Tarrant Rushton

It's unlikely that you would have heard of this small Dorset hamlet unless you have an interest in the events leading up to 6th June 1944 but I would guess that in the bigger scheme of things Tarrant Rushton is one small place that punched above its weight sixty five years ago.

The village today, as then, doesn't have a pub, it has a church, a telephone box, half a dozen houses, a post box and most importantly between 1942 and 1980 it had an airfield. During the war years it was the home of the Halifax 'tugs' and the Horsa and Hamilcar gilders. These gliders carried men from the 6th Airborne Division on their way to Normandy, the airfield had also been the base for carrying spies and other soldiers behind enemy lines on flights that would go deep into enemy territory and last up to twelve hours. The airfield would also be the base for some of the gliders that took part in Operation Market Garden.

At 22:56 on night of the 5th June 1944 six Horsa gliders lifted off from Tarrant Rushton airfield and headed out over the English Channel . Carried within the gliders were 138 men from the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and 30 Royal Engineers which together comprised the coup-de-main force that had been tasked with capturing and holding two bridges over the Orne River and Caen Canal that were a vital part of the airbourne effort to enable the allied invasion of Normandy to begin.

In the early hours of the 6th June, despite having their force scattered by heavy landings, and later taking casualties and injuries, the men of the coup-de-main force persevered and successfully completed their objective by capturing what are now known as the Horsa and Pegasus bridges.

After the end of the war the airfield was taken over by a local company that specialised in the pioneering of in-flight refuelling, something that would bear fruit during the Falklands campaign when aircraft needed refuelling on the journey south. The airfield also saw tests for the Harrier Jump Jets and some early experiments that would later lead to the development of Concorde.

Between 1958 and 1965 the airfield was used by the RAF as one of the points of its emergency dispersal points during the Cold War, the runway was reinforced so that even the largest bombers could land and taxi.

The airfield finally closed in 1980 and within weeks all but one building had been demolished and the runway had been dug up after a successful appeal by the land owners who had requested that it be returned to agricultural use. Today only one giant hanger remains, together with a taxiing area and part of the runway which now forms part of the local farmers access road. Close to the hanger is the memorial, I photographed above, to the men who trained and flew from here all those years ago.

On Thursday 4th June 2009 a run for the Project 65 charity will begin at the site of the old airfield, at the appropriately named Windy Corner. Details can be found here.

On Sunday afternoon as 150,000 people headed for Bournemouth Beach we headed inland to the peace and tranquility of this beautiful place. It is impossible now to imagine what it was like when there were 3,000 people working on the site in around 300 buildings, but the sunshine, the cornfields, solitary building and the runway lined by fields made our visit all the more poignant.