History buffs are undoubtedly familiar with the story of Shadrack Byfield, a common British redcoat who fought during the War of 1812 and, due to his troubles, lost his left arm to a musket ball. Byfield has been featured in numerous popular history books — including a children's book and a 2011 PBS documentary — as a shining example of a disabled soldier's stoic perseverance. But a recently rediscovered memoir Byfield published in his later years complicates that idealized picture of his post-military life, according to a new article published in the Journal of British Studies.
Historian Eamonn O'Keeffe of Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's, Canada, has been a Byfield fan since reading the 1985 children's novel, Redcoatby Gregory Sass. His interest grew while working at Fort York, a War of 1812 fort and museum in Toronto. “There are dozens of memoirs written by British veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, but only a handful from the War of 1812, which was much smaller in scope,” O'Keeffe told Ars. “Byfield's autobiography seemed to offer an authentic, surface-level view of the fighting in North America, allowing us to see beyond the generals and politicians and grapple with the implications of this conflict for ordinary people.
Born in 1789 in the suburbs of Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire, Byfield's parents wanted him to follow in his weaver father's footsteps. He enlisted in the provincial militia at the age of 18 and joined the regular army the following year. When the War of 1812 broke out, Byfield was stationed at Fort George along the Niagara River, where he took part in the successful siege of Fort Detroit. At the Battle of Frenchtown in January 1813 he was shot in the neck, but recovered sufficiently to participate in the campaigns against Fort Meigs and Fort Stephenson in Ohio.
After the British were defeated at the Battle of the Thames later that year, he fled into the forest with native warriors, despite his concerns that they wanted to kill him. They did not, and Byfield eventually rejoined other British fugitives and returned to British lines. He was one of 15 of 110 soldiers in his light company still alive after 18 months of fighting.
But his luck ran out in July 1814. While engaged in a skirmish at Conjocta Creek, a musket ball tore through his left forearm. Surgeons were forced to amputate after gangrene developed – a procedure performed without anesthesia. Byfield described the operation as 'annoying and painful' A story about the service of a light companythe memoirs he published in 1840, adding: “I could bear it quite well.”
