The little guys have it!

While I was in Tokyo with the Navy, I saw tthat, at 6'2" I was taller than almost any Japanese I saw there. When I met some of their ww2 survivors, I was far taller & heavier than any of them. (The one exception was Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, who at 6'7" was the tallest Japanese I ever saw.) I thought to myself, "How did those shrimps make such good soldiers?" So, I asked an Australian vet who'd fought them on New Guinea.

The Aussie told me the Japanese could hide in places a larger man couldn't, in places seemingly impossible for a soldier to hide in. & were quick & athletic. And, of course, they could shoot as straight as anyone. So, I decided to research to find out how small or short people did in warfare through the ages. SURPRISE ! Little people have done quite well !

Attila the Hun was quite-short, but not a dwarf, as has been speculated. He was estimated to have been about 5'2"

Pepin the Short, Charlemagne's father & quite a military leader himself, was 5'2". (OTOH, his son Charlemagne was 6'4, enormous for that time among those peoples.)

U. S. Grant was not quite 5'7"; His great cavalry commander, Phil Sheridan, was 5'5"

In ww2:

Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was 5'2"
Gen. Franco, dictator of Spain, was 5'3"
Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels, was 5'0"
Japan's Adm. Yamamoto was 5'3"
Both Hideki Tojo & Stalin were 5'4"
Mussolini wasn't quite 5'7"
America's most-decorated soldier, Audie Murphy, was 5'5"
Last living MOH willer on Iwo Jima, Hershel "Woody" Williams, is 5'6"

OTOH, Hitler was 5'9", Churchill 5'8", FDR was 6'2", Hindenburg was 6'5", De Gaulle was 6'7"

So, there were, and are, plenty of small people who were, or are, great military figures !