Nanaimo Historical Society Public Presentation

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Thursday, November 12th, 2015
7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Little Big Men: Remembering the 143d Battalion, “B.C. Bantams”, of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (C.E.F.). On the morning of February 10, 1917, over nine hundred Canadian soldiers, barely over five feet tall, marched through Victoria towards the wharf on Bellville Street. The pint-sized battalion boarded CPR ferries for Vancouver while their own brass band played Auld Lang Syne.

Eighteen days later the BC Bantams arrived in Liverpool where they were quickly shuttled off to the battlefields of France. Almost half would never return. The carnage in the trenches along the Western Front led to an extreme scarcity of British Empire manpower reserves. To meet British and Canadian Army enlistment regulations one had to be at least 5’4” tall, single, and between 19 and 30 years old. By early 1916 BC had depleted its supply of of regulation compliant manpower. Without an available supply of new recruits, the newly formed Bantam battalion regulations were reduced to one line on a recruitment poster: “Men of small stature, 5 ft. 4 in. and under, who are willing to SERVE KING AND EMPIRE are eligible for this battalion. Age 18 to 45.” Tonight’s Presentation: Upon discovering his grandfather’s (Pte. Pete Ross 827129) service records in this unique battalion our guest speaker, Charlie LeRoss of Victoria, discovered hundreds of articles and photos about the 143d Battalion, mostly from Victoria Colonist newspaper records.

The coverage includes the year of recruitment and training in Victoria up to the battalion’s transfer overseas. LeRoss also travelled to Ottawa to access copies of the limited records available from the National Archives.

Special to the Nanaimo Historical Society our speaker has added a section to his slide presentation that provides information of the approximately 30 men from Nanaimo who joined the 143d Battalion. LeRoss compiles his research into the website www.bcbantams.org