Tac,

If memory serves, you served in The Royal Green Jackets.

Is there a book detailing the history of The Royal Green Jackets that you'd recommend covering the early years of this element of the British Army?

I've started again through the Sharpe series done on ITV, and I'd like to know more about the early units.

What I've found on the interwebs is confusing and shallow. I'm hoping someone wrote a definitive history that you can point me toward.

Good morning, sadly, I did not serve my time in the Army in the Royal Green Jackets, although, with a history like theirs, I would have been immensely proud to have done so.

Now, you have to remember that the 95th Regiment of Foot [Derbyshire] was only a part of what became the Light Infantry Division of the Army, and many regiments were raised in local counties, like the Kings Own Shropshire Light Infantry and the incredible Durham Light Infantry. May I recommend that you make contact with the current regimental museum of The Rifles, as the recently-amalgamated regiments and battalions are now called?

Here it is -http://riflesmuseum.co.uk/

Incidentally, the Light Infantry Division, historically dressed in 'Rifle Green' march at the light infantry pace of 120 ppm - just as the Gurkhas do. Both types of soldier were historically of shorter stature than those in the line regiments. A comment at the time of the Peninsual Wars noted that 'soldiers in the light divisions were short of body yet nimble withal', and chosen for their ability to cover ground rapidly, as individuals, 'with an intent and purpose not commonly found among the red-coated foot soldier in his serried ranks'. The men of the Durham Light Infantry of WW1 fame were mostly miners or of mining stock, and were not only well-built, but had the common factor of having mostly been raised within streets of each other and gone to school together - maybe even related. All of this makes reading their Book of Commemoration, located in a place of honour beneath their regimental colours in Durham cathedral even more poignant.

Best

tac

PS - Seán Bean's 'rustic' accent accurately reflects that commonly found in the 95th, a regiment raised, as I noted, in Derbyshire.