Dear Mr. Cornwell, I really like your books and have all the Sharpe series on video. Your historical research seems to be extremely good. However, I often wondered HOW you imagined that awful sergeant’s behaviour patterns. … A superb actor, too, one could really dislike him ! Why? Because when I was a conscript in the Dorsets (in Austria) in l949, we had a sergeant running the battalion police. His name was Algeron and, so I was told, he still had a piece of metal in his head. However, his corporal was my nemesis … L/Cpl Nash … who used to say …”Yew, soljer, whatyerdoin’ wiv a cigarette ‘older, that’s again miletary reg-u-lations.” I never, ever swore in the army until I met this little, which he was, b…..d. Mind you it was a little effete using a cigarette holder but in them thar days it had a filter and on l0/- a week one made ones own cigs. SGT ALGERON USED TO ALSO GRIMACE AND NOD HIS HEAD FORWARDS ALL THE TIME … but otherwise was not a S.O.B. Just thought you’d like to know that….. re your Baker rifles, well, the guys always wanted to borrow mine as it ‘shot straight’, mind you, that, as you well know, was a Lee Enfield … but the one time I shot with a Bren I got bored with hitting the bull every time from 600 yards so I shot at the moving marker … and even notched the stick … but the butts didn’t like this at all. Yours truly, Freeman Newton, White Rock, B.C. Canada. … an excellent place to retire to. Freeman Newton