Benjamin Harris

Born in 1781, Benjamin Harris is best known for the memoir Recollections of Rifleman Harris, a firsthand account of service in the 95th Rifles during the Napoleonic Wars. The book has remained well known because it describes army life from the rank and file rather than from a general's point of view.

Harris served in major campaigns including the Peninsular War, and his recollections follow the hardships, marches, battles, and everyday routines of a common soldier. The strength of his writing is its directness: he notices food, weather, fear, comradeship, and the strange mixture of boredom and danger that shaped military life.

He died in 1858. For readers interested in military history, his memoir stands out as an unusually human record of the period, offering not just battle scenes but the voice of someone who actually lived through them.