Although weakened by cancer, Gladden had been determined to make it back to Normandy to take part in this year’s D-Day commemorations.LONDON, UK — British army veteran Bill Gladden, who survived a glider landing on D-Day and a bullet that tore through his ankle a few days later, wanted to return to France for the 80th anniversary of the invasion so he could honor the men who didn’t come home.
He joined the army at 18 and was ultimately assigned to the 6th Airborne Reconnaissance Regiment as a motorcycle dispatch rider.FILE - D-Day veteran Bill Gladden shows off one of his paintings, that depicts the type of glider in which he landed in Normandy on D-Day. On June 16, he carried two wounded soldiers into a barn that was being used as a makeshift field hospital. Two days later, he found himself at the same hospital after machine gun fire from a German tank shattered his right ankle.“Amputation considered. Large deep wound in right ankle. Compound fracture of both tibia and fibula. All extension tendons destroyed. Evacuate.”
Over the years, Gladden had regularly joined other old soldiers on trips to battlefields in Normandy and the Netherlands organized by the Taxi Charity for Military veterans. There’s also a scrap of parachute silk left behind by one of the paratroopers who landed in the orchard at Ranville. As he lay in the hospital recovering from his wounds, Gladden painstakingly stitched his unit’s shoulder insignia into the fabric.