Friday, May 10, 2013

Review: The Compleat Rifleman Harris

As part of my Amazon order, with vouchers I received for christmas, I bought "The Completat Rifleman Harris" (sic). I have recently finished this book, and I must say I liked it. I was aware before starting this was not going to be some Cornwell-esque romp through the Napoleonic era, but much more of a day to day story of the wars from a soldiers point of view. As such, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the tone of the book was much more of a conversational style, not as dry as I thought it might be, and the language not so dated as in, for example, Robert Roger's diary.

The anecdotes related within, whilst not all derring-do, were still interesting, and very informative. I for one knew nothing about the weird unknown disease that knocked out the whole of the rifles that were deployed as part of the Walcheren Expedition (not that I claim to be anything like a napoleonic scholar), but it does give a real insight into the problems the soldier of the time faced, apart from the enemies guns.
History from the soldiers point of view.

(You can find a summary of the contents here. But really, if you don't already have it, just go buy it).

Order it from Amazon here.

4 comments:

  1. Always thought about picking this up, but never got quite round to it, now on the wish list.

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  2. Replies
    1. And freely given too, what more could you ask? ;)

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