Despite having been in the Army during the war, Dad always encouraged my older brother and me in our pursuit of all things to do with armchair aviation: from modelling to airshows. In fact, my brother built some beautiful free-flight models. Many years later, I'd taken Dad down to Manston, where I was an ATC 'C' Cat gliding instructor, and wangled him a flight with me as pilot. We were sitting down over a pint or three that evening when he let drop that his 'job' during the war had been as an army glider pilot who'd flown a Horsa into Normandy on D-Day + 1!! He'd never mentioned it to the family ever before - not even Mum! Subsequently came all his stories of selection and training and of coincidental meetings with old comrades years later. He even told of how he'd run away to join Alan Cobham's Flying Circus during the Thirties but returned when homesickness and hunger got the better of him.
But he'd kept schtum through all the years of my brother's and my fascination for flight. Is it in the blood, or what?!
