Alex Ross, who has died aged 86, was Douglas Bader's medical orderly during their time at the German prisoner-of-war camp Oflag IVC, better known as Colditz Castle.
A bandsman in the Seaforth Highlanders who had been captured in France in 1940, Ross became Bader's orderly in 1942 at Stalag VIIIb (Lamsdorf), and volunteered to accompany him to Colditz.
In the autumn of 1943 Ross was approached by Hauptmann Pupcke, one of the German staff, and handed a letter from the Red Cross telling him that, as a non-combatant, he was being repatriated. Delighted at the prospect, Ross went up to Bader, who was in the yard at the time, and said, "I'm going home!" "No, you're bloody not," Bader retorted. "You came here as my skivvy and that's what you'll stay."
Ross remained at Colditz for a further 18 months until it was liberated. In later years former prisoners used to tell Ross that he should have shown his Red Cross letter to the senior British officer, Colonel Tod, and claimed his right to repatriation; but Ross, a quiet, patient, humorous man, seems to have decided against going over Bader's head in this way, and stuck with him to the end.
When the camp was finally liberated by American troops on April 16 1945, Bader succeeded in hitching a lift with an American woman journalist and got back to England the next day. The remainder of the PoWs packed their belongings in boxes and were flown back to Britain two days later; their baggage never arrived. After debriefing, Ross went to visit his family at Tain, on the Dornoch Firth, north of Inverness, and while there he was summoned to the Post Office to take a long-distance call from Douglas Bader. The Battle of Britain hero wanted his spare pair of legs, and Ross had to explain that the Americans had not allowed them to bring anything back with them - in any case, Ross later insisted, there were no spare legs. Bader swore at Ross and put down the telephone on him. It was the last occasion on which Ross heard from Bader.