10 Facts About Movie Star Richard Todd Serving In WWII

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1. Todd joined the military soon after the outbreak of World War II and enrolled at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1939.
2. In January 1941, Todd was injured along with 25 other cadets when a German bomb hit ‘D’ Block of New College during an attack by the Luftwaffe.
3. In his memoirs, Todd describes being blown out of the building by the blast and landing on a grass bank with lacerations, while five cadets were killed in the incident.
4. Despite the incident, Todd completed his course at Sandhurst in the spring of 1941 and was commissioned into the 2nd/4th Battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI).
5. After arctic warfare training in Iceland, Todd returned to the UK as a lieutenant, and for a short time, served as a liaison officer to the 42nd Armoured Division before joining the Parachute Regiment.
6. Todd participated in Operation Tonga during the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, and was among the first British soldiers to land in Normandy and the first Irishman.
7. He was involved in helping to repulse counter-attacks by the Heer forces and met Major John Howard on the Pegasus Bridge.
8. Five days after D-Day, Todd was promoted to captain while still in the bridge defence area.
9. After fighting in Normandy for three months, the 6th Airborne Division returned to the UK and later served in Germany to stop the Battle of the Bulge.
10. Todd served as the motor transport officer, responsible for gathering commandeered vehicles to ferry troops forward, and was later injured in a Jeep accident during counter-insurgency operations in Palestine before being demobilised in 1946.