Stars in Battledress (SiB) was an organisation of entertainers who were members of the British Armed Forces during World War II.
Its official title was the War Office (forerunner of the Ministry of Defence) Central Pool of Artistes which was based in Upper Grosvenor Street, London.
He told Charlie: “Nothing would get me into that.” At that moment, a German plane appeared, raking the ground with its machine guns and Arthur promptly dived into the trench from which he emerged covered in mud and frogs.
Among them was Going Places with Lieutenant Desmond Llewellyn, who played Q in the James Bond films after the war, as producer, and Sergeant Wally Huntley, in charge on the road.
Walter Huntley’s own story and of what it was like to be in an SIB show is told in his book Dummy Bullets, published by Trinity Mirror in 2008.
As a cub journalist he had enlisted in the Territorial Army in 1939 and was mobilised at the start of the war with the 149th Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery, in Hoylake, then in Cheshire.
Huntley had been an amateur ventriloquist since his school days and had acquired a full size walking dummy, whom he enlisted with him!