William Green was an English rifleman of the 95th Regiment who served in the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

. He was the author of a memoir entitled "A brief outline of the Travels and Adventures of William Green (late Rifle Brigade) during a period of ten years in the British Service", one of the few accounts by an enlisted man of life in Wellington's Army. As such it has served as a primary source

Primary source

Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines to describe source material that is closest to the person, information, period, or idea being studied....

 for many historians.
Green was the second child of John and Elizabeth Green, of Welford, Northamptonshire

Welford, Northamptonshire

Welford is a village and civil parish in England. It is located on the River Avon border between the counties of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. At the time of the 2001 census, the parish's population was 1,016 people....

, who settled in Lutterworth

Lutterworth

Lutterworth is a market town and civil parish in the Harborough district of Leicestershire, England. The town is located in southern Leicestershire, north of Rugby, in Warwickshire and south of Leicester. It had a population of 8,293 in the 2001 UK census....

 just before his birth.