Under Alien Skies Environment, Suffering, and the Defeat of the British Military in Revolutionary America

Whether trudging through alligator-infested swamps, nursing a comrade back to health in a rain-sodden tent, or digging trenches in a burned-out port city, most who fought in America under the British army's flag ultimately deemed themselves strangers fighting in a strange land. For them, Revolutionary America looked nothing like the "happy land . . . blessed with every climate" that Revolutionary republicans so successfully promoted. Instead, the War of Independence descended into a quagmire of anxiety, destruction, and distress at the hands of the American environment-a "Diabolical Country," as one British soldier opined, "which no Earthly Compensation can put me in Charity with."