A bantam, in

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurkha ...

usage, was a soldier of below the army's minimum regulation height of . During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, the British Army raised

battalion A battalion is a military unit, typically consisting of 300 to 1,200 soldiers commanded by a lieutenant colonel, and subdivided into a number of companies (usually each commanded by a major or a captain). In some countries, battalions ...

s in which the normal minimum height requirement for recruits was reduced from to . This enabled shorter but healthy young men to enlist. Bantam units enlisted from industrial and coal-mining areas where short stature was no sign of weakness. The name derives from the town of Bantam in Indonesia, from which a breed of small domestic fowl allegedly originated.

Bantamweight Bantamweight is a weight class in combat sports. For boxing, the range is above and up to . In kickboxing, a bantamweight fighter generally weighs between . In MMA, bantamweight is . The name for the class is derived from bantam chickens. Bra ...

was a weight category in boxing that had originated in the 1880s and had produced many notable boxers. The first "bantam battalions" were recruited in

Birkenhead Birkenhead (; cy, Penbedw) is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside, England; historically, it was part of Cheshire until 1974. The town is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the south bank of the River Mersey, opposite Liv ...

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county tow ...

, after Alfred Bigland, MP, heard of a group of miners who, rejected from every recruiting office, had made their way to the town. One of the miners, rejected on account of his size, offered to fight any man there as proof of his suitability as a soldier, and six men were eventually called upon to remove him. Bantam applicants were men used to physical hard work, and Bigland was so incensed at what he saw as the needless rejection of spirited healthy men that he petitioned the

War Office The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...

for permission to establish an undersized fighting unit. When the permission was granted, news spread across the country and men previously denied the chance to fight made their way to Birkenhead, 3,000 successful recruits being accepted for service into two new bantam battalions in November 1914. The requirement for their height was between and . Chest size was one inch (2.5 cm) more than the army standard. The men became local heroes, with the local newspaper, ''The Birkenhead News'', honouring the men of the 1st and 2nd Birkenhead Battalions of the Cheshires with enamel badges - "BBB" - "Bigland's Birkenhead Bantams". Soon renamed the 15th and 16th Battalions, Cheshire Regiment, they undertook gruelling training and served in some of the hardest-fought battles of the war, such as the Battle of Arras in 1917. Another bantam battalion was the 14th Battalion (West of England), the

Gloucestershire Regiment The Gloucestershire Regiment, commonly referred to as the Glosters, was a line infantry regiment of the British Army from 1881 until 1994. It traced its origins to Colonel Gibson's Regiment of Foot, which was raised in 1694 and later became the ...

, raised in 1915 and sent to France in 1916. Eventually two whole divisions, the

35th Military units *35th Fighter Wing, an air combat unit of the United States Air Force *35th Infantry Division (United States), a formation of the National Guard since World War I *35th Infantry Regiment (United States), a regiment created on 1 July 1 ...

and the 40th, were formed from "Bantam" men, who were virtually annihilated during the Battle of Bourlon. Heavy casualties, transfers to specialized Army tunneling companies and tank regiments, the introduction of

conscription Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to Ancient history, antiquity and it continues in some countries to th ...

, and replacements by taller men, eventually led to Bantam units becoming indistinguishable from other British divisions. Sidney Allinson has published a thorough study: ''The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War One''.

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* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bantam (Military) British Army in World War I Human height

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