Reginald St John Battersby

Reginald St John Beardsworth Battersby was, at the age of 15, the youngest known commissioned officer of the British Army of the First World War. He enlisted in the Manchester Regiment at the age of 14 and was promoted to lance corporal within a week. When his father realised what Battersby had done, he intervened and had him commissioned as an officer in the East Lancashire Regiment. Battersby was wounded in action leading a platoon over the top on the first day of the Somme but returned to duty to fight in the 1917 Operations on the Ancre. It was here that he was struck by shrapnel from a German shell, resulting in the amputation of his left leg. Battersby was asked to resign his commission owing to disability but insisted he could still be of use to the army if fitted with a prosthetic leg and successfully returned to duty with a Royal Engineers transport unit. After the war he studied theology and became a vicar at Chittoe, Wiltshire. During the Second World War he organised the local Home Guard unit and between 1943 and 1945 served as a chaplain to the Royal Marines at Chatham Dockyard.