No other regiment in Wellington's Peninsular army can compare with the 95th Rifles. Even before Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels and television series, the Rifles were the most famous of all the British Army's fighting formations. Unlike the red-coated regiments of the Line, the Riflemen were trained to act with a degree of independence, selecting their own targets in battle. As a result, a number of the officers and some of the men were more literate than their counterparts in the Line, or at least were more willing to record their experiences fighting the French. Consequently, many of the finest memoirs of the era have come from the pens of the likes of Harry Smith, Johnny Kincaid and Riflemen Harris and Costello, and have found their places on the shelves of every enthusiast of the era. However, these well-known works were written years after the fighting when memories had faded and were bulked out with incidents borrowed from others and heavily edited with grand descriptions of 'derring-do' for their Victorian audience, and heavily constrained by the strict morals of the day. Through many years of research, Gareth Glover has uncovered other memories written by members of the 95th which have never been published before or have not been brought to the attention of the present-day public, that were written at the time. These honestly state what really happened on the battlefields of Spain and Portugal - the suffering, the awkward incidents, the rumours and camp gossip - presenting a very different picture of life in Wellington's army than the sanitised versions we have been presented with until now. Also included are rare or unpublished memoires written by members of the staff of the Light Division, enabling the reader to understand the division's command structure and organisation to provide a rounded and realistic vision of this famous fighting force. AUTHOR: Gareth Glover is an ex-Royal Navy officer who has made a study of the Napoleonic Wars for over forty years. In the last two decades, Gareth has made it his mission to uncover unknown or rare memoirs and correspondence from participants in these wars and his discoveries have changed our understanding of many aspects of the history of the period. To date he has produced over ninety books or monographs and has plans to publish many more in the next decade. Among these works, are the critically acclaimed twelve-volume Waterloo Archive series, with three more planned, which has become a 'must' for any serious student of the Waterloo campaign and four further volumes are planned. He is now regarded as the foremost expert on the archival records of the British military in the Napoleonic wars. Gareth resides in Cardiff with his wife Mary, and they have two grown up children, Sarah and Michael, who are both teachers. 16 b/w illustrations
