At just about this time 63 years ago the pathfinders took off from England to mark the drop zones for the 82nd and 101st ABN Divs. My mother's first cousin (made him my 2nd cousin, I guess) made that jump with the 502nd PIR. God bless em all!
Yup and my late father was getting ready to go in too!
He was a Royal Marine Commando and on D-Day manned an anti-aircraft gun on a destroyer parked off the beaches. On D-Day+1 he used his demolition expert skills to blow the bottoms out of the concrete block ships to form the temporary harbours and on D-Day+2 he went ashore and then fought his way to Berlin where he was de-mobbed in '46.
He went up the Arnhem Corridor two weeks after it was finally opened (luckily he just missed out on being IN on the 'bridge too far' debacle!) and he passed through the Bergen/Belsen concentration camp just after it was liberated and he said that was truly sickening and the stench from the camp could be detected four miles away!
My apologies for the delayed post of additional info. I just realized that in my initial post I'd forgot to include the following: If anyone is interested, there are some pictures of his uniform at this link:
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