead, which had a substantial expatriate Welsh population. He worked on the Thetis and the Ark Royal before the war, in which he served with the Merchant Navy, most notably in the Mediterranean.

By 1942, constant bombing of shipping had left Malta short of vital supplies.

To relieve the island, it was decided to send the Pedestal convoy, which included 14 merchant ships, two battleships and four aircraft carriers.

Owen was on the Deucalion, which was bombed and abandoned. Owen volunteered to serve on the Ohio, which had been disabled and was under tow. But she reached land as the harbour band played Rule Britannia. For helping keep the tows connected to a pair of tugs, Owen was awarded the DSM.

Married with three children, Owen was a brilliant sailor and engineer.

Norman Warden Owen, sailor; born May 17, 1917, died August 16, 2008