Former glider pilot Denzil Cooper holding a photo of himself (on the left) with fellow Staff Sergeant Les Cole, at his home in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands. Photo: PA Wire

Glider pilot Denzil Cooper’s memories of D-Day include the abiding image of a fallen soldier’s neatly-presented uniform and the “calm and measured” approach of his comrades.

Almost seven decades after his Horsa glider touched down in Normandy at 80mph under a clear sky, Staff Sergeant Cooper is still in awe of the “unbelievable” secrecy and depth of preparation surrounding the landings.

The 93-year-old, from Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, was not even told the names of the troops who flew with him from RAF Brize Norton to capture a bridge around four miles from the French coast.

Cooper, who was wounded later in the war, says of the troops he safely delivered to France: “It was just a job we expected to do.

“What we did we kept to ourselves, and what they did they kept to themselves. I helped them unload the jeep and trailer that they’d got. They drove straight off, and we bedded down in the hedgerow.

“We just said ‘cheerio’ to the fellas and where they ended up, we’ll never know. Hopefully they survived.”

The Glider Pilot Regiment saw 37 of its men killed during the operation to gain a foothold on French soil. The aircraft they flew, which were towed across the English Channel by Albemarle transport planes, delivered troops and equipment to fields near strategically vital bridges.

D-Day’s human cost was such that Cooper describes the Glider Pilot Regiment as being “very lucky” compared to other Army units, adding: “We were told afterwards that they expected seven out of 10 of us to die.”

The veteran returned to England in a landing craft on June 7, 1944, to take part in further operations, having seen a glider pilot killed by an anti-aircraft pole dug into the ground at the landing site.

He also saw the bodies of dozens of British soldiers piled up against a concrete gun emplacement near Sword beach, including a lance corporal who stood out because of the newly-whitened chevrons on his shoulder.

“It’s a memory that still stays with me today,” the old soldier recalls. “He looked so smart.”

Cooper, who still has a lump of shrapnel in his right leg to remind him of his service during the Battle of Arnhem, concedes that his mind was on his next mission even before he had left France.

Asked what the 70th anniversary of D-Day will mean to him, the retired optometrist responded: “Any time that we’ve gone back to visit the area, we’ve thought of our pals.

“That’s what it’s all about really. It’s about the poor fellas that didn’t come back. You just realise how lucky you were to have survived it all.

“But, on the other hand, I expected to survive – you never gave any thought to not coming back. Being scared didn’t come into it really, we were too damned busy trying to fly the glider, which was hard work.

“We knew exactly what we had got to do and we just went and did it.”