This video shows - the human skeleton found during excavations on the Waterloo battlefield. A group of military veterans working alongside archaeologists on the battlefield of Waterloo in Belgium have discovered a rare complete skeleton - thought to be a soldier who fell in the field more than 200 years ago. As many as 20,000 men fell on a single day in June 1815 as the Duke of Wellington’s victory over France’s Emperor Napoleon ended the latter’s reign and made the modern world. However, for more than 200 years what happened to the remains of those who died in the battle has largely stayed a mystery - as at the time care wasn’t taken to respectfully dispose of the dead. Some soldiers are believed to have been buried in mass graves - but none have been found - or their bodies burned, with others’ remains even rumoured to have been used as fertiliser. The team from Waterloo Uncovered – the charity that helps today’s veterans and military personnel recover from injury and the impacts of their service through archaeology - have been undertaking summer digs since the battle’s bicentenary in 2015. This year’s dig, which ended on 16 July 2022, made the significant find on the site of Wellington’s field hospital at Mont-Saint-Jean. The team carefully excavated the intact skeleton of a soldier, lying amid ammunition boxes, medical waste and the bones of legs and arms, amputated by surgeons in their struggle to save the wounded. Professor Tony Pollard, one of the project’s Archaeological Directors and Director of the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology at Glasgow University, says, “I've been a battlefield archaeologist for 20 years and have never seen anything like it. We won't get any closer to the harsh reality of Waterloo than this.” Rod Eldridge, one of the project’s Lead Welfare Officers and a veteran, added, “Finding human remains can invoke a range of strong emotions, from excitement at their discovery to understandable sadness and reverence, as this is likely to be a soldier, just as those excavating it with Waterloo Uncovered are. There are strong feelings amongst the team that the bones must be treated with respect and dignity at all times.” Véronique Moulaert from AWaP, one of the project’s partners, adds: "Finding a skeleton in the same trench as ammunition boxes and amputated limbs shows the state of emergency the field hospital would have been in during the battle - dead soldiers, amputated limbs and more would have had to be swept into nearby ditches and quickly buried in a desperate attempt to contain the spread of disease around the hospital." The dig has uncovered other, poignant evidence of the scale of the climactic Napoleonic battle in the form of a number of horse bones - evidence of the several thousand horses killed during the battle’s cavalry charges. This year, Waterloo Uncovered's excavations supported a new group of 20 veterans and serving personnel from four countries. The veterans and archaeologists were also visited by the historical author Ken Follett.