Drive for Heroes

A FATHER-and-son team with a combined age which matches the model Land Rover in which they will be competing will drive 2,000 miles for Help For Heroes.

Michael Payne and his son Adrian are preparing to take part in the charity’s 4x4 European Rally.

Adrian, 43, a former member of No. 2262 (Bexhill) Squadron, Air Training Corps, is a veteran of the First Gulf War ending his own military service as an RAF technical instructor when the RAF closed its Locking base at Weston Super-Mare. He is currently a senior engineer with a communications company in South Wales.

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His father, 67, of Cooden Drive, is a former Bexhill police officer who has spent the past 27 years as chief armourer to a Sussex defence manufacturer.

Both are long-term Land Rover enthusiasts.

Now they are getting ready to use Adrian’s Land Rover Defender 110 in an event which will trace the track of the US 101st Airborne Division (The Screaming Eagles) during the liberation of Europe.

The division’s valiant exploits were vividly reproduced in the television series Band Of Brothers.

The pair had hoped to take part in last year’s Help For Heroes European rally but the fund-raising event for the charity’s work for injured servicemen and women was vastly over-subscribed and with a long waiting list of hopefuls to fill any last-minute vacancies.

The rally raised £121,000.

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This year they were successful and will be one of 45 teams taking part.

With father navigating and son driving, “Team 110” will set off from Salisbury Plain on June 18 as the Band of Brothers did in 1944 and go from Portsmouth to Caen in Normandy.

Covering six countries in 11 days, they will make their way via the D-Day beach at Arromanches, where parts of the Mulberry Harbour remain, to Bastogne.

A trail of World War II landmarks will include Bastogne in the Ardennes, where the 101st gained immortality resisting the besieging Werhmacht during the Battle of the Bulge.

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Others will include Arnhem, focal point of the ill-fated Operation Market Garden and Dachau concentration camp with the final point being Berchtesgaden, where Hitler had his infamous Eagles Nest retreat.

Michael said: “We will have to cover 3,200 kilometres in 11 days. But we will see battlefields I have always wanted to see.”

Readers can support Michael and Adrian’s fund-raising for Help For Heroes by logging on to www.bmycharity.com/H4H4x4EuropeanRally2011Team110