History buffs are no doubt familiar with the story of Shadrack Byfield, a rank-and-file British redcoat who fought during the War of 1812 and lost his left arm to a musket ball due to his trouble shooting. Byfield has been portrayed in several popular histories – including a children’s book and a 2011 PBS documentary – as a shining example of a disabled soldier’s steadfast perseverance. But according to a new paper published in the Journal of British Studies, a newly discovered memoir published by Byfield in his later years is complicating that idealized picture of his post-military life.
Eamonn O’Keeffe, a historian at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Canada, has been a fan of Byfield since reading the 1985 children’s novel. red coatBy Gregory Sass. His interest grew while he was working at Fort York, a War of 1812-era fort and museum in Toronto. “There are dozens of memoirs written by British rank-and-file veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, but only a handful from the War of 1812, which was much smaller in scale,” O’Keeffe told Ars. “Byfield’s autobiography offers an authentic, ground-level view of the battle in North America, helping us look beyond the generals and politicians and grapple with the implications of this conflict for ordinary people.
Born in 1789 in the Bradford-on-Avon suburbs of Wiltshire, Byfield’s parents intended him to follow in the footsteps of his weaver father. When he turned 18 he enlisted in the county militia and joined the regular army the following year. When the War of 1812 broke out, Byfield was stationed at Fort George on the banks of the Niagara River, participating in the successful siege of Fort Detroit. At the Battle of Frenchtown in January 1813, he was shot in the neck, but he recovered enough to join the campaign against Fort Meigs and Fort Stephenson in Ohio.
After the British defeat at the Battle of the Thames later that year, he fled into the jungle with the indigenous warriors, despite concerns that they wanted to kill him. They did not do so, and Byfield was eventually reunited with other British deserters and returned to British lines. He was one of 15 of the 110 soldiers in his light company who were still alive after 18 months of fighting.
But his luck turned bad in July 1814. During a skirmish at Conjocta Creek, a musket ball tore through his left arm. Surgeons were forced to amputate the limb after gangrene began – a procedure that was performed without anesthesia. Byfield described the operation as “difficult and painful”. Description of the service of a Light Company soldierThe memoir he published in 1840 stated, “I was able to bear it very well.”
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