Step back 250 years as a British Redcoat Soldier defending the American colonies during the War of Independence, and you were likely to face some of the most horrific and violent conditions seen just about anywhere around the world.

What might have first seemed an exhilarating and patriotic endeavour would soon turn into a gruelling and gory series of events, through which your loyalty to the crown would be seriously tested…

Rather than a political and social movement devised by the great founding fathers and resulting in the smooth birth of a nation, the American Revolution truly consisted of a hard, bloody and destructive war. A civil conflict that impacted the lives of so many, and would take the lives of thousands of soldiers who fought in it.

But look at the paintings from the period, the history books, broadway musicals and Hollywood depictions of this war, and you’d believe it to have been a chess match won by plucky patriots against out-of-touch, aristocratic generals.

Beneath of all this was the reality, an arduous series of skirmishes, sieges and pitched battles fought between ordinary British regulars and loyalist troops against so-called rebel militias and Washington’s Continental Army. This would also be a war of attrition, a fight against the elements, and a true test of loyalty.

So what was life actually like for the average redcoat on the ground? In this series, in collaboration with Survive History, I’ll be recruited into the 33rd Regiment of Foot, a proud military unit commanded by Lord Charles Cornwallis that took part in almost all major campaigns of the American War of Independence.

Using meticulous research and real soldiers’ diaries, I’ll discover how ordinary civilians in Britain could find themselves in the deep heartland of America within a matter of months, how they adjusted to the novel tactics used by the rebels, the extreme conditions in the colonies and what the chances were of them making it out alive….