British regimental wives marched with the troops and endured all the hardships of campaigning from hunger and childbirth to sickness and capture. Often undisciplined and sometimes drunk, they were expert plunderers. They washed, cooked and helped their men, and in tending the wounded they were often heroines of the battlefield.

David Clammer was born and brought up in Dorset. He taught history for more than 30 years. Since retirement, he has given history lectures aboard expedition ships in the Polar regions. He is the author of several books on Victorian military campaigns, and articles on textbook research, arctic cartography and local history. More recently, he has written extensively on the Napoleonic invasion threat, and was elected to the Royal Historical Society. He lives with his wife in a village in Cambridgeshire.