Shadrack Byfield

Shadrack Byfield
Title page of A Narrative of a Light Company Soldier's Service (1840)
Born	16 September 1789 Woolley, near Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
Died	17 January 1874 (aged 84) Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army
Years of service	1807 to 1815
Rank	Private
Unit	Wiltshire Militia, 41st Regiment
Battles/wars	Siege of Detroit, Battle of Frenchtown, Siege of Fort Meigs, Battle of the Thames, Capture of Fort Niagara, Battle of Lundy's Lane, Conjocta Creek
Awards	Military General Service Medal for Fort Detroit
Other work	Weaver, Monument keeper

Shadrack Byfield (sometimes Shadrach) was a British infantryman who served in the 41st Regiment during the War of 1812. He is best known as the author of a memoir of his wartime experiences, A Narrative of a Light Company Soldier's Service, published in his hometown of Bradford on Avon in England in 1840. This work is notable as one of the only accounts of the conflict penned by a common British soldier.

Born in Woolley, a suburb of Bradford on Avon to a family of weavers in 1789, Byfield enlisted in the Wiltshire Militia in 1807, aged eighteen. Two years later, he volunteered into the 41st Regiment and was sent to join the regiment in North America, serving in Lower Canada and at Fort George in modern-day Niagara-on-the-Lake prior to the outbreak of war.

As a private in the 41st, Byfield saw heavy action during the Anglo-American War of 1812. In the conflict's western theatre, he served at the Siege of Detroit and the Battle of Frenchtown, where he was wounded in the shoulder, as well as at the Siege of Fort Meigs and the Battle of Fort Stephenson. Byfield narrowly escaped capture after British defeat at the Battle of the Thames and later rejoined elements of his regiment in the Niagara Peninsula. Byfield participated in the Capture of Fort Niagara and the Battle of Lundy's Lane, but his left arm was shattered by a musket ball at the Battle of Conjocta Creek, an unsuccessful British raid on 3 August 1814 preceding the Siege of Fort Erie. Byfield's forearm was subsequently amputated and he was invalided back to England, where he was awarded a pension from the Royal Hospital Chelsea in 1815.