Redcoat’s Rifle

by Griff Hosker Book 2 in the Soldier of the Queen series.

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The British Army at the end of the nineteenth century was not a fair place. Despite the reforms, a bad officer could still ruin men’s lives and Jack Roberts discovers that despite being a hero of Rorke’s Drift, that means nothing when a superior has influence. He becomes a soldier serving in the Egyptian campaign where he learns not only new skills but how to deal with the new responsibility fatherhood brings. Throughout it all one thing is constant, he is a soldier of the queen, a redcoat with a rifle.

The Egyptian campaign places Jack inside an army adapting to imperial warfare beyond the familiar European battlefield. Rifle technology, transport, heat and distant command structures all change the demands placed on ordinary soldiers. His experience also shows how the Victorian army's formal reforms coexist with older habits of class privilege, patronage and harsh discipline.