Batman (army)

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For other uses of Batman, see Batman (disambiguation)

A batman is a soldier assigned to a commissioned officer as a personal servant.

The term is derived from the obsolete bat, packsaddle (from French bât, from Old French bast, from Late Latin bastum) + man.

A Batman's duties often include:

acting as a "runner" to convey orders from the officer to subordinates
maintaining the officer's uniform and personal equipment as a valet
driving the officer's vehicle, sometimes under combat conditions
other miscellaneous tasks the officer does not himself (or, since the admission of women in many corps, herself) have time or inclination to do

In armies where many or even most officers were traditionally from the upper class (like the clergy, it made a good alternative carreer for junior brothers of the heir to title and estate; at mobilisation the heir can join as well, as many British aristocrats did, often in the Guards; in many Prussian families it was a tradition, one speaks of the 'officer caste' there) it was not unusual for a former batman to follow the officer into civilian life as a domestic servant, e.g. Footman.

In the German army the post was known as der Putzer (cleaner). A popular German army song 'Ich war der Putzer vom Kaiser' sung during World War I tells of a soldier who missed the horrors of service on the Western front by being the batman to Kaiser Wilhelm II. It was set to a contemporary tune for a whistling version in 1967, and released under the title 'I was Kaiser Bill's Batman' in the United Kingdom and United States. The artist, John O'Neill, recorded it under the name 'Whistling Jack Smith'.

In the United States Army the term "dog robber" was used, but it could also be applied to a junior officer who acted as a gofer to somebody with high rank. The position was made famous by James Garner in the movie The Americanization of Emily.

In the Indian army the word batman is now replaced with the Hindi word Sahayak which translates to Assistant or care taker. Orderly was another term which was used, which is also now done away with.

External links

[Recollections from memory about batmen]

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Batman (army)

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