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WAR EXPERIENCES OF GLIDER PILOT Part 3

My Next Action

March 24th 1944 - The Rhine Crossing, was my next action.
That was the big break through, and this is my memory of it.

It was a fairly long glider tow — 3hrs 30 mins, and it can be a bit wearing because you get an awful lot of slip stream coming back when you’ve got a ‘caravan’ of gliders and tugs in the air. You can get tossed about quite a bit and 3hrs 30 mins is about the limit you can do I would think.
We had a very good landing but very intense small arms fire from the ground coming in.
I was the first pilot on this mission, and Sergeant Hough was my second pilot, and unfortunately he got a bullet in his chest coming in. It was a difficult job getting him under cover, and we cleaned out a nearby farmhouse and they put their hands up. There was a very big brewery near this place and is was rather an important place because most of the Gestapo P.O.W records were kept there, and they were very busy trying to destroy them, but we stopped that.

This time I took part in the cleaning up operations. They had all kinds of problems — they had about 2,000-3,000 people who had been in concentration camps. They were in a dreadful state, they had had no food for days, no water. You can just imagine what it was like. What we were trying to do was to get them fed anyway, and to clean out any pockets of resistance that were left. We weren’t long before the Armoured Corps caught up with us, and they took over. So it was on the way back, boys!
This time I went back to the U.K. via Belgium in a Dakota.

Looking Back

It’s now 60 years or more ago, and when I think about it, it seems inconceivable that it took place for the reasons it did take place. One cannot really comprehend the impiety of the German Reich, and what they got away with, and it just shows how important real democracy is.
I’ve travelled a lot since the war, I have been in a lot of towns in Europe, and I like the people. There is no reason why we should not become a united Europe. It was worth fighting for, we are now far less likely to be fighting each other, but to be living in peace.

Did I expect to survive

Yes, I did. I think when I found out in the slit trench that Nobby was actually dead I think I wondered why am I still alive and he’s not. There was nothing I could do for him at all. Why the blast went his way and not mine I will never know. It was just one of those things.

Ron Willcox

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by June Woodhouse (volunteer) of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Ron Willcox (author) and has been added to the site with his permission. NO SURPRISE AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR

I was actually in a car driven by my parents from Hyams Park, Essex to Epping where my Grandmother and Grandfather lived as we were going to see them.

By the time we reached them the broadcast given by Winston Churchill had already been made at 11 a.m., declaring war with Germany. I seem to remember hearing it in the car.

My parents were not surprised; it wasn’t a surprise to anyone in those days. It had developed to such an extent that we didn’t believe a word Hitler said, and we knew it was likely he would take no notice of any strictures we might put into his life, so we were not surprised when he went into Poland. No, it was no real surprise.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by June Woodhouse (volunteer) of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of an anonymous author and has been added with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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