183:. The narrator acutely demonstrates the squalid conditions and indecisive generalship which led to the ensuing disaster in the marshy land and high summer of Holland. Harris himself fell ill from the ague which killed two-thirds of the expeditionary force, and thus also provides an insight into the medical care and treatments available to soldiers during the Georgian period, a disease from which he never fully recovered. For the next three years, despite determined efforts to rejoin his unit in Spain, Harris was unable to participate in the wars due to his recurring
106:, 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.
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service in this era that claims to have originated with a private soldier. However, as Harris himself was illiterate, it remains unclear how far the text reflects his own views, and how far it reflects the views of
Curling, the author of the written account. Even the description of the text's origins comes from Curling, meaning that it is impossible to know what Harris himself actually said or felt about the events which the diaries describe.
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206:, 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
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During Harris' life the book was neither popular nor well-received critically, fading into obscurity for many years before being rediscovered in the early years of the twentieth century. The book has since been republished many times, with a number of commentaries, some rather poorly researched, even
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with interesting and colloquial prose. He describes medicine from a patient's point of view, punishment from a friend of the victim's view, and military life from the bottom up, giving insight to the daily life of a soldier in the
Napoleonic Wars, as well as a valuable primary source to some of the
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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
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167:. Harris and his regiment were amongst the final troops evacuated from the beaches, and they returned to England, where Harris served in recruitment and training positions, thus providing readers with a rare insight into rural Georgian England from a lower class perspective.
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The book is perhaps most important in the manner in which it claims to provide the viewpoint of one of
Wellington's foot soldiers at a time when so many were illiterate. Whilst some officers kept diaries or wrote memoirs of their service,
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John Harris was a fellow rifleman, but one whose movements do not match up with those recorded in the text. The narrator never provides his first name, and it is only through recent historical research that
Rifleman Harris has been
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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
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in action for the first time. Harris also recounts further experiences of drunkenness and ill-discipline amongst the largely inexperienced soldiery. He also served in 1808 with several men who had participated in the
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reporting Harris' first name as John. In more recent times a freshly researched volume by historian Eileen
Hathaway has been published which removes many of the older mistakes and contains a foreword by the author
151:, where Harris' unit was heavily engaged and Harris offers a vivid description of the engagement, at which a number of his close friends were killed. This is followed by a description of the
212:"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"
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In the summer of 1808 Harris was dispatched to
Portugal to participate in the opening actions of the Peninsula War, seeing action in the opening skirmish at
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British campaigns of the period. However, this uniqueness is also cause for some suspicion about the authorship and intentions of the text.
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191:, Harris recounts many stories told to him by his comrades and contemporaries of their service on the Peninsula, including tales of the
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In 1813 and 1814, Harris was attached to the 8th
Veteran's Battalion based in London, having been rejected from foreign service by the
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Campaign and thus forfeited his pension. Nonetheless, Harris' final words on the subject are very revealing.
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played a rifleman very loosely based on
Benjamin Harris. Salkey later recorded an audiobook version of
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is a memoir published in 1848, which claims to reflect the experiences of an enlisted soldier in the
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Recollections of rifleman Harris, (old 95th) with anecdotes of his officers and his comrades (1848)
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The account begins with a description of Harris' recruitment in the army via the militia and the
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Harris was sent to
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where he was again heavily engaged and follows the army on the ensuing march to
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fevers. During this period of inactivity and ill-health at the depot in
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The Recollections of Rifleman Harris as told to Henry Curling
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