Ted

Having written about sport for close on 20 years one of the biggest challenges I find is how to make the same thing sound interesting year after year.

When a new season starts, it’s inevitable that some will be excited by it but read between the lines of any sports preview and it will say pretty much what it said last year. The truth is it can be a bit of a bore.

So how can I preview tomorrow’s (or today’s if you’re reading this on Sunday) opening game of the 2016 Pembrokeshire cricket season without sounding samey? The truth is I’m not. I’m not going to mention cricket, except in passing because this preview is all going to be about Ted.

I’ll come to him in a moment but first the weather forecast. It’s going to be dry but cold; with a stiff easterly breeze winging its way down from the Artic picking up a few Scandinavian scents along the way.

Inevitably there will be moans and groans about this from experienced umpires wrapped up in dozens of jumpers and fielders with their hands in pockets hoping beyond hope that the ball is not coming their way at pace.

Before you annoy your teammates with your carping ask yourself if yourself if it’s justified because as my mother always says ‘there is someone always worse off than you’

You may not think it at the time but it’s true.

Ted Owens knows all about adversity and a cold cricketer wouldn’t receive too much sympathy from a man who has seen more things in a lifetime than we have seen in films.

Ted is 91 and hails from Pembroke Dock. Despite his age is a sharp as a tack. He’s a natural storyteller and has a tone of voice that’s as melodic as the gentle murmur of a packed Lord’s crowd. It’s a perfect combination of Pembrokeshire twang coupled with an old aged husk. It’s mesmeric and so is his life’s story.

He was born and bred in the town. When Ted was 15 he saw a parachute float down above it. Beneath the parachute was a sea mine dropped from a German plane. It knocked out three or four streets of his place of birth and killed dozens or more (no-one knows for sure) on a stretch of grass by the barracks while they celebrating some form of occasion. Only one person survived that blast although she suffered a pick axe through her eye as a rescuer dug through the rubble. 

Ted saw it all.

A few years later when he was 19 Ted was in the Marines and was part of the D-Day landings. He was on a landing craft crammed in with his comrades waiting to go into action. He knew some wouldn’t come back, he probably wondered if he would.

Prior to the attack, hundreds on board were sea sick. Even before the Normandy landings, the conditions he faced were horrendous.

As Normandy approached their commander told them to take of their tin hats and replace them with their berets to show ‘their defiance and pride’.

“When we get there,” barked their commander. “Focus your attentions on that hotel. Do not stop firing at that hotel.” And that’s what Ted did despite having to doge bullets, bombs and the bodies of the fallen. He never took his eye off his goal.

Up the beach was a German tank that was sweeping all before them. He ran up to it and shot inside, soon after a shell came raining down and sent him flying. As the shrapnel hit his skin it cooled on impact and exploded into hundreds of pieces. There are dozens still left inside him as is part of a bullet lodged in his throat.

He thought he was dead and when he realized he wasn’t he knew he was paralyzed. Fortunately it was only temporary.

He was stretchered off, given a new drug called Twilight Sleep and woke up in a hospital in Caerphilly.

After two months he asked to go back only to get shot at again and worse still, have his toenails eaten off in the middle of the night by a gang of hungry rats but he still kept his eye on the goal.

We’ve got a lot to be thankful for him for and is why he was given the Chevalier in the Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur

The past week he went to meet today’s Marines as they took part in an exercise off our coast.

“I tapped one of the shoulder,” he said. “And it was like hitting a brick wall. I think I was like that once.”

It’s fair to say he was probably a little bit more but bear him in mind when you’re stuck at fine leg shivering in the freezing wastes or even if you’re out for a duck.

It may feel crap at the time but remember Ted because there’ll always be someone worse off than you.