BANTAMS IN ACTION.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 145084, 8 September 1916, Page 4

BANTAMS IN ACTION.

1 STOIC COURAGE. [ ' (From Philip Gibbs.) With the British Armies in the • Field, June 17. A month or two ago I chanced to be at a port in France when a transport ship came in with some new troops. The men filed down the gangway and then formed up on the quay-aide before being entrained, and as they did so 1 nibbed my eyes and wondered what had happened. . . . These men were somehow' different from all the other troops I have seen arriving in France on their way to the battlefield. They wore small inch. Lord I They werejill wee chaps, .standing no more than oft. lin. above their boots, and. for the most part, lees than that. There were hundreds and hundreds of them—and some French soldiers, and 'English nurses, and tall British officers waiting there by the boat were astonished by this apparition. A word gave mo the cue to tho mystery. The Bnntnms! Why, of course, these were the first drafts of the famous Bantam Division of which rumours had come out from England. That was one of Kitchener's ideas, which came to him one day in Chester, when ho saw a number of such men who were below the standard of military height. \Shy not enrol them in a separate unit of their own? “I can got you 3000 of them, sir,” said the Mayor of Chester, “and they are very keen to go." Before long there wore 12.000 of them, recruited from Cheshire, Lancashire. Warwickshire and Gloucestershire, and beyond the Tweed; and now a whole division are iu tho lighting line, and doing jolly well. For some lime I have .soon their .sign about, outside their headquarters, and on their supply columns —and sentries pacing up and down, with rifle and fixed bayonets, looking twice sis long sis their bodies and little groups of little men marching along tho roads of war, sturdily, with' splendid discipline ami a short, quick step of short, strong legs. GALLANTRY IN ATTACK. U is told in the trenches that when they came into the lino for the time the Germans, who were expecting them (they generally Poem to Know), called out “Cock-a-doddle-do !” "VN dl, thuv don’t crow now over the liantiiuiK. It Is the Bantams who crow over them in No Man’s Land, which lias been their Tom Tiddler’s ground, where they go a-lmnting on night patrol. I hey are not hurt- by a.little friendly i-imlf from big British soldiers, who think that length means quality, forgetting that NapoIcon was not very big iu his hoots, and that Robert* was a bantam. “Thoy'lt bo devils in a charge if they can once got up to tlie elbow-rwt and hop over the parapet,” said an officer, who was “chipping” one of them. tho Bantams have not been long in proving that vou can’t measure a man’s soul with a foot rule. In tho trenches at Nouvo Chapello. where the fire-steps ' w’Obc raised for them, they are enduring the ordeal of heavy bombardment with a stoic courage worthy of the most hardened troops, and have shown a fine spirit of initiative and gallantry in attack as well ns defence. It was ihc Gloucester* of the Bantam Division who made the raid on the German trenches opposite Neuve Chapolle on June 8, mentioned in the official communique. They killed a number of Germane —big fellows all—and brought back a Maxim gun. May S was a night when many of the Bantams showed a real heroism, not losing their nerve, though many of their friends wore killed and wounded, and helping each other with great devotion and solf-sacrificc. Two Bantams of the field ambulance — W; Jarman and W. Abborton—went as volunteers to an advanced dressing station. which was over a mil© away, over country under heavy shell fire, and having brought up field dressings, spent the night in helping to carry wounded down a road swept by machine-gun fire. These are only ft couple of tho many bravo acts done during the last few weeks by the Bantams, who have been awarded many decorations. It is a pleasure to go amonf them. as. I did yesterday with, the General of their division." who has trained them since they were first assembled. A platoon of them was paraded so that we might see they way they carry their field kit when tfiev are ont on the march, a very light pack compared with the ordinary equipment. A French woman was watching them out of a window and smiled in a motherly way at these warriors, and it is with such a smile of affection and admiration that they aro greeted down tho roads of war. for tho Bantams aro fine little fighters, and it I were a Gorman in his trench 1 should not cry Cook-a-doddle-dof when they came my way.