The Triumph and Tragedy of The Bantams

In 1982, Kit Fraser tracked down and interviewed ten surviving Bantams soldiers of the Great War, then in their 80s, who told their poignant story in his BBC radio documentary. They were small men - 50,000 of them - strong and able bodied miners, dockers and farm labourers - turned away from recruitment offices because they were below the regulation height of 5ft 3". The book features the large amount of unbroadcast material describing in their own words their bitter battle to overcome that obstacle and to play their part in the popular war against the Hun, as the 35th and 40th Bantam Divisions; of having to take two sandbags off the trench wall in order to see and fire on the enemy; of medals awarded for fearless acts of courage; and of the loss of comrades in their thousands to snipers, machine guns, bayonets and constant shell bursts. It also describes the flaw in recruitment which allowed under-age boys and unfit men to join up and which ultimately led to the loss of Bantam status from the 35th. "The 40th though fought on to their Last Stand - a battle which would become the defining moment for this extra-ordinary and largely forgotten body of soldiers - at Bourlon Wood. After a fierce battle over three days, the diminutive troops triumphed and took Bourlon Wood but it was a bittersweet victory, with the calamitous loss of over 4000 men. So few Bantams survived that the 40th too lost its Bantam status. An extra-ordinary story, though oddly, perhaps conscious of the authorities' recruitment lapses, regimental histories paid the Bantams scant attention. In this in-depth telling of the Bantams story, using the unbroadcast words of the surviving Bantams themselves recovered from the edit suite floor, Kit Fraser sets the record straight.