THE funeral of a Second World War veteran who survived evacuation from Dunkirk and the battle of Arnhem is due to take place next week.

Bill Gibbard, 93, of Woodstock, who died last week after an illness, was one of 10,000 British and Polish troops who parachuted and landed by glider at the Dutch town in 1944 to try to capture its bridge over the River Rhine from the Germans.

The aim was to hold it for two days before an armoured column punched through the German lines, but stiff resistance meant the tanks’ advance was too slow.

Supplied with only light weapons and rations for two days, the Allied airborne troops held out for nine days against two German tank regiments.

Only about 1,000 made it back to Allied lines, with the rest killed or taken prisoner, including Mr Gibbard.

He was born in Sandford St Martin, near Middle Barton, in April 1919, the son of a farm worker and one of 11 children. The family lived in a small two-up-two-down cottage with the children sleeping head to toe.

After leaving school at 14, he worked for Oxfordshire County Council ’s highways department at its Deddington depot.

Mr Gibbard was called up by the Army in 1939 and joined the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and went to France with the British Expeditionary Force after the Second World War broke out.

In May 1940 he was evacuated from Dunkirk after Germany invaded France and Belgium.

He later transferred to the Parachute Regiment and was posted to train at Hardwick Hall in Manchester in 1943.

The trainees went from jumping off a platform to jumping from a balloon and then making seven jumps from a plane.

He was first posted to Algeria with the 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment and then to Italy.

In 1944, the unit was put on stand-by for the D-Day landings in Normandy, but instead was thrust in action in the Arnhem assault, Operation Market Garden.

As part of the battalion’s 3rd mortar platoon, he was tasked with providing covering fire for troops at the bridge.

By the third day they were over-run and the order came “every man for himself”. Mr Gibbard was captured that night.

He escaped twice from captivity but was recaptured both times and was liberated in May 1945 by US troops.

After the war he became a cattle herdsman on Oxfordshire farms. He retired aged 65 and moved with his wife Joyce, who he had married in 1944, to Woodstock.

Mrs Gibbard died in 2006, aged 80. Mr Gibbard leaves his children Margaret and Terrence, four grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

His funeral will take place at Oxford Crematorium on Monday at 12.15pm and will be followed by a thanksgiving service at St Andrew’s Church in Oddington, near Bicester, on Saturday, August 25, at 2pm.