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THEY were known as the “bantam battalions” – thousands of men who had been told they were too small to fight in World War I, only to be called into service.

Standing no taller than 5ft 3in, some of them were dwarfed by their own guns and, while the jibes of onlookers might have annoyed them on parade, it was nothing compared to the horrors that awaited as they headed for the Western Front.

And yet surprisingly little has been written about the bantam battalions – the men who volunteered to fight despite their lack of height giving them a reason to stay at home.

Now Edinburgh author Ken Houston is using the bantams as inspiration for a fictional tale of one such soldier who swaps the snooker halls of Glasgow for the killing fields of France and Belgium.

And as the 100th anniversary of the start of the conflict approaches, Ken hopes his novel The Wee Fellas will shed some light on a little-known part of World War I.

“At school the only thing I was any good at was history,” he said.

“It was my first love, and military history in particular.

“I remember the 75th anniversary when there were loads of books and documentaries and quite a few of the veterans were around to tell their story.

“It’s going to be the same this time – I wanted to get my retaliation in first.”

When the war started in a haze of patriotic fervour and a belief it would be over by Christmas, the minimum height for volunteers was 5ft 3in.

But as the patriotism gave way to the realities of a long, brutal and bloody conflict, the need for more manpower made it inevitable that rules would be relaxed.

With many fit men of fighting age already in the forces, it meant that whole battalions of men, all of about 5ft, were put into service.

Glasgow’s first bantam battalion was the 18th Highland Light Infantry, and was raised despite the War Office in London initially refusing to ­sanction its formation.

“There are lots that have been written about the 15th, 16th and 17th volunteer battalions of the Highland Light Infantry,” Ken, 63, said.

“The 15th was the tramway men, the 16th was ex-members of The Boys’ Brigade and the 17th was commercial surveyors and lawyers and people like that.

“But very little has been written about the 18th Battalion.

“The other battalions were raised in the immediate euphoria in the outbreak of the war and went on to perform with magnificent gallantry, but the first bantam battalions weren’t raised until 1915 when the enthusiasm had started to tail off.

“It was a politician called Lord Derby who set in motion the ­structure to allow men under 5ft 3in to serve, and initially a lot of these guys were volunteers. A lot of guys who weren’t in uniform got stick and were handed white feathers by women but no one did that to these men.

“They didn’t have to volunteer and could easily have sat out the war, so it’s easy to have admiration for them.”

Within hours of a recruiting drive being launched in Glasgow, more than 1200 men had signed up.

The city’s trams were plastered with posters reading, “Bantams for the Front – 3000 Wanted – Apply 46 Bath Street.”

The War Office quickly relented and before the men had even reached France they were christened “The Devil Dwarfs”, having earned a ­reputation for brawling and mischief that outstripped their sister battalions in the Highland Light Infantry.

Other bantam battalions quickly followed. In Edinburgh, Lord Rosebery led the raising of the 17th Royal Scots, while the 13th Cameronians were raised in Hamilton and a second Glasgow battalion – the 14th ­Highland Light Infantry – was also formed.

Across the UK and Canada a total of 50,000 bantam soldiers entered service.

Ken describes his novel, which he writes under the pen name Richard Maitland, as a tale of “mud, blood, gore and romance”.

It revolves around the story of Billy Stirling, a man from a middle-class family fallen on hard times, who runs a protection racket prior to signing up and finding himself in uniform in a bantam battalion.

The story spans Billy’s early life, the effect that becoming a soldier has on him and the aftermath of the conflict, with some of the book’s details being inspired by his own research.

During training, the bantam ­battalions were often found to be good at drill and had the ability to handle long route marches with ease.

On one 12-mile march along a stretch of the Ayrshire coast, the 18th Highland Light Infantry were led by a police pipe band, only to set too fast a pace for the pipers and drummers, leaving them trailing as they reached their destination.

However, their impressive stamina belied the fact that some of them simply lacked the physical strength necessary for active service.

As training continued, some of the weaker volunteers were told by officers they wouldn’t make the grade.

Ken said: “I imagined them in the trenches where being small might actually be put to good effect, although I believe that no allowance was made for the kit they had to carry.

“So they would have been weighed down. A lot of these men were very effective fighters but because they didn’t have the strength, some of them were weeded out after the first few months and sent home with an honourable discharge.”

PR firm owner Ken’s research also took him to the battlegrounds of France and Belgium as he attempted to put himself in the minds of the men who lined the trenches – but a century on, it was no easy task.

“I was amazed to see this rolling, lush farmland, as when you see the photographs from the war it looks like a lunar landscape,” he said.

“You can see in the distance the Lutyens Memorial dedicated to 73,000 British troops who died in the Somme but had no known graves.

“The place is awash with ­memorials and cemeteries but they’re more like gardens. They’re not sad places. They’re beautifully tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and everyone’s got a headstone, so if you have a deceased relative buried in a certain cemetery, it’s quite easy to find them.”

Having become fascinated by the little-known story of the bantams, Ken is now keen that his story captures the imagination of readers in the run-up to the centenary of the outbreak of the war.

He added: “So little has been written about bantams, particularly in novel form, that I thought it would be something different.

“I felt this was something that hadn’t been touched on before in fiction and so it would be something new as we head towards the 100th anniversary.”

AMONG the most famous of the bantam soldiers was Sir Billy Butlin, who after the war went on to found Butlin’s holiday camps.

He was a teenager living in Canada who reluctantly volunteered for service in 1915, eventually serving as a stretcher-bearer in the 216th (Bantams) Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, seeing action in places such as Vimy Ridge, Ypres and Arras.

He later said that, although he never fired a shot in anger, there were times he would have willingly parted with a leg just to escape the slaughter.

A more enthusiastic volunteer was 4ft 9in Henry Thridgould, who was believed to be the shortest corporal in the British Army.

He had emigrated from the UK to New York in 1911, vowing never to return, until the outbreak of war led to him paying his own way back across the Atlantic so he could volunteer.

The Wee Fellas by Richard Maitland is available now on Kindle and in paperback from Amazon later this month.