"essential supplies" is when the American Army arrives at Walmington-on-Sea (with the comparatively well-off American troops already having plenty of liquor and other items normally provided by Walker). Walker considers himself a ladies' man; an early episode showed Walker entering an unknown woman's house at night and departing the next morning. In the episode "War Dance", he brings twin sisters as his dates to a dance Mainwaring is hosting. Walker also has a recurring girlfriend named Shirley/Edith (played by Wendy Richard), who is seen in several episodes. In the platoon, he mostly associates with Lance Corporal Jones, Pike and Frazer. Despite merely being a private, Walker clearly has some form of influence over the platoon, not least due to his black-market dealings which have got them out of (and into) numerous scrapes. Moreover, when Private Frazer is temporarily promoted to captain in "If the Cap Fits...", he selects Walker as his sergeant. Walker has friendly relationships with all the men in the platoon, jokingly referring to the Scottish Frazer as "Taffy", and occasionally calling Jones a "silly old duffer" when they have the odd disagreement. While often exasperating Mainwaring with his constant quips and irreverent attitude towards the war in general and the platoon in particular, on one occasion (in the episode "Sons of the Sea") Mainwaring praises Walker's "lively sense of cockney humour" and for keeping his cool under stress (to which a surprised Walker stammers that he was "only trying to keep people cheerful"). At times, Walker even expresses a sentimental sense of fondness for Mainwaring and others in the platoon, telling Frazer (in the episode "Absent Friends") that he was bothered by seeing Mainwaring upset after the platoon chose to stay in the pub playing darts instead of going on parade. In the same episode, he tells Frazer to leave Godfrey alone when the latter decides to go back on parade instead of staying in the pub with the others; he expresses similar sentiments in the episode "Branded" when Godfrey is set to be kicked out of the platoon due to his being a conscientious objector during the First World War, referring to Godfrey as a "nice old bloke". Walker even dwells on the concept of Jones potentially leaving a fellow soldier to die in the episode "The Two and a Half Feathers", to the point that it interrupts his makeout session with his girlfriend. In Battle