Ron Field was born in Hertford, England in 1943 and was educated in Cheltenham, where he gained a Bachelor of Education (Hons) degree. He was Head of History at The Cotswold School at Bourton-on-the-Water until his retirement in 2007. Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1982, he taught History at Piedmont High School in California from 1982-83. He was associate editor of the Confederate Historical Society of Great Britain from 1983 through 1992, and was elected a Fellow of the Company of Military Historians, based in Washington, D.C., in 2005. In 2010 he was awarded a Research Fellowship at the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, The John Hay Library, Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island. He is also a contributing editor of Military Images, a magazine devoted to the photographic history of the U.S. soldier and sailor in the 19th century. A prolific author, Ron is an internationally acknowledged expert on U.S. military history.