France's top honour for Shropshire war veteran

Former paratrooper Glynne Medlicott, 87, from Shrewsbury, has received France's highest military honour. He spoke to Toby Neal.

Flying into battle, about to make a hazardous night parachute drop into enemy-occupied territory, Shropshire paratrooper Glynne Medlicott took a nap.

"I was relaxed. I felt I should get some sleep because I didn't know how long it would be before I got some rest again. They had to wake me to have a flask of tea," said Mr Medlicott, part of the spearhead force for the air assault in the invasion of southern France.

The date was August 15, 1944, and 21-year-old Corporal Medlicott was one of an elite group of paras whose role was to prepare the landing zones for the main force which was due to arrive a couple of hours later.

Living today in Shrewsbury, his courage has, at the age of 87, been recognised with the award to him by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who presented him with France's highest military honour, the Legion d'Honneur in a ceremony in London.

"I was very honoured and pleased," he said.

"I was not expecting it at all so when I got the letter I was quite surprised. My wife and the boys knew before me, but weren't allowed to tell me."

Mr Medlicott hails from Church Stretton, and his father George Medlicott was the steward of a British Legion club there for 26 years. Young Glynne, who was nicknamed "Rocket" in these Church Stretton days as he was a speedy footballer, went to work with his brother Jack Medlicott, at Humphries butchers in the High Street. Then war changed his life.

"I wanted to go into the paratroops as there was a lad in Church Stretton, Bill Meredith, who was one of the first in the Parachute Regiment."

He served in the Royal Berkshire Regiment before successfully volunteering for the paras, seeing service in North Africa and Italy before, literally, taking a leading role in the "other" invasion of France, just over two months after the landings in Normandy.

Corporal Medlicott of the 1st Independent Parachute Platoon was armed with a Sten gun, a revolver, and a knife, and was in the lead plane.

"It was 3.30am and there was very thick fog. We were flying in at 1,500ft, which was quite high for us, because mountains were close by — normally we dropped at 700 to 800ft. When the green light came on I was jumping at number 14, out of 16. We had an accident in the plane. One of the chaps in my platoon, Private Eric Morley, got tangled up in the strop. He was killed in the jump.

"Fear? In my case I was more scared with having fear and not being able to jump. There were so many things to think about.

"On the way down I released the kitbag from my leg. It was on the end of a 20ft rope. I couldn't see, and it went through the rigging lines of another parachutist below and collapsed his chute, and the two of us went down together. We had a hard landing. I landed in a dry, rocky river bed about 20ft deep. I was shaken up a bit. I had a few bruises but didn't think about it."

In the darkness there was no time to lose as he linked up with colleagues and scrambled through vineyards and got to the drop zone, a little over a mile away, near the village of Le Mitan. They prepared the landing area for the main force of parachutists and gliders, clearing it of "Rommel spikes" - poles to deter gliders - and set up a piece of homing equipment called Eureka.

The operation was a success and after a few weeks Corporal Medlicott and his colleagues were pulled out and redeployed to Greece, where there was a developing civil war.

Leaving the Army after the war with the rank of Sergeant, he became a butcher in London, before returning to Shropshire on retirement.

"We were young lads in the Parachute Regiment. We were aware that there were dangers. When I was on patrol in Italy my best mate got shot more or less beside me, and another got badly wounded.

"I was never scared. I thought perhaps we were always a little bit immune to it. It never worried any of us. I never saw one lad was who likely to pack it in. I think if they were going to pack it in, they were picked out during training at Ringway when were were doing our training jumps."

Since his first dramatic arrival in France, Mr Medlicott has been back twice since, for anniversaries, and has pinpointed the exact spot he landed all those years ago.

"I don't hold anything against the Germans," he said.

"I used to box a little bit, and my brother boxed. You fight, knock each other about, but did not bear any malice. It was the same thing. Of course, we did not know all about the camps and what was happening to the Jews."