A Soldier's View of Battle through the Ages

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• 1. Introduction
• 2. Bannockburn and the schiltron
• 3. Edgehill
• 4. Sedgemoor and Killiecrankie
• 5. Fighting across the Channel
• 6. Battle of Britain
• 7. Find out more
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Introduction

As battlefield archaeologists, every time we walk across a battlefield or unearth a musket ball from that hallowed ground, we ask ourselves: 'What must it have been like to stand and fight in this battle?' Fortunately for us we have never been called on to take part in combat, and the experience of fighting and dying in battle is unknown to us.

'... battlefield archaeology brings us as close to that moment of past combat as it is possible to get without a time machine.'

Despite this obvious realisation, which is always accompanied by a sigh of relief, we believe that battlefield archaeology brings us as close to that moment of past combat as it is possible to get without a time machine. To hold a musket ball on the battlefield at Killiecrankie, and ponder that it may well have passed through a man's body and killed him stone dead, is quite an experience in itself. So what might the soldier's experience of combat have been like on the battlefields we have spent 12 months investigating?

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Published: 2003-12-08