A D-Day veteran, who flew a glider into France and survived being shot by a tank, has died aged 100. Bill Gladden, from Haverhill in Suffolk, was “one in a million”, according to a veterans’ charity. He died at home on Wednesday. He served with the 6th Airborne Army Recce Regiment RAC and was just 20 when he piloted a Hamilcar glider, a large aircraft used to transport equipment, into Normandy carrying a tank and six motorbikes on 6 June, 1944. Image: Bill Gladden flew a glider into Normandy on D-Day. Family pic Image: A Tetrarch tank being loaded into a Hamilcar glider in 1945. Pic: Charles E. Brown/Royal Air Force Museum/Getty His destination was the village of Ranville, near the strategically important Pegasus Bridge. Eleven days later, he carried two of his fellow soldiers, who were wounded, into a barn that was being used as a medical post. They died of their injuries and are buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Ranville. Two days after that, he found himself being carried into …