How I Won the War is a 1967 British black comedy film starring Michael Crawford, Jack MacGowran, Roy Kinnear, Lee Montague, and John Lennon in his only non-musical acting role.

[1] The film uses a variety of styles such as vignettes, straight-to-camera, and docu-drama to tell the tale of the fictional 3rd Troop, the 4th Musketeers and their misadventures through the Second World War.

The screenplay takes a comic and absurdist attitude towards the conflict through the Western Desert Campaign in mid-late 1942 to the crossing of the last intact bridge on the Rhine at Remagen in early 1945.

Every time a character is killed, he is replaced by an actor in bright red, blue, or green-coloured Second World War uniform, whose face is also coloured and obscured so that he appears to be a living toy soldier.

In writing the script, the author, Charles Wood, borrowed themes and dialogue from his surreal and bitterly dark (and banned) anti-war play Dingo.

From their duologue emerges another key source of subversion – the two officers are in fact united in their class attitudes and officer-status contempt for (and ignorance of) their men.

The model is a regular infantry regiment forced, in wartime, to accept temporarily commissioned officers like Goodbody into its number, as well as returning reservists called back into service.

In both world wars this has provided a huge bone of contention for regular regiments, where the exclusive esprit de corps is highly valued and safeguarded.

Filming took place during the autumn of 1966 in the German state of Lower Saxony, at the Bergen-Hohne Training Area, Verden an der Aller and Achim, as well as the Province of Almería in Spain.

A photo of Lennon in character as Gripweed found its way into many print publications, including the front page of the first issue of Rolling Stone in November 1967.