War heroics of a modest film star

WHEN I was working at the Public Record Office in 1983, I was asked to help a man with his autobiography. He had served in the RAF in World War II and had a very interesting story. His name did not register, but I recognised his face straight away: he was the actor Peter Arne. He had been advised to change his original German surname when he got into the acting profession after the war. I spent the day talking to him about the films I had seen him in, including The Cockleshell Heroes and Ice Cold In Alex. He told me they had to go through the training for the former film just as the men of the Royal Marines had during World War II. Arne returned several times to look up — with my help — wartime records, and I looked forward to meeting him and talking about his many films. Sadly, a short time afterwards I read in the newspaper that he had been murdered on the day he had gone for a costume fitting for his part as Range in the BBC’s Doctor Who. His memoir never did get written. During the research, I found out Arne had been a fighter pilot in the RAF, had a mental breakdown and was medically discharged. He later came back into the service, flying recce aircraft off ships by catapult, having to ditch in the sea and — if he was lucky — be picked up. A sad story about a man who never really got a leading role in movies, but as the list of films he was in shows, he was never out of work. Alan Cooper, Hailsham, E. Sussex.