Lance Corporal Jack Jones is a fictional Home Guard platoon lance corporal and veteran of the British Empire, first portrayed by Clive Dunn in the BBC television sitcom Dad's Army. His catchphrases are "Don't panic!", "Permission to speak, sir?" and "They don't like it up 'em!". Jones also often recounts his past military experiences particularly those in Sudan and India and gives a glimpse to the military traditions and events in the concluding years of the 19th century.
Fictional biography
The backstory invented for Jones suggests that he was born in 1870 in Walmington-on-Sea, the son of George Jones, who by the start of World War II is the 88-year-old caretaker of the Peabody Museum of Historical Army Weapons. In "The Showing Up of Corporal Jones", when Major Regan asks him his age, Jones replies sixty, but tells Captain Mainwaring later in the same episode his actual age, which is seventy. Jack Jones joined the army as a drummer boy in 1884; thereafter, he served in five military campaigns – the Gordon Relief Expedition to the Sudan (1884–1885), the Anglo-Egyptian Reconquest of the Sudan (1896–1899), the Boer War (1899–1901), where after that he was promoted to Lance Corporal, and the First World War (1914–1918) (declaring in "The Deadly Attachment" that, "I haven't had this much fun since I was in the trenches in 1916!"). Occasionally he mentions fighting the Pathans on the North-West Frontier (his medal ribbons imply service on the Frontier in 1895-98 and 1908). In the episode "The Two and a Half Feathers" he mentions that he served in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, while in "The Bullet Is Not for Firing" he startles his khaki clad colleagues by appearing at a court of enquiry in the pre-1914 scarlet and blue full dress uniform of the regiment, complete with two rows of medals.
During his service on the Western Front, he says that he was known as the Mad Bomber, due to his inclination to throw grenades madly. He was invalided out of the army in 1915 because of his poor eyesight, as he said in the first episode "The Man and the Hour". Ιn the same episode he mentions that the last 14 years of his career he was a Lance Corporal. So it means that he was promoted to this rank in 1901, after the Boer War. He also claims that he once formed part of a Guard of Honour for Queen Victoria. During the episode "Battle of the Giants!" Jones gets an attack of malaria, which he probably picked up during his service in Africa. Despite his advanced age, Jones reveals that both his parents are still alive and well. It is also stated in the episode "Room at the Bottom", that Jones is a member of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Jones was working as the town butcher. (The address of his shop was mentioned in the episode "A Brush with the Law" as being 19 High Street, Walmington-on-Sea.) He was so keen to join the Local Defence Volunteers that, despite his age (70), Captain Mainwaring instantly appointed him as the platoon's lance corporal. However, it is suggested that Jones' ability to provide off-the-ration meat may have had rather more to do with this decision than his physical and mental abilities, which were declining somewhat due to his age. His vision, for example, was so poor that when signing up for duty, he initially signed the table instead of the form.
In many episodes, Jones fondly recalls his participation in the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan, facing the "Fuzzy Wuzzies" under the command of General Kitchener. As an aged veteran, he is extremely fond of bayonet warfare ("the cold steel"), and usually meets any queries about this with the assertion that "they don't like it up 'em!", a phrase which writer Jimmy Perry remembered an old campaigner using, during his own service in the Home Guard.
It is also noted that Jones once kept wicket behind the great cricketer Ranjitsinhji, who was "an Indian gentleman and upstanding man" until he "whipped his bails off".
Age and health
It is a bit of a puzzle as to how old Jones is. In the fifth episode of series one ("The Showing Up of Corporal Jones"), he tells Major Regan (who is inspecting the platoon) that he is sixty years old. Yet later in the same episode, he tells Captain Mainwaring that he is "only" seventy. But in the last episode of series four ("Fallen Idol"), he says that he is not sixty yet. Yet Walker says that due to all of the military activities Jones keeps claiming that he took part in, he must be over ninety. Jones contracted malaria during his military service in the Egypt and the Sudan in the Season 4 Episode 14 extended Christmas special "Battle of the Giants!" he gets a bout of it and says he had it for nearly forty years.