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The recollections of rifleman Harris

Title	The recollections of rifleman Harris
Author	as told to Henry Curling; ed. & introd. by Christopher Hibbert
Publication	Military Book Society
Size	IX, 128p
Language	ENG
ISBN	0850520053
Topics	Memoirs Biography--Military Biography--Travellers Harris, Benjamin Randell (Engl. soldier, 1781-) Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815--Personal narratives Soldiers Armed forces--Infantry
Notes	a memoir published in 1848 of the experiences of an enlisted soldier in the 95th Regiment of Foot in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. The eponymous soldier was Benjamin Randell Harris, a private who joined the regiment in 1803 and served in many of the early campaigns in the Peninsula War. In the mid-1830s, Harris was working as a cobbler in London when he met an acquaintance, Captain Henry Curling, who asked him to dictate an account of his experiences of army life. This account was then held by Curling until 1848, when he succeeded in getting the manuscript published, preserving one of the very few surviving accounts of military service in this era from a private soldier. The account begins with a description of Harris’ recruitment in the army via the militia and the 66th Regiment of Foot in Stalbridge, from where he was sent on garrison duty to Ireland and joined the 95th Rifles. The account reveals many details of army life in the period, including a graphic depiction of an execution by firing squad and a description of the actions and progress of a recruiting party through Ireland, which reveals the endemic alcoholism and religious rivalry which Ireland and the army of the time was subject to. Harris notes particular difficulty in separating Catholic and Protestant Irish recruits. Harris went to Denmark in 1807, to the Iberic peninsula in 1808, and participated in the Walcheren disaster 1809. In 1813 and 1814, Harris was attached to the 8th Veteran's Battalion based in London, having been rejected from foreign service by the Duke of Wellington, who decreed no survivors of Walcheren were to serve in his army as none were fit for marching or fighting. There he served alongside several detachments of French deserters, again witnessing the frequent brutal punishment of the day, when a man was given 700 lashes for desertion. Stricken with illness, he was unable to rejoin his regiment during the Hundred Days Campaign and thus forfeited his pension. Nonetheless, Harris’ final words on the subject are very revealing. "I enjoyed life more whilst on active service than I have ever done since, and I look back on my time spent on the fields of the Peninsula as the only part worthy of remembrance". The book is perhaps most important in the manner in which it provides the viewpoint of one of Wellington's foot soldiers at a time when so many were illiterate. Whilst many officers[who?] kept diaries or wrote memoirs of their service, ‘’The Recollections of Rifleman Harris’’ is rare because unlike the grand actions or great people recalled by his superiors, Harris mentions dozens of men whose history is no longer remembered and whose names would otherwise be lost, and records the details of daily ennui with interesting and colloquial prose. He describes medicine from a patients’ point of view, punishment from a friend of the victim's view and military life from the bottom up, giving otherwise unknown insight to the daily life of a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars, as well as a unique primary source to some of the British campaigns of the period. [wikipedia]

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