Highly decorated Lancaster bomber Squadron Leader shared Dwayne Linton’s wartime POW camp

This website reaches out to the whole world, and it’s exceptionally rewarding when it generates a response that relates to the life of Dwayne Linton, so here’s a story gratefully received from Heather Panter-Jones of Cheshire, who told me about her father, Squadron Leader Eric Bathurst Panter. He flew Lancaster bombers, and was shot down over Egypt in 1942 falling, wounded, into enemy hands. During his combat career he had shown great courage and gallantry on several occasions, for which he had been awarded the DSO, as well as the DFC and Bar.

He always maintained afterwards that his life was saved by a German doctor who attended to his shrapnel wounds after he was shot down and taken prisoner. Over his several years of incarceration, Eric escaped from POW camps several times with a fellow prisoner, who always insisted on knocking on people’s doors asking for help; this inevitably led to their capture and return to incarceration – and their persistent escape attempts ended up in their being sent to Stalag Luft III, where Dwayne Linton was a prisoner from 1942 to 1945.  

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Eric was put in charge of a group of fellow Stalag Luft III POWs whose job it was to get rid of the sand excavated from escape tunnels. Years after the War, when still serving in the RAF in France, Eric met a Dutchman by chance, whom he recognised from Stalag Luft III, and who had been there at the time of the ‘Wooden Horse’ escape (which occurred before ‘the Great Escape’). However, the Dutchman was too tall to fit in the wooden horse and was thus denied the chance of escape. Throughout his time in POW camps, Eric stayed in touch with home, writing to his wife (Heather’s mother), whom he had met whilst training in Kinloss, Scotland. He also kept in touch with his own mother, and was re-united with them after the War. He continued to enjoy a successful RAF career for many years after World War 2 and, at the Rank of Wing Commander, eventually retired abroad.

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My thanks to Heather Panter-Jones for providing me with invaluable information, documents and photographs.

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