Hundreds of people gathered to commemorate the vital role a Dorset airfield played in D-Day.
The Royal Air Force station at Tarrant Rushton, between Wimborne and Blandford, saw Halifax bombers take off towing wooden gliders carrying soldiers bound for Normandy on June 6, 1944.
READ: 80th anniversary of D-Day to be celebrated in Weymouth
Home to 3,000 men and women in 1944, all that remains of the airfield is a small strip of the main concrete runway, two aircraft hangars and the perimeter track once used for taxiing bombers and gliders that is now a public footpath.
To mark the airfield's historic role in the allied of invasion of northern France, 400 people attended a memorial service, on Saturday, June 1, to honour the soldiers and pilots who flew from the base.
Among those attending the service were two veterans who served at the airfield in 1944; 99-year old former ground crew Halifax engineer Bob Wakeling, from Surrey, and 99-year old former WAAF clerk Anne Martin from Fordingbridge in Hampshire.
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Also attending the service was 103-year old Joan Clark from Wimborne, whose late husband Patrick Clark was in the Glider Pilot Regiment.
The D-Day 80th anniversary service was organised by the Friends of Tarrant Rushton Airfield Memorial, a newly formed voluntary non-profit-making community group.
Chair of the group, Anne Gardner, said: “It was a wonderful and moving occasion of shared memory and remembrance.
"It was great to be able to meet and speak with so many children and grandchildren of Tarrant Rushton veterans among others.
"I would like to thank everyone who helped plan and stage the service as well as all those people who attended from near and far – one family travelling from Spain."
After the war, the airfield became the home to Sir Alan Cobham’s pioneering aviation research and manufacturing company Flight Refuelling.
Several people who worked with the company – or who had links to the airfield at that time – also attended the service, including Lady Nadine Cobham, daughter-in-law of the late Sir Alan Cobham.
READ: Full schedule of D-Day 80th anniversary events across Dorset
The guest of honour at the service – and representing His Majesty King Charles – was the Lord-Lieutenant of Dorset Angus Campbell who served in the Army Air Corps which was formed in 1957 from the Glider Pilot Regiment.
Major General Neil Sexton of the Army Air Corps who was also accompanied by an honour guard from Middle Wallop in Hampshire where the Army Air Corps has a base.
Anne, whose late father William Wastell served in the Glider Pilot Regiment and took part in the Arnhem operation in 1944, added: “Tarrant Rushton airfield has a remarkable and important history in war and peace.
"The courage of its Halifax aircrews, glider pilots and airborne troops should be remembered and commemorated.
READ: Weymouth resident shares father’s experiences of D-Day
"The bravery and sacrifice of the men who failed to return after flying from the airfield should never be forgotten.”
A restored heavy industrial tractor used for towing aircraft and gliders restored by David Maidment, from Charlton Marshall near Blandford, whose ancestors lived at Crook Farm which was demolished in 1942 to make way for the building of the airfield, also made an appearance.
After the service, members of the Dorset Gliding Club based near Wareham – which operated from Tarrant Rushton airfield in the 1970s – performed two fly pasts over the former airfield with a tug aircraft towing a glider.
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