In 1966, following his work with the Beatles on A Hard Day's Night and Help!, director Richard Lester began to work on an anti-war satire called How I Won The War; based on Patrick Ryan's novel. Charles Wood wrote the screenplay which concerned the adventures of a group of young soldiers of the Third Troop of the Fourth Musketeers during World War II. Lester offered the part of Private Gripweed to John and he accepted.
The Musketeers are involved in the fighting in North Africa, Dunkirk, Dieppe and Arnhem and are led by an incompetent officer Lieutenant Ernest Goodbody, played by Michael Crawford. The other Musketeers included Sergeant Transom (Lee Montague), Corporal Dooley (Ewan Hooper), Private Drogue (James Cossins), Private Clapper (Roy Kinnear, who also appeared in Help!) and Private Juniper (Ronald Lacey). They are engaged in numerous pointless missions during the hostilities; The objective of one venture behind enemy lines is merely to set up a cricket pitch (which never gets used), and one of their few successful sorties results in a British plane being shot down. When all his men have been killed, Goodbody sets off on his final objective, to secure a bridge, and ends up buying it from the German officer commanding the position. During the course of the film, the Musketeers are killed off one by one; Gripweed dies a particularly gory death when he is blown to smithereens by a shell fired from a German tank.
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