 Jack Jones was the oldest member of the platoon (born 1870), but was played by Clive Dunn, who was 48 when he took the role.Jones was an old campaigner who had joined the British Army as a boy soldier and served under Kitchener of Khartoum in the Sudan between 1896 and 1898, and also served in the Boer War and the First World War.By 1940 he was the town butcher, which enabled him to supplement his superiors' meat ration occasionally.