Douglas Coxell waited with growing dudgeon until his war began in earnest in early 1944. As a young policeman in Cambridgeshire from 1939 he was held back from enrolling in the RAF because he was in a reserved occupation. Armed with a Smith & Wesson .38, he kept a keen lookout for fifth columnists but need not have worried that his opportunity to make a greater contribution would pass by. As an RAF pilot he would take part in the D-Day landings, Operation Market Garden, Operation Varsity (the largest parachute landing of the war) and in the liberation of Norway.
At 1am on June 6, 1944, Coxell took part in one of D-Day’s opening salvos as one of the first pilots to drop parachutists near