Batman (military)

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A batman (or batwoman) is a soldier or airman 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.

1 Duties
2 By country
3 In popular culture
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Duties

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
acting as the officer's bodyguard in combat
other miscellaneous tasks the officer does not have time or inclination to do

The action of serving as a batman was referred to as "batting". In armies where officers typically came from the upper class, it was not unusual for a former batman to follow the officer into later civilian life as a domestic servant.

[edit] By country

[edit] In France

In the French Army the term for batman was ordonnance. Batmen were abolished after World War II.

[edit] In Germany

In the German Army the post was known as putzer ("cleaner") or bursche ("fellow"). A popular German army song "Ich war der Putzer vom Kaiser" ("I was the Kaiser's batman") sung during World War I^{[history source needed]} 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 credited was "Whistling Jack Smith"; the public performer of the tune and the actual whistler who created it were two different people.

[edit] In India

The old British term "orderly" continued into the post-independence Indian Army. It has now, however, been replaced with the Hindi word sahayak, which translates as "assistant" or "caretaker".

[edit] In the United Kingdom

The official term used by the British Army in the First World War was Soldier-Servant. Every officer was assigned a servant, usually chosen by himself from among his men. The term Batman replaced this in the inter-war years. By the Second World War, only senior officers of the Army and Royal Air Force were officially assigned their own batmen, with junior officers usually having the services of one batman between several officers. Batwomen also served in the women's services.

Batman was usually seen as a desirable position. The soldier was exempted from more onerous duties and often got better rations and other favours from his officer. Senior officers' batmen usually received fast promotion to lance-corporal rank, with many becoming corporals and even sergeants. The position was phased out after the war.

In the Royal Navy the stewards performed many of the duties of batmen in the other services. Aboard ship, only captains and admirals were assigned personal stewards, with the other officers being served by a pool of officers' stewards. Most vessels carried at least two stewards, with larger vessels carrying considerably more.

The term "orderly" was often used instead of "batman" in the colonial forces, especially in the British Indian Army. The orderly was frequently a civilian instead of a soldier.

In the British Armed Forces, the term "batman" or "batwoman" was formerly also applied to a civilian who cleaned officers' messes or married quarters. In the Royal Air Force, free married quarters cleaning services were phased out for all officers except Squadron Leaders or above in command appointments as of 1 April 1972.

One example of a famous officer and batman in the Second World War was British actor Lieutenant-Colonel David Niven and his batman, fellow actor Peter Ustinov. A well-known fictional example of a batman is Baldrick, who was Blackadder's batman in Blackadder Goes Forth.

In 1967, the pseudonymous Whistling Jack Smith (actually a session vocalist) recorded an all-whistling number called "I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman", which went Top 5 in the UK. Despite a title that baffled most Americans (who no doubt were thinking of the other Batman), the tune hit #20 on the Billboard charts.

[edit] In the United States

In the United States Army the term "dog robber" was unofficially used, although that 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 DC Comics, Alfred Pennyworth is sometimes referred to as "Batman's batman".

[edit] In popular culture

Director Peter Jackson has described the relationship of Samwise Gamgee to Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings books and movies as that of a batman to his officer. J.R.R. Tolkien would be familiar with this relationship from his service in the British Army during World War I.