To the Beat of a Savage Drum

This is not the story of the Battle of Waterloo, nor is it an analysis of what happened on that day. Rather, it is the story of a young man who enlists as a drummer in the 27th Regiment of Foot, the Inniskillings, and ultimately finds himself participating in that epic confrontation. I have used the events leading up to Waterloo, and the battle itself, as a setting in which to place drummers from their initial recruitment into the army to the moment they find themselves in the line marching courageously towards the enemy, beating time for their musket-bearing comrades. I have tried to be historically accurate in my depiction of the life of the common soldier in the early nineteenth century, and in presenting the battle scenes at Waterloo, to allow James Burns to tell the drummer's story in an authentic voice. The earlier events that I have described, prior to the 27th arriving in Ghent, are entirely fictional as are most of the book's characters. For ease of reading, military slang of the period is kept to a minimum and, where used, is explained in context. Drum signals are referred to using capitalisation as are some military terms and units; French place-names are not italicised. All mistakes are mine.

This is not the story of the Battle of Waterloo, nor is it an analysis of what happened on that day. Rather, it is the story of a young man who enlists as a drummer in the 27th Regiment of Foot, the Inniskillings, and ultimately finds himself participating in that epic confrontation. I have used the events leading up to Waterloo, and the battle itself, as a setting in which to place drummers from their initial recruitment into the army to the moment they find themselves in the line marching courageously towards the enemy, beating time for their musket-bearing comrades. I have tried to be historically accurate in my depiction of the life of the common soldier in the early nineteenth century, and in presenting the battle scenes at Waterloo, to allow James Burns to tell the drummer's story in an authentic voice. The earlier events that I have described, prior to the 27th arriving in Ghent, are entirely fictional as are most of the book's characters. For ease of reading, military slang of the period is kept to a minimum and, where used, is explained in context. Drum signals are referred to using capitalisation as are some military terms and units; French place-names are not italicised. All mistakes are mine.