Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Atherton
5th Battalion, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry

It was a tragedy that one of the first casualties that the battalion was to suffer was their commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Atherton, a Territorial soldier of the highest quality. As already related, he was killed while acting as loader to an anti-tank gun with point-blank range of one of the German tanks. During his six months in command he had impressed his personality most vividly on the battalion and his loss was hard to bear.

(Ernest Gordon Godfrey, The History of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, 1939-45, 225)

Born on 7 July 1906 in Kingston, Cambridgeshire, John Winn Atherton was a lawyer, solicitor, and Territorial Army officer, having been commissioned with the Dorsetshire Regiment since 1926. He mobilized for active service and within four years had risen to acting lieutenant-colonel and commandant of a division battle school. By January 1944, he had been appointed to command the 5th Battalion, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry in the 43rd Wessex Division.

The division deployed to France two weeks after D-Day but Atherton would be killed in action on 27 June 1944. He helped to manned a 6-pound anti-tank gun, when he blown up by a a shot from a Panther tank. “We have had the sad news this morning of the passing on active service of Col. Atherton,” the magistrate for local police court announced. “As most of you know, he practiced in this court before the war, and he was respected and loved by us all.”

He was succeeded by Major Richard Whitfield James, who would be killed just weeks later.