Bantams

Bantams is inspired by stories of Tameside's soldiers. It is 1915 and The Great War Rages On.

Hundreds of thousands have already enlisted. Hundreds of thousands more want to and will. But not every man who wants to enlist can. Some are too old. Or too thin. Or have poor eyes. Or poor hearing. Or a bad leg. Or … the list goes on.

Unable to enlist, they must remain at home to endure accusations of cowardice, humiliation on every street, white-feathers in the morning-post. Until finally, these men are offered a way out.

They are invited by to form a Bantam Battalion, a rag-bag group of irregular soldiers, deemed to be not like other soldiers, not quite fit enough to be soldiers, though soldiers nonetheless. But more than that. Soldiers who could have stayed out of The Great War. Stayed safe. Stayed alive. And chose not to. Chose instead to take part in the most appalling, most destructive, most deadly conflict the world had ever seen.