David Samuel Anthony ‘Lummy’ Lord was born on 18 October 1913, in Cork, a city in the south of Ireland. He grew up in British India, as that is where his father, a warrant officer in the British Army, had been posted. When young David Lord’s father retired from the military, the family moved to Wales. There, he completed high school, before attending a college in Valladolid, Spain, to study theology. During the mid-1930s, Lord decided that he no longer wanted to pursue a career as a Roman Catholic priest, so he returned to his family’s new hometown, Wrexham, in northern Wales, to work as a freelance writer. Finally, in 1936, he volunteered for service with the Royal Air Force (RAF).
After completing flight training, Lord served as an RAF transport pilot in the North-West Frontier, which is now part of Pakistan, as well as the Middle East and Burma. By then, World War II had begun and Lord had become a combat experienced Douglas DC-2 transport pilot. He was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) in 1943, for “acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty whilst flying in active operations against the enemy.” These acts of valour included the evacuation of wounded soldiers, as well as civilian women and children in Burma, whilst under attack by enemy forces. Many of his missions, such as those in which he dropped supplies to troops, were flown deep into enemy territory, without any fighter escort.
After receiving his DFC, Lord was sent to England to receive operational training in dropping supplies and paratroopers, as well as towing transport gliders with No. 271 Squadron, which had recently been equipped with Douglas C-47 Dakotas. In June 1944, Lord and other pilots of No. 271 Squadron participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, in northern France. The squadron was tasked with towing Airspeed Horsa troop-carrying gliders and with dropping paratroopers behind enemy frontlines.
In September 1944, Allied forces initiated Operation Market Garden. At the time, it involved the largest airborne operation in the world, in which thousands of troops and their equipment were delivered in the Netherlands with parachutes and transport gliders. During the operation, a major battle took place at Arnhem, in the east of the Netherlands. The battle was made famous by the book and subsequent movie by the same title, ‘A Bridge Too Far.’ As the battle commenced, besieged British forces began to run out of supplies. By the third day of the battle, the shortage of supplies had become critical, so the RAF responded by sending more than 160 transport aircraft to drop more than 350 tonnes of supplies to British forces. German forces expected a resupply mission and had prepared additional flak batteries in the area. When the RAF’s C-47s arrived, they came under intense fire, making it incredibly difficult to deliver their much needed cargo. In the end, only a comparatively small portion of the supplies could be recovered by the British, as most of the area was controlled by German troops. Still, this resupply mission, along with subsequent ones, allowed the British to continue fighting in the Battle for several more days.