In WWII, were gliders pilots (chiefly used in Normandy by the Americans and Crete and Belgium by the Germans) supposed to fight as infantry with the troops they carried to the front or to not get involved in the fight and rejoin the bulk of the forces as soon as possible ?

British glider pilots were part of the Glider Pilot Regiment, a unit that was trained and expected to fight on the ground, at least until the landing zones were relieved. It was an Army unit, formed in early 1942 alongside the 1st Airborne Division. Its first commander was a Lieutenant Colonel John Rock, but its ethos and mission was more the product of its second-in-command, Major George Chatterton. Chatterton had been an RAF pilot before transferring to the Army and fighting in France. He brought his experiences from both of these to the Glider Pilot Regiment, leading him to call for a very high standard of training. With Colonel Rock learning to fly gliders, Chatterton was able to guide the selection and training process for the Glider Pilot Regiment. When Rock died following a glider accident in October 1942, Chatterton was able to fully organise the regiment along his lines of thinking. He trained his men to be able to fight with every weapon their gliders were expected to carry, from small arms to anti-tank guns and artillery. The regiment was trained in small-unit tactics too, and organised like an Army unit rather than an RAF squadron or wing. It was composed of two battalions (later Wings). Each battalion was subdivided into three squadrons, equivalent to companies in the rest of the Army. Those squadrons were themselves divided into three-four flights, equivalent to Army platoons. A flight had 40-48 enlisted men and four officers. The officers were armed with pistols, while there were two SMGs (Stens or Thompsons), two Bren LMGs and 36-44 rifles for the enlisted men. The intention was that the regiment would fight as a whole, serving as a light infantry unit to defend the landing zones, while the airlanding troops and paratroopers fought elsewhere.

British glider pilots had many chances to fight. The 1st Airlanding Brigade was committed to the assault on Sicily. However, poorly trained tug pilots, bad weather and AA fire from both friends and foe meant that the gliders were scattered over a wide swathe of southern Sicily and the Mediterranean. As a result, the glider pilots and their charges fought a string of confused small-unit actions. During the Normandy Landings, British gliders were used in coup-de-main operations against bridges over the Orne river and the Caen canal, as well as the battery at Merville. There were also lifts to reinforce the paratrooper landing zones around Ranville. The pilots were brought together to defend the south-western approaches to the landing zone at Ranville. From here, they fought off German counterattacks, including one supported by tanks. They also found themselves hunting snipers, before being taken off over Sword Beach on the 8th June. Of the 196 British pilots who landed in the early hours of the 6th June, some 71 would be killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Casualties amongst those who landed later in the day, though, were much lower. At Arnhem, the glider pilots fought to defend the landing zones around Wolfheze. As German troops closed in, they withdrew into the perimeter around Oosterbeek. They were spread around the perimeter, with one squadron forming the divisional reserve. They suffered heavy casualties during the battle; of the 1,334 pilots who flew into Arnhem, 359 were killed and 719 captured, an 80% casualty rate. The regiment had to be reconstituted using volunteers from the RAF for the next operation, the Rhine Crossing (Operation Varsity). Here, the gliders suffered heavily from German flak, as well as from smoke and dust from the preliminary bombardment. There was also some fairly heavy fighting to secure the initial objectives. This meant that of the Glider Pilot Regiment's 101 casualties, the majority came in the first hour of the landings.

The American pilots, meanwhile, were drawn from the Army Air Forces. The Air Forces saw them as pilots first, and soldiers a distant second, the complete opposite to the British practice. While British glider pilots were volunteer soliders, many American glider pilots were wash-outs from the training schools for powered aircraft, or could not qualify for them for reason of age or poor eyesight. The Air Forces spent most of their time training the glider pilots to fly; they did not receive the combat training that their British equivalents did. Similarly, they were organised like Air Force units, rather than Army units like the British Glider Pilot Regiment. American glider pilots were attached to troop carrier squadrons as a glider flight, and were did not have assigned sub-units like the British did. They were officially only armed with pistols, though many scrounged carbines or SMGs. They were directed to gather in rear areas, at command posts and supply dumps, and to wait for evacuation. In the meantime, they could be used for minor duties - guarding prisoners and the like.

Normandy was the first massed use of American glider pilots, and it followed the doctrine well. The gliders were used to secure landing zones around the base of the Cotentin peninsula, close to the parachute landing zones. The glider pilots almost immediately headed for the rear, with only a brief pause to unload the gliders. In the 82nd Airborne's sector, some 270 were evacuated over the beaches on the 7th June. The next day, another ~170, who had been guarding prisoners near the division's HQ, would leave for England. Of the 1,030 pilots who landed on the 6th, 197 would become casualties. The American use of gliders during Operation Dragoon (the invasion of Southern France) went similarly. 357 American gliders were committed to the invasion, with only 41 casualties, mainly from crashes. During Market Garden, the American gliders were used to fly in reinforcements on the 18th September, the day after the main airborne lift. There were ~1,700 American glider pilots in the airhead, but with little organisation and no weapons, they were of little use to the divisions. Ultimately, they were used mainly on rear-area duties until the divisions were relieved; directing traffic, carrying supplies, and the like. However, some 300 glider pilots would be armed as a scratch force, and used to free up a sector of the front line to relieve pressure on the 505th Parachute Regiment, fighting from the 20th-23rd September. The American experience of Varsity was fairly similar to the British experience, though they faced less flak; casualties were lower, and the pilots quickly evacuated back across the Rhine.

The German airlanding establishment was small compared to the British or American versions. The glider pilots, like the rest of the German airborne force, were drawn from the German Air Force. They were treated like the rest of the German paratrooper force, though they received specialist training in flying gliders. After this, they were assigned to transport squadrons or specialist air-landing units. German combat landings were generally on a smaller scale than Allied ones. The largest landing, on Crete, used 72 gliders, under half the size of the British commitment to Operation Husky. Given this, the pilots did not have assigned sub-units, but were expected to fight alongside their charges.