Somme survivor ended up as a star of small screen's home guard

One man's harrowing experiences serving with the Somerset Light Infantry at the Battle of the Somme would have a haunting resonance many decades later in one of the most famous British comedy programmes of all time, says Eugene Byrne.

- Eugene Byrne.

On Thursday November 20 1969, the 11th episode of the third series of the BBC's hugely popular comedy series Dad's Army was broadcast.

Titled 'Branded, the episode involves Private Godfrey, the bumbling old duffer of the Walmington-on-Sea platoon, handing in his resignation because he recently found himself unable to kill a mouse in the kitchen at home. If he couldn't bear to kill a mouse, he reasons, how can he kill an invading German?

From this, it emerges that he was a conscientious objector during the First World War, something which horrifies the pompous Captain Mainwaring, who determines to shame Godfrey in front of the rest of the men.

Some are appalled, some indifferent, some don't know what to think. But when Godfrey rescues Mainwaring from being asphyxiated during a training exercise, they all discover that Godfrey is, in fact, a decorated war hero.

He was a conscientious objector, but had signed up with the Royal Army Medical Corps and during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 he had rescued several men under heavy fire. For this, Godfrey had received the Military Medal, but refused to wear it because he didn't want to show off.

The man playing Godfrey, Arnold Ridley, had not been a conscientious objector, but he had been at the Somme where he was severely wounded, and his real life certainly had plenty of resonances with the fictional Godfrey.

Invalided out of the army, he was walking through Torquay in 1917 when he was handed a white feather by a young woman.

The white feather was the symbol of cowardice, given to military-age men in civilian dress, usually by middle class women, who wanted to know why they were not in uniform. Soldiers who had to leave the army because of wounds were given a special discharge badge for this very reason.