Dad's story continues with his view of the build up to D-Day - it must have been an awe inspiring sight to see so much hardware being positioned yet not know what the plan was until you read it in the paper post D-Day!
"Like many Flying Instructors, requests to be posted to an Operational Squadron or O.T.U. were made and on most occasions were refused - as in my case. It therefore came as a great shock when in early June 1944 I was posted back to 2 FIS Montrose, Scotland, on the staff as an instructor of instructors. It was then I realised that my chances of an operational posting was absolutely nil and no further requests were made.
In Gloucestershire we were well aware that something big was being planned for. Not only were all the grass verges of countryside roads around the airfield slowly being filled with all sorts of military stores and hardware but RAF Brize Norton, an operational airfield close to ours, was becoming much more active with glider towing exercises. Our own airfield, RAF Southrop, was also being used for landing large numbers of gliders en masse. It was an awesome sight as gliders in their dozens were released from their ‘tugs’ and landing on Southrop. Brize Norton was to become very active on D-Day itself.
At that time our quarters were in Nissan huts in a wooded part of the airfield complex. I well remember early one morning in a practice operation, goodness knows how many Dakotas flew above our quarters dropping many paratroopers supposedly on the airfield but suddenly several British paratroopers came down from the sky into the wooded area where our quarters were and found themselves suspended from trees - so ‘help the paratroopers’ was the order of the day! The Dakotas were US Air Force planes and there was much swearing towards the American Dakota pilots! Unfortunately I was back in Scotland at 2 FIS on the very day after the D-Day landings. It must have been quite awe inspiring on the day as the masses of gliders, paratroopers and infantry were flown into and dropped over France together with the movement of all the trappings of war from the lanes and roads of Gloucestershire."
If Dad had remained at Southrop it would have been strange to see the lanes empty of personnel and trucks/armour.
HF