>>64070572
Hijacking the thread real quick to talk about glider pilots because I think their story needs to be more widely known.
After combat landings and assuming they survived the crash, glider pilots had no real job to do so many just wandered around the countryside until they got bored. In Normandy, glider pilots were notorious for ninja looting all the cool shit off of battlefields and taking all the gifts from liberated civilians while the combat troops were still fighting (see pic related, an SVT-40 and Kar98k leaning against the boat in the foreground) causing the pilots to be reorganized into a rifle company with combat objectives after the Normandy landings. They would be tasked to pull flank security and hold key terrain, which were easy jobs that reflected on their lack of actual combat training.
During Operation Varsity, one of these pilot companies accidentally saved the day when their supposed easy objective turned out to be right in the middle of the Germans' escape route retreating from the British landing on the Rhine beachhead. The pilots were attacked by armor and heavy weapons and were on the verge of being overrun when a bazooka was found, and after figuring out how to charge the rocket, a pilot shot it at a nearby panzer, which panicked and drove into a flak gun that was being set up. The attack was broken up shortly after with their heavy weapons being destroyed and the other Varsity landing troops were free to move on their objectives.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/valor-operation-varsity/