The Recollections of Rifleman Harris The Recollections of Rifleman Harris is 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 memoir . 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 . Denmark . Harris was sent to Denmark in 1807 , where he participated in the campaign which surrounded the bombardment of Copenhagen , including seeing his first fighting near Køge and observing Congreve rockets 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 South American expedition of 1807 , and offers comment and anecdotes on that campaign and the subsequent trial of General John Whitelocke , whom Harris holds in contempt . The Peninsula . 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 Óbidos and subsequently the Battle of Rolica , 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 Battle of Vimeiro where he was again heavily engaged and follows the army on the ensuing march to Salamanca and the clash with the French at Sahagún . This is followed by a graphic depiction of the horrific march northwards during the Galician campaign culminating in the Battle of Corunna . 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 . Walcheren and illness . From England Harris and the 95th were sent to Walcheren to participate in the catastrophic Walcheren Expedition . 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 malarial fevers . During this period of inactivity and ill - health at the depot in Hythe , Harris recounts many stories told to him by his comrades and contemporaries of their service on the Peninsula , including tales of the Siege of Badajoz and the Siege of San Sebastian . 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 " " . Importance . 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 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 . Critical reception . 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 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 Bernard Cornwell , who used the memoir as a source for his Sharpe series , even basing a minor character on Harris , albeit with a very different career . Likewise in the " Sharpe " TV series , the actor Jason Salkey played a rifleman very loosely based on Benjamin Harris . Published as an audio book , as read by Jason Salkey , who had portrayed the Harris character in the Sharpe films . Available from www . explore - multimedia . co . uk