Sergeant Albert Collier Of WW2 Pegasus Bridge LTD TO 67 Hand Signed FDC

STB014 This is rare official hand signed first day cover celebrating the 50th Anniversary of D-Day and Pegasus Bridge and hand signed by Pegasus Bridge hero Sergeant Albert Collier and which has been fully certified by the publishers (see scan including the large frank of how it is personally autographed by Wally Parr) and is in mint condition. It was a limited edition of only 67 for world distribution and is hand numbered 65 from the series on reverse. You wont source better.

Sergeant Collier took part in the glider-borne spearhead of the D-Day landings in June 1944.Along with Private Harry "Cherry" Tilbury (so-named because of his ruddy face) Albert "Scram" Collier took off for France in the small hours of 6th June in a lumbering wooden Horsa glider. The Horsa, dangerously overloaded with a jeep, a 20mm towed anti-aircraft gun and supplies was hit by flak as it crossed the enemy coast behind its tow-plane, a four-engined Lancaster bomber.The crash landing as recalled by Harry was "a big bump followed by the Horsa crashing into cement posts the Germans had placed in the field, which knocked the wings off." German artillery was pounding the landing ground and just as the pair finally succeeded in unloading the jeep and gun from the damaged glider, a shell finished off the wreck.Bert and Harry raced to Ranville where they linked up with other men of their unit including Major John Howard's small force which had captured the bridges over the Orne River and Caen Canal, a crucial part of the Allied invasion plan.He was later the victim of a battle accident and taken to a Belgium Hospital by Red Cross train, took part in the Victory Parade and subsequently returned to England where he was demobbed in 1947