THEY grew up only miles apart but Ted Cogdell and Ray Lewis would both be sent to fight in Norway as Britain took on Nazi Germany for the first time. Martin Wade tells how they would be awarded for the efforts 76 years later.

GRIFFITHSTOWN boy Ted and Ray from Tredegar were both called up in July 1939. They were assigned to the 55th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, and although they worked on different guns they belonged to the same battery.

By early 1940 they were supposed to be going to Finland. The Finns were fighting the Russians and for a time were winning. At the time Churchill was keen to help the gallant Finns against the Russians who at that point were not fighting Nazi Germany. Ted says it would have been “suicidal” to help them - we would have been fighting the Russians. As Ted and Ray sat aboard their troopship in Scotland for days, waiting for the word to go, the Finns capitulated so they didn't go.

Instead, they were sent to France, but two weeks later, Germany invaded Norway and the Gwent men again headed north, but this time there would be no false starts.

They arrived at the end of April 1940, landing at Harstad in northern Norway. Ted was based there, while Ray went north to Tromso.

Ray says the ship which took them north was the former liner Empress of Australia. The soldiers were denied a comfortable crossing as she had been stripped of her luxury fittings.

Their arrival was chaotic. While the troops disembarked in Harstad, their guns were unloaded further south in Namsos. The confusion wasn't limited to the British. He saw French Alpine troops landed without their skis.

The problems didn't end there. "We weren't given much cold-weather clothing" Ted says. "We had warm coats which went down to our ankles. When you walked through snow it was very difficult because they got so wet." Ray quite liked the coat, though, admitting he still had his for many years after the war. "There was a lot of in-fighting among the top brass" Ted recalls: "The army, navy and air force all wanted it to be their operation and that led to confusion."

They were met with the might of the Nazi war machine. "Norway had faced the full force of the 'Blitzkrieg'" Ted recalls. This was the German word, literally 'Lightning War' which described the ferocious method of waging war they had perfected. Attacks by tanks and dive bombers would spread fear and confusion among defenders as German troops surged forward.

As anti-aircraft gunners, Ted and Ray's unit would be critical in blunting the Blitzkrieg's lightning thrust. Their Bofors guns would be expected to shoot down the Stuka dive-bombers as they hurled death from the sky.

The northern port of Narvik was an ice-free harbour in the North Atlantic for iron ore taken by railway from Kiruna in Sweden. Both sides wanted to secure this supply for themselves and it was here that Ted and Ray would face their fiercest fighting.

The Germans invaded Narvik on 9 April, but the British gave a good account of themselves. By May 28, the numerically superior British, French and Norwegian forces had pushed the Germans out of the town; although the Germans remained in control of the south of the country. This was the first major Allied victory on land, but it was to be short-lived. Germany invaded France in mid-May and by the time Narvik was taken, the British and allied troops were needed elsewhere.

Ted reasons, at that point, only days before the Dunkirk evacuation, Britain could have lost almost all their soldiers. They were needed back home. So only days after taking Narvik, they were evacuated.

Ted recalls the4 episode bitterly: "When we took Narvik, it was the first defeat the Nazis had, and it has always annoyed me that we gave it back so quickly." All Allied troops were evacuated from Narvik between 4 and 8 June.

There were harrowing scenes as they left. The destroyer HMS Eskimo had its bows blown off by a torpedo as it shielded the battleship Warspite. "We saw it as it came into a fjord where we were waiting to be taken off" Ted remembers. "Where the front had been blown away you could see the bodies of sailors trapped on the buckled plates where they had drowned." Six months later she was repaired and was fighting again.

On 8 June, the Germans retook Narvik, and on 10 June the last Norwegian forces in Norway surrendered.

Long after the war ended, Ted says he tried to trace former members of the regiment, but admits there are probably just three of them left now, two thirds of whom are the Gwent pals. "There's me, Eric Walden in Torquay and Ray Lewis in Tredegar."

But his research led him to find the final resting place of another comrade who was killed in Norway. Albert Badham was a fellow gunner who was shot by a German aircraft as it fired on the gunners as they passed throughout the village of Mo I Rana in Northern Norway. "We could only bury him at the roadside" Ted says, "but it seems some local people re-buried him in a churchyard in the village."

"I bought a computer when I was in my eighties, and when I'd learned how to use the internet, I looked up the village to see if there was any information on the graves. I e-mailed someone who lived there to see if he could send me a picture of the graves. The next day he sent me a picture of them."

He has since become good friends with that man, Norwegian Tommy Skog. "He has visited us twice with this family", Ted says. 

Ted and Ray were honoured by the Norwegian government recently when they were awarded a medal thanking them for their role in defending Norway. Ted was awarded his by the Honorary Norwegian Consul to Wales in Cowbridge, but Ray was unable to attend.

Although 76 years have passed since their baptism of fire, Ted and Ray stayed in touch and still proudly wear their regimental beret. Ray admits it is nice that the Norwegians "showed they appreciated us". Ted, though he says it was an honour to receive the honour says sadly it was "too late for most of them".