The Glider Pilot Regiment, beginning as the first element of the new Army Air Corps in 1942 and disbanded in 1957, can probably claim to have been the smallest and shortest-lived Regiment ever to form part of the British Army. Nevertheless, in those few years the Regiment gained as much distinction other units took hundreds of years to achieve. Yet, strangely enough, the story of these heroic men who piloted their flimsy gliders to most of the important battlefields of the Second World War has never before been told. It is indeed a remarkable story and no one is better qualified to tell it than Claude Smith, who himself served with the Regiment and took part in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944, and later in the ill-fated landing at Arnhem, where he was taken prisoner. AUTHOR: Claude Smith served in the Glider Pilot Regiment in the latter part of the war. He flew a glider to Normandy on D-Day and another to Arnhem, where he was taken prisoner. He was in captivity near Dresden for seven months, until released by the Russians. 16 pages of b/w photographs
