The Personal Narrative of a Private Soldier

Originally published in 1821, this book vividly describes scenes of war with all its maddening excitement and all its horrors, as experienced by an anonymous Private who served in the 42nd Highlanders for 12 years during the latter part of the Peninsula War.

Inspired by the narrative of an earlier published military diary entitled The Journal of a Solider of the 71st (1819), and having known our anonymous 42nd Soldier since childhood, the (likewise anonymous) editor of The Personal Narrative of a Private Soldier said to himself, “Why might not ******* write the personal Narrative of his Life, as ‘a poor, but honest Soldier?’”

Subsequently, having read the 71st Soldier’s journal “with mingled feelings of pleasure and regret,” the editor approached the 42nd Soldier and requested from him, via letters, “a brief but faithful relation of what he did and what he saw, from the time he enlisted till he was discharged in 1814.”

And thus was born this highly informative first-hand account of one of the most significant wars in history…