Guernsey Press

D-Day veteran shares his memories of flying sorties

A D-DAY veteran who dropped parachutists over France 75 years ago has been sharing his memories.

Published
D-Day veteran Douglas Coxell pictured with his many medals including the Legion D’Honneur, furthest right. The former pilot has been sharing his memories with the Guernsey Press about dropping parachutists over France 75 years ago as part of the D-Day operations. (Picture by Peter Frankland, 24846899)

Douglas Coxell, 97, who was 22 at the time of the landings on 6 June 1944, flew a Halifax aircraft, dropping the parachutists at 1am in order for them to locate and mark drop zones for air landing operations.

He said it had been quite a dangerous sortie over enemy lines.

‘Returning, we flew low over the canal, so it was very difficult for them to shoot at us,’ Mr Coxell said.

He returned on a second mission delivering reinforcements in a Horsa glider.

‘The D-Day operations went well. We thought it would be hectic, but they ended up being a success,’ he said.

The Halifax planes were those involved in Operation Deadstick, known as the most successful landings close to the Orne Canal and river bridges.

Mr Coxell married his first wife on 11 July 1944.

Originally from Peterborough, he was in the Huntingdonshire police force before requesting to sign up for the war.

He had to pass a test to be either a pilot or a navigator.

‘I don’t know how I did it,’ he said.

‘They would only let me sign up if I passed the tests for one and I managed it for piloting, otherwise I would have remained in the police.’

He moved to Alderney in 1976 to fly Aurigny planes, then later moved to Guernsey after being asked as a senior pilot to move his base.

He continued to be a pilot until he was 86, as part of Channel Islands Air Search.

His second wife, Jan, said they returned to the Orne Canal many years later.

‘We went back on a yacht along the canal, they opened up all the gates as we went through, then on the way back they played the bagpipes. It was really amazing,’ she said.

More than 150,000 soldiers from the UK, US, Canada and France landed on the beaches of Normandy on 6 June 1944.

The success of the landings was helped by various rehearsals and training exercises along the Devon and Dorset coast, together with Mulberry harbour engineering.

Mr Coxell has since written a book about his life, including details about the landings, which he has yet to publish.