As a youngster I remember seeing a Horsa descend from its Dakota tug during the 1950 Battle of Britain day at Binbrook. Its approach was so incredibly slow that I could have hit it with my catapult, and everyone wondered at the bravery of those who went to war in such flimsy aircraft.
Many years later, my engineering examiner and Air Registration Board surveyor C. H. Taylor had been a senior engineer with de Havilland and responsible for having 70 Tiger Moths on the line at a wartime basic training school. He told me that the first Army trainees from the Glider Pilots' Regiment were marched everywhere in steel-shod ammunition boots and were subject to strict discipline.
One trainee was about to enter the cockpit when an officer gave him an order. The lad saluted, screamed "SAH!" and crashed his heel smartly down as he sprang to attention, driving his boot clean through the plywood walkway and the fabric-covered wing beneath. After a similar incident the trainees were 'excused boots' for the rest of their training.