Some twenty-nine battalions of bantam soldiers, around 30,000 men, every man a volunteer, were raised by the British at the beginning of World War I from men who wanted to fight but were below the minimum height. The Bantams consisted of men between five foot three and five foot. They rapidly earned a reputation for courage on the battlefield showing the truth of the old Southern maxim: It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.
Bantams
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Wolverines !
Honey Badger !
Nature’s full of smaller tenacious critters and being smaller has advantages: harder target, easier to hide.
Wolverine is exactly what to look at– there’s a very good chance the guys who created the character of Wolverine were familiar with these guys.
Short men most likely have taken verbal and possibly physical abuse most of their lives, at least since their peers outgrew them. This naturally tends to produce men with a proud and combative personality, and skill in physical confrontation as well. So it doesn’t surprise me a bit that the Bantam units were formidable in battle. I wonder, did their example lead to anyone revisiting the notion of a minimum height requirement for enlistment? It seems to me there should be plenty of assignments, if not most of them, for which one’s physical height is wholly irrelevant, and some where it would be a significant advantage.
In the modern military, there are “waivers” you can get when someone doesn’t fit the standards but they’ll serve the needs of the military exceptionally well.
When I was in basic training in 1987 we were visited by a high ranking NCO with a Congressional Medal of Honor. I don’t remember his exact position there. He was about 5 ft 3 in tall, and slightly built. The post cadre were in awe of him.
In my earlier days, I was a “doorman” at a college-town establishment that catered to both fraternity members and leather-clad “motorcycle enthusiasts.” While they generally kept to themselves, an occasional drift across the unmarked boundary, usually involving a lady of some sort, would occur with predictable results.
It was a rule that if the person involved was anywhere near my size, (6’2″, 240#) then I could generally talk him out of continued stupidity, and never did I have to resort to physical intimidation. However, if the instigator was under 5’5″, we simply called the police and hoped they hurried.