A COMMEMORATIVE service is being held in Tilshead to mark the 80th anniversary of the formation of The Glider Pilot Regiment (GPR).

It takes place on Saturday February 26 at the Glider Pilot Regiment and Parachute Regiment Memorial Stones on Saturday February 26.

Those wishing to attend the commemorations are asked to meet at Tilshead Village Hall from 10am ahead of the service which takes place at 11.30am and will be led by the Venerable Alan Jeans, Archdeacon of Salisbury and Honourable Chaplin to The Rifles Association.

Major (ret’d) Frederick W Greenhow MBE, the acting chair of Glider Pilot Regiment Society said: “It is so pleasing that after two years of not being able to hold fitting tributes that we can now hold physical commemorations to honour these gallant men. We have several key events lined up with it being such a special year and where better to start than where the Regiment was formed in 1942, but here at Tilshead on Salisbury Plain."

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Formed in February 1942 following Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s call to raise an Airborne Force, the Glider Pilot Regiment and, later that year, the Parachute Regiment, formed the Army Air Corps of the British Army.

On the date of its formation the Glider Pilot Regiment acquired a deserted airfield at Tilshead on Salisbury Plain as a training depot, which had previously been the base of 225 Squadron RAF, with its 12 Lysander aircraft.

The Glider Pilot Regiment at Tilshead was one of four camps in the area and became known as an “Airborne Camp” which was occupied by the emerging Glider Pilot Regiment in January 1942, and subsequently joined by “C” Company 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment who, at the time, were training to carry out the raid on Bruneval.

The Glider Pilot Depot moved to Fargo Camp at Larkhill in September 1943, where it remained until November 1946 when it moved to Aldershot to become a training and depot squadron as part of the Airborne Forces Depot. Later it moved to Middle Wallop where it remained until the Regiment was disbanded in 1957.

The Regiment took part in some of the most famous actions of the Second World War including D-Day in June 1944 and Arnhem Market Garden in September 1944.

The GPR trained 2,700 Glider pilots during the Second World War. Of these, 553 were killed in action – the highest ratio of any army unit – and a further 763 were wounded or made prisoners of war.

Gliders ceased to be used in combat after the war, although the Regiment continued to serve in Palestine, the Berlin Airlift, Malaya, and Korea before being merged with the present-day Army Air Corps in 1957.

Weather permitting, there will be a fly-past on Saturday by the Historic Flight from Middle Wallop to honour and remember the anniversary.

 

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