author
William Surtees
1781–1830
A veteran of the British Army’s Rifle Brigade, he turned years of hard campaigning in the Napoleonic Wars into a vivid first-person memoir. His writing offers a grounded, from-the-ranks view of military life, full of movement, danger, and practical detail.
1 Audiobook
Twenty-Five Years in the Rifle Brigade
by William Surtees
About the author
Born in 1781 and remembered as a quartermaster in the Rifle Brigade, he is best known for Twenty-Five Years in the Rifle Brigade, a memoir drawn from long service in the British Army during the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.
Surtees began his military career as a private soldier before rising through the ranks, an experience that gives his book much of its appeal. Instead of a grand overview of famous commanders, he writes from close to the action, describing marches, skirmishes, campaigns, and the everyday demands of soldiering.
His memoir was published after his death in 1830 and has remained of interest to readers of military history because it captures the Peninsular War and related campaigns in a direct, personal voice. For many readers, the value of Surtees lies in that combination of eyewitness detail and the perspective of a man who earned his authority through long service rather than high rank.