Staff Sergeant Thomas Laidlaw

Staff Sergeant Thomas Gray Laidlaw, 1st Glider Pilot Regiment, Army Air Corps. He was posted missing in action, aged, 23, on the 10 July 1943. He had been born in Selkirk in 1919 and was the son of James and Nancy Gray of 37 Market Place, Selkirk. He had served his apprenticeship as as an ironmonger in Selkirk before going to work in Edinburgh. There he enlisted in the Royal Scots before transferring the the Army Air Corps. He was lost during the Allied invasion of Sicily where the seaborne landings were preceded by glider landings behind enemy lines. Being towed from Tunisia 136 Waco Hadrian and 8 Airspeed Horsa Gliders took part but with too little flight and navigational training many gliders were lost when they crashed into the sea. He is commemorated on the Cassino Memorial, Cassino, Italy. The first photo shows a Hadrian glider and the second a Horsa glider