Through So Many Dangers: The Memoirs and Adventures of Robert Kirk, Late of the Royal Highland Regiment

Robert Kirkwood served with the 42nd and 77th Highland Regiments in North America during the French and Indian War and Pontiac’s Rebellion.  From Niagara Falls to Newfoundland, from the Carolinas to the Mississippi, he covered some five thousand miles by foot, canoe, whaleboat, and transport ship.  By the time he returned home after ten years of “service truly critical,” our roguish hero had not only been captured by Shawnee Indians but had become an accomplished marksman, hunter, and tracker, proficient in the use of canoes, snowshoes, and tumplines.  In short, Kirkwood was the ultimate Light Infantryman of Britain’s “American Army,” and his Memoirs, reprinted here for the first time since 1775, bring his exciting story to life.

“Robert Kirk’s long-lost, first-hand account tells us that this Highlander and erstwhile Ranger with Robert Rogers apparently was everywhere during the North American campaigns of the Seven Years’ War.

Yes, the expert editors of Kirk[wood]’s published account reveal his multiple borrowings from other source as a typical 18th-century Grub-Street pastiche.  But more importantly, they firmly identify the reportage of important, veritable and fresh kernels of experience, if not authentically from Kirk[wood] himself, then surely “oral history” collected from his comrades-in-arms.

Robert Kirkwood’s narrative offers an uncommon window on the horrific experiences of the usually anonymous, everyday soldiers who shaped the destiny of North America.”  – Nicholas Westbrook, Director, Fort Ticonderoga, Ticonderoga, New York