Gordon Procter RIP, Rhine Glider Pilot

Adrian Roberts · Dec 29, 2008

Gordon Procter - Telegraph

This chap had a colourful life, including a brief but hazardous experience of WW2

Gordon Procter, who has died aged 84, was one of the advertising industry's most flamboyant figures, with a bubbling enthusiasm for fast cars.

As a young man he was an amateur driver for Ford of Europe in the Monte Carlo, and also took part in circuit races at Brands' Hatch. A Daily Telegraph photograph once showed him driving his company car in a race at Goodwood with two wheels off the ground. This earned him a reprimand from his boss, Alfred Pemberton, but also a bonus sufficient to buy another car for racing while retaining the company car for business.

Procter also took delivery at Silverstone of a new V8 Vantage, which had been run-in, and after a preliminary spin round the track, drove it in the Aston Martin owners' club annual St John Horsfall meeting. An advance story in Autosport about a madman planning to race his brand new company car, capable of doing 170 miles per hour, ensured a large crowd. It was not disappointed when he overtook a DB5 Vantage, driven by Win Percy, the former British touring car champion, on the penultimate lap. The advertising men present noted that Procter won the Driver of the Day in a car numbered 208, the frequency of Radio Luxembourg, his firm's client and the meeting's sponsor.

The son of a commodities broker Gordon Heslop Procter was born at Wallasey, Cheshire, on October 11 1924 and went to Whitgift school, Croydon, before being trained as an RAF pilot in Arizona and posted to the Glider Pilot Regiment, which needed replacements after the Arnhem operation.

With 10 hours' glider training he was given a Horsa to carry a captain, eight soldiers and a Jeep across the Rhine in Operation Varsity on March 24 1945. He landed near Wesel with his passengers unhurt – though some had blacked out – and saw Americans emerging from their glider in looted black top hats, donning steel helmets and making a charge at a German machine gun in a farmhouse.

Expected now to fight as infantry, for which he had been issued only with a Smith & Wesson revolver, Procter dug a trench, where he took part in a game of cards until a player was shot through the head. He watched a GI who gave the wrong password being fired on by an American patrol, which then stripped off his smock to reveal a German uniform underneath. He next encountered a prisoner with a bundle of Dutch guilders, which he confiscated. On returning to England Procter shocked his mother when he rang; she had been told that he had been killed.

After the war he developed a taste for the high-spending life, funding it through stints at the Samson Clark and Alfred Pemberton agencies before founding Gordon Procter and Partners. He used his love of fast cars to initiate a sponsorship deal between Saudi Airlines and Frank Williams's Formula One team, which later won the world championship.

In 1969 Procter entered the London-New York air race from the top of the GPO tower in London to the Empire State building. While some competitors were deadly serious, he began on a tandem, switched to the Tube and finished in a NYPD helicopter after crossing the Atlantic by a DC8 owned by Capital Airways (another client), which broke the speed record for its category.

Procter later raced a 34ft Class I offshore powerboat, driven by a helicopter engine, and together with his wife, Floss, entertained regularly on his motor cruiser White Swordsman in the Solent. When his two daughters asked for ponies he gave them little race boats, and his son a go-kart.

Gordon Procter's last major campaign was to raise money for a replica of the Horsa glider he flew as a memorial to those who took part in the Rhine crossing. He died on October 21.
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Kyt · Dec 30, 2008

10 hours training for the Horsa doesn't seem like much at all!! And the fact that he was expected to fight as infantry sounds very different from arnhem where I believe the pilots were top priority for return to friendly lines.

Kyt · Dec 30, 2008

And the Horsa referred to:

Skycontrol.net: The Royal Air Force launched an appeal for cash to complete Glider that shortened World War 2

Antipodean Andy · Dec 31, 2008

A man of adventure. RIP.

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