Blood, Guts and Gore

John Gordon Smith qualified as a doctor in Edinburgh in 1810 and began his army medical career as a hospital mate on 25 April 1811. He became an assistant surgeon to the 11th Light Dragoons in March 1813 and transferred to the 12th Light Dragoons in October of the same year serving in the Peninsular War. In 1815, with the 12th Light Dragoons, he served in Belgium during the Waterloo campaign and the occupation of France that followed. In 1818 he was placed on half pay and he never returned to military service. He published the two volume The English Army at Waterloo and in France in 1830 and died in London in September 1833. Editor Gareth Glover is a former Royal Navy officer and military historian who has made a special study of the Napoleonic Wars for the last thirty years. In addition to writing many articles on aspects of the subject in magazines and journals, his books include From Corunna to Waterloo, Eyewitness to the Peninsular War and the Battle of Waterloo, An Eloquent Soldier, fourteen volumes of The Waterloo Archive, Waterloo: Myth and Reality, The Forgotten War Against Napoleon: Conflict in the Mediterranean 1793-1815, The Two Battles of Copenhagen 1801 and 1807: Britain and Denmark in the Napoleonic Wars and Marching, Fighting, Dying: Experiences of Soldiers in the Peninsular War.