ABSTRACT
An Irishman who fought in the War with Revolutionary America, Roger Lamb (1756–1830) served in the Ninth Regiment of Foot and was promoted to corporal. After being taken prisoner by the Americans and effecting a heroic escape, Sir Henry Clinton offered him his discharge or the choice of enlisting in any regiment he chose. He then entered the Twenty-third Regiment, also known as the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, where he was shortly promoted to sergeant. Sergeant Lamb returned to Britain in the winter of 1784 and requested his discharge. Because he was young and had not served a sufficiently long term, he was refused a pension. He returned to Dublin and married Jane Crumer two years later, taking work as a schoolmaster. The final line of the book is “Free School, Whitefriar-lane, June 26, 1810”, indicating that Lamb was still a teacher when he wrote the book. The narrative switches between first and third person, which suggests that Lamb was transcribing his own diary at certain points. This device was made explicit on page 142, where a footnote begs “pardon” for using the first person, with the explanation that “this passage [was] literally copied from the author’s private Journal”. Reading Roger Lamb’s autobiographical publications inspired Robert Graves—a fellow Dubliner and member of the Royal Welch Fusiliers—to write his own lightly fictionalised accounts of Lamb’s life in 1922 (Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth) and 1940 (Proceed, Sergeant Lamb).
