The employment of glider-borne troops in warfare had been pioneered by the Germans at the capture of Fort Eben-Emael, Belgium, in May 1940. A year later gliders were a prominent aspect of the German descent on Crete. The British made small, unsuccessful raids with airborne troops in Italy and Norway in 1941 and 1942 but not until July 1943, when the invasion of Sicily was launched, did the Allies make extensive use of both paratroops and glider-borne troops. This approach was an important aspect of the liberation of France, the advance into the Netherlands, and the crossing of the Rhine. Gliders were also used extensively in the Burma campaign. Although gliders sometimes transported forces in the initial stages of an assault (as had occurred at Eben-Emael and in Normandy), they were more commonly used to fly reinforcements and supplies directly to forward battle areas that had already been secured by seaborne or parachute troops. As a military tool they were unique to the Second World War; in modern combat they have been succeeded by helicopters.
The 6th Airborne Division was a British formation which included the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion. Their Horsa gliders were capable of carrying twenty-five soldiers or three tons of cargo. Artist Will Ogilvie saw these craft near the mouth of the Orne River in July 1944; they had most likely been used to reinforce units that had captured key bridges and neutralized a German artillery battery in the early hours of 6 June, 1944. The black and white stripes had been applied to all Allied aircraft during the Normandy invasion to identify them clearly to friendly anti- aircraft gunners. The work also demonstrates one of the advantages of gliders their usefulness in delivering a concentrated amount of supplies which would have been scattered had the material been dropped by parachute. Born in South Africa, William Abernethy Ogilvie (1901- ) studied art there and moved to Canada in 1925. Within a decade he had become an established figure in the Canadian art world, and in 1936 he was commissioned to work on murals for the Hart House Chapel at the University of Toronto. Ogilvie joined the Canadian Army in 1940 and, following basic training, was employed as a staff artist overseas. When an official war art programme was established in January 1943 he was commissioned a lieutenant and assigned to the programme. In the course of his wartime service Ogilvie produced more than 400 works ranging from drawings to oils on canvas; among the Canadian war artists only E.J. Hughes was more prolific. Ogilvie covered a variety of subjects: army training in Britain; operations in Sicily and Italy; the Normandy campaign; and Canadian forces in Holland during the winter of 1944-45. Rising to the rank of major, he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1946 and was the only Canadian war artist to be decorated solely for his artistic activity.
Courtesy: Canadian War Museum, National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada (13394)
