Somewhere in Normandy a few weeks after D-Day, Pvt. 1st Class Donald Huard had the ride of his life.
A U.S. Army medic, Huard had volunteered to fly from a Royal Air Force base near the Blandford Camp military hospital complex in southern England on a glider mission that transported medical supplies and medical personnel to field hospitals in France.
Hundreds of casualties a day were pouring into Allied hospitals because of the aftermath of Operation Overlord and the subsequent push into France. Gliders, one of the forgotten aerial workhorses of World War II, were normally aircraft that went on a one-way trip.
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