might have followed a series of bumbling Home Guard recruits throughout , but its actors faced a far grimmer reality when Hitler mounted his campaign.
It’s well documented that Arnold Ridley, who starred as medic Private Charles Godfrey in the classic sitcom, suffered from shell-shock after seeing active service in both and World War II.
He experienced hand-to-hand fighting in the trenches and was severely injured from a bayonet wound to the groin, along with a head wound that left him suffering nightmares for the rest of his life.
Ridley wasn’t the only Dad’s Army star who signed up to serve in the war.
Express.co.uk takes a look at the cast’s real life war heroics.
Dad’s Army had a slew of stars who really served in the World Wars (Image: BBC)
John le Mesurier
Best known to Dad’s Army fans for playing Sergeant Wilson, John le Mesurier was moving house the day that war broke out in 1939. He uprooted his life with first wife June Melville to sign on as an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) Warden at Dolphin Square, responsible for keeping people safe when the sirens went off.
By the end of 1939 he was classified as fit for service after an Army medical exam and handed his call-up papers – but they, along with his other belongings, were destroyed when an incendiary bomb hit the Brixton Theatre.
When he did eventually turn up for service it was with his golf clubs in hand. He started life as a trooper in 1940 in the mechanised cavalry, but later volunteered for the Parachute Regiment. He was turned down for the job, and went on to learn how to drive a tank on land instead.
Eventually John became a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Armoured Corps, posted to the 54th Training Regiment at Perham Down where he continued his air raid duties.
He eventually was posted overseas, spending two years in Poona, India, where he helped to plan military exercises and taught English.
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Arnold Ridley
Arnold Ridley actively served in both World Wars (Image: Getty)
Arnold Ridley’s character Charles Godfrey might have been a pacifist in the show, but in real life Arnold fought in both World Wars.
The star as left with a “virtually useless” left hand after the Battle of the Somme, while his legs were embedded with shrapnel. He received a bayonet wound to the groin and a blow to the head with a butt of a rifle left him prone to blackouts once the war ended, necessitating him to be medically discharged in 1917.
But by 1939 he’d signed up again, becoming a captain for World War II before joining the real Home Guard in 1940, discharged from the forces on health grounds.
He wrote in an unpublished memoir: “Within hours of setting foot on the quay at Cherbourg [in World War II], I was suffering from acute shell-shock again. It took the form of a mental suffering that can best be described as an ‘inverted’ nightmare.”
Clive Dunn
Clive Dunn was taken as a prisoner of war (Image: Getty)
In 1939, Lance Corporal Jack Jones actor Clive Dunn attempted to sign up for both the Royal Navy and the Army – but was told to go home until he was called up. Aged 19 at the time, Clive even tried to sign up for the RAF – but hadn’t scored highly enough in French to join.
He finally found his feet as a volunteer in the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service, before being called up to the Army in 1940 where he was trained up for the Royal Armoured Corps.
In a “terrifying” experience, Clive actually witnessed part of the Battle of Britain, when half a squadron of Hurricanes roared across the sky overhead to battle hundreds of German bombers. He explained: “It was the most exciting and unreal sight in the world – there seemed to be dogfights everywhere.
“Planes were falling out of the sky – it was a hair-raising mixture of shrieking machines and vicious gunfire.”
It wasn’t Clive’s only close call during the war. When he spotted a low flying plane above him, he alerted the nearby sergeant and was forced to run for his life before bombs were dropped nearby, killing one Army recruit and injuring another.
Eventually posted to a crack cavalry unit, the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars, Clive was sent overseas to Egypt – and even volunteered to go to the front lines as a medical orderly.
Clive was eventually captured as a prisoner of war in Austria, shuffled from prison to prison and forced to perform hard labour – falling ill with chronic colitis and taken to hospital. He spent years as a prisoner until 1945, when the German guard decided to desert.
Arthur Lowe
Arthur Lowe had a brush with death in WW2 (Image: Getty)
Captain Mainwaring star Arthur Lowe had his own experience in the Second World War, joining the Territorial Army in 1939 before being called up to the Duke of Lancaster’s Own Yeomanry.
The star’s medical exam, however, revealed that his poor eyesight would interfere with his ability to perform in a mechanised unit, and he was trained as a wireless and radar technician.
Still, Arthur was sent to Egypt in 1942, working as a horseman and helping to repair radio communications in the area. The star was promoted to the rank of sergeant major in the No. 2 Field Entertainment Unit, which put on amateur dramas to boost morale.
But despite his relatively straightforward military service, Arthur didn’t avoid a brush with death. He was stationed at Pembroke Dock in Wales when German bombers attacked – with one bomb landing “virtually next door to his billet in the fort”.
He returned to Britain in 1945 but wasn’t demobbed until a year later.