Kingy said:

Had a look at DV’s Dads Army pic, and looked up some of the characters on Wiki.

I knew some of them were WW2 vets, but wow.

William Arnold Ridley (7 January 1896 – 12 March 1984)

Ridley was a student teacher and had made his theatrical debut in Prunella at the Theatre Royal, Bristol when he volunteered for service with the British Army on the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914. He was initially rejected because of a hammer toe. In December 1915, he enlisted as a private with the Somerset Light Infantry, British Army. He saw active service in the war, sustaining several wounds in close-quarter battle. His left hand was left virtually useless by wounds sustained on the Somme; his legs were riddled with shrapnel; he received a bayonet wound in the groin; and the lasting impacts of a blow to the head from a German soldier’s rifle butt left him prone to blackouts after the war. He was medically discharged from the army with the rank of lance corporal in May 1917. He received the Silver War Badge having been honourably discharged from the army due to wounds received in the war, and was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal for his service.

Ridley rejoined the army in 1939 following the outbreak of the Second World War. He was commissioned into the General List on 7 October 1939 as a second lieutenant. He served with the British Expeditionary Force in France during the “Phoney War”, employed as a “Conducting Officer” tasked with supervising journalists who were visiting the front line. In May 1940, Ridley returned to Britain on the overcrowded destroyer HMS Vimiera, which was the last British ship to escape from the harbour during the Battle of Boulogne. Shortly afterwards, he was discharged from the Armed Forces on health grounds. He relinquished his commission as a captain on 1 June 1940. He subsequently joined the Home Guard, in his home town of Caterham, and ENSA, with which he toured the country. He described his wartime experiences on Desert Island Discs in 1973.

I think he and John Laurie were the only Dad’s Army actors who were in the real Home Guard.

Ridley was also a successful playwright. His comedy thriller for the stage, The Ghost Train was made into several films, the most famous being a wartime version starring Arthur Askey.