Jim and the others ran with difficulty through the shifting sand and hot night to fetch them. It was a long, painfully slow process as men and mules dragged and hauled the heavy boats through the sand, along with outboard motors, ropes, life jackets, petrol and oil drums, back to the crossing. But the news that the fighting patrols in Inywa and Ma-ugon had driven off the Japanese was cheering and boosted their efforts, so their task was completed well within the allotted time frame.

Returning to the gliders and loading one with mail sacks and the wounded, the men manhandled the gliders into position in readiness for their pick-up. It was a practised and highly skilled manoeuvre which had been used throughout the Burma campaign, but one that only a few of the men had seen, so once all three gliders were in position, they avidly lined the sandbanks to watch how it was done.

Each glider carried two long poles, both armed at the ends with a blue light powered by its own battery, with a third shining above the pilot’s cockpit. As the pilot gave his orders the poles were stuck in the sand about two hundred feet in front of the glider and fifty feet apart. One end of a double-length nylon tow rope was fastened firmly to the hook in the glider’s nose, and then fixed to the first pole, stretched to the second and then tied very firmly to the nose hook.

The first glider pilot waited, all three lights glowing, brakes off and controls set for take-off. Everyone watched with bated breath as the approaching C-47 lowered a long steel boom from beneath its tail which had a self-operating catch.

The C-47 came in low with its engines throttled back, flaps down, propellers at full pitch. The trailing hook grabbed the taut rope between the poles and snatched it up. The C-47 took the strain, its engines screaming, and as its pilot rammed his throttles fully forward and lifted its nose, the glider – jerked from nought to eighty miles an hour in a matter of seconds – was catapulted into the air, and they both swept away into the darkness as the second C-47 came in for the next glider.

As the last plane disappeared into the night, Jim let out the breath he’d been holding. ‘Bloody hell,’ he gasped in awe. ‘Now that’s really something to write home about.’

6

Ron opened a bleary eye and wondered where the hell he was. He felt as cold and stiff as a corpse, his mouth tasted foul, and this was definitely not his bedroom. He blinked to clear his muzzy sight and was immediately assaulted by Harvey climbing all over him and eagerly licking his face.

‘Gerroff, ye heathen beast,’ he grumbled. ‘To be sure your breath is worse than mine.’