VETERAN glider pilot Geoff Thompson was guest of honour at an East Yorkshire gliding club as it marked the 68th anniversary of the Normandy Landings of Allied Forces by glider.
Mr Thompson, 92, of Pocklington, a member of the York branch of the Parachute Regimental Association, was presented with a donation from the Wolds Gliding Club at Pocklington towards the annual fundraising effort for the Airborne Forces Security Fund.
He remembered flying gliders full of British and Allied airborne troops heading into battle against the Germans in Normandy in June 1944.
The Horsa gliders were made out of old wooden furniture. Later, he flew to Arnhem in Holland, where he was captured and made a prisoner-of-war (POW).
As a POW, he later went on the gruelling ‘Death March’ from Poland, in which he was forced to walk for miles without food or water for eight weeks, with many of his companions dying at the roadside from frostbite and malnutrition.
He was told he would lose both feet and half of a leg from frostbite but was given penicillin and eventually lost only the toes on one foot.
For his heroic efforts during the war, he was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, the highest honour France can bestow, in 2005.
Mr Thompson went up in a glider at Pocklington to mark his 70th birthday, but at the age of 92, declined the offer to go up again this week, saying he preferred to keep his feet on the ground nowadays.
He has put his weight behind the drive to raise funds for the Forces Security Fund, which supports in particular airborne forces veterans from the Second World War. He will be out with fellow association members on the streets of York tomorrow collecting money.
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