Click on image to buy tickets
★★★★★ To a background of constant shelling noises, we meet Patrick Michael Wolfe, a corporal in the 15th Bantam Battalion of the Notts and Derby Regiment of the British Army. Patrick wasn’t conscripted; he volunteered – at first in his hometown of Dublin, and then in England – but rejected as he didn’t meet the minimum 5ft 3in height requirement.
In Derby, however, he enlisted in the Bantam Battalion. He didn’t join up for the money. Patrick signed up to get Home Rule for Ireland. His comrade, Belfast Billy, a shipyard man joined up to stop it as he thought Home Rule for Ireland meant Rome Rule. Billy, Patrick recalls, was a brave man, the best sergeant he ever had. Despite their political differences, they forged a true comradeship in the trenches of the Western Front.
Michael Hughes, the writer and performer of this powerful play, unearths the hidden history of the forgotten soldiers of the First World War, men who were from five feet tall to those who were five feet, three inches in height. His character tells the story of how they were treated by friend and foe alike; they were given cast-off Boer War or Post Office blue uniforms, issued with ill-fitting boots, catcalled in the street and mocked and jeered as ‘petit soldat’ by the French.
Patrick brings home the grim reality of life and death in the trenches of the Western Front, constant shelling, German snipers, gas attacks, scouting raids, hand-to-hand combat, and his spell in hospital after suffering a wound where he witnesses men go into the operating theatre with two legs coming out with one, none or not coming out at all. The attrition grinds down the battalion. Of the thousand men who joined, only Patrick is left, so the numbers were replenished by men of regular height as most shorter men were unfit for service.
Patrick felt a keen sense of betrayal when news broke of the ‘rebellion in Dublin two years ago in Easter 1916’ – what we know today as the ‘Easter Rising’ – when ‘rebels with German rifles’ declared a Republic. ‘Why,’ he wanted to know, ‘were’t they here with us?’ Dublin was in flames. ‘Our lads fought the rebels and formed firing squads to shoot the ringleaders.’ Wistfully, he says, ‘I wish I didn’t know that.’
The Last Bantam brings home to a modern audience the brutal reality of trench warfare, the survival skills necessary, and the camaraderie that emerges between the men in the middle of the blood and the mud and the constant shelling. It puts a spotlight on the often-contradictory motivations of the men who served, especially those from Ireland.
History has been kind to the Dublin insurrections of 1916 and the Ulstermen of the 36th (Ulster) Division. Not so, the tens of thousands of Irishmen who served in the British Army in that conflict. Until recently, they were regarded at best as a national embarrassment. This play will help redress the balance. It deserves a wider audience.
Reviewed by David Kerr
See the interview with Michael Hughes here
