During the First World War, the British Army recruited special battalions of men who were shorter than the normal minimum height of 5 ft 3 in. The dropping of height restrictions enabled otherwise healthy young men to enlist in a unit where others were also of similar height.
Some 3,000 short- statured men fought well in the Battle of Arras in March and April of 1917, before the battalions were all but wiped out in the Battle of Cambrai in November and December of that same year.
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