I have just read and enjoyed your book “Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles”, and having read many books on the subject, thought it was the most lucid, well presented and interesting. It is certainly the best of the histories I have read.

I note that you examined much of the aftermath of the battle including the wounded and their treatment.

As a curiosity of The Battle of Waterloo I can tell you that as a medical student, I needed to acquire a half Skeleton in order to learn anatony from the bones, learn all their tuberosities and areas that muscle and ligaments adjoin. My Uncle, a doctor before me, had the old skeleton he learnt on so he gave it to me. The Skull had “Waterloo” carved across the frontal bone. He told me that after the battle with so many dead, skeletons were required for Hospitals, Surgeons and medical students. Many were collected. His was one.

The skull displayed the groove of a shot that would have glanced off the right parietal bone as well as a sabre cut through the thin left temporal bone. The skull was intact bar the evidence of these two injuries. The shot would probably have maimed him and caused him to attempt to retire behind his lines, whereas the sabre thrust from the tip of the sabre suggested he was caught by a cavalryman from above and behind, perhaps whilst fleeing. This would have killed him.

I have now passed “Alphonse” on, yet our family remember him well and his skull still tells its own story of his small part played it the battle, and attests to his likely mode of death.

I send this information in case you were unaware of the practice of body collection, following the battle, to be used for medical purposes.

Dr Tony Greig