NOT SO EASY, LADS: Wearing the Red Coat 1786-1797

1-239300

First-hand unpublished eye-witness letters of Serjeant Major William Roworth to his wife about being in the redcoats in Georgian England. Roworth's 44th (East Essex) Regiment of Foot was just one of many destined for duty on the Continent, where it joined the Duke of York's army as reinforcements during the War of the First Coalition 1792-1797. On his return to Britain in the late Spring of 1795, he received an order for service in the West Indies. The Roworth letters highlighted so many of the concerns in the lives of soldiers then which are much the same today; love; duty; ambition; children; extended family; sickness at home; the difficulties distance and lack of communication created by infrequency of letters; the careful personal censorship of those letters, to avoid instilling fear - all these and more. William Roworth left his own interpretation of the arenas of Boxtel and the reduction of St Lucia. He wore his red coat with pride from the day he volunteered until the day of his death - and rightly so.