‘A Narrative of the Life of Serjeant WillM Pell First Foot Guards, (Written by Himself) FroM His First Inlisting, Jan. 18th 1779’, Part I: FF. 1–3, 6, 9–11, 12, 24, 28, 36–8, 47–8, 49–52; PART II: FF. 2–3, 7–8, 10–13, 17, 21–2, 24–5, 31, 38, 40–1, 45, 46–7. Grenadier Guards Archives, London, E6/003.

As a recruit in the First Regiment of Foot Guards, later known as the Grenadier Guards, William Pell had a somewhat distinctive experience of soldiering. The guards’ regiments were famously less likely than regiments of the line to be sent abroad for long periods. They thus did not face as high a possibility of death from combat or disease as their brethren in other regiments, though this distinction appears to have been lost on Pell’s family. His memoirs reveal the horrors families could feel when notified of their loved one’s enlistment, though Pell also demonstrates the strong family connection that a soldier could sustain throughout his term of service. Guardsmen were often stationed in or near London, and in Pell’s era, the Guards were either quartered in local lodgings or housed in barracks at the Tower of London or the Savoy Barracks in Somerset house. It was the latter to which Pell was assigned after he joined the regiment in January of 1779. He was very soon admitted to the Queen’s Royal Hospital to be inoculated against smallpox. After a few weeks in hospital, Pell began learning drill, and was among a select few trained in the Light Companies exercises, a new type of skirmishing technique that emerged in the British army during the American Revolution.