"Colonel John Tillett, who has died aged 95, was closely involved with the glider-borne operation to capture Pegasus Bridge on D-Day. Late on the night of June 5 1944 Tillett, adjutant of 2nd Battalion The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, together with his CO, saw off the first wave of glider-borne troops from Tarrant Rushton, Dorset. Led by Major John Howard, the six platoons of “D” Company, known as the coup de main force, were ordered to seize the first objectives of the invasion, the vital bridge over the Caen Canal as well as that over the Orne River at Bénouville, later renamed Pegasus and Horsa bridges. Tillett flew to France with the remainder of the Battalion later on D-Day and they crash-landed their gliders in the fields of Normandy at about nine o’clock that evening. Some 400 gliders carrying the 6th Airlanding Brigade were all making for small designated areas near the town of Ranville. When asked how he decided where to land his contingent of some 70 gliders, Tillett replied “We came down anywhere there was room!” In the few months of fierce fighting that followed, the Battalion had several hard engagements with the enemy and suffered many casualties, before reaching the River Seine and being pulled back to England at the end of September 1944. John Tillett was born on November 4 1919 at Ipswich and educated at its Grammar School. During a hockey tour of Germany in 1936, he saw at first hand something of the Hitler Youth organisation and was made an “honorary member”of it. Convinced that war was coming, he joined the TA. He was commissioned and posted to the 2nd Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, known as the “52nd”." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11369762/Colonel-John-Tillett-D-Day-veteran-obituary.html
