Patriots (41 page)

General John Burgoyne stood among the British guns bombarding the hill and was thrilled by the panorama unfolding before him. A roar of cannon and mortar filled his ears as he watched Howe’s infantrymen make their way over the low fences and the other British wing climb steadily up Breed’s Hill. Straight ahead of him, Charlestown was ablaze, the wooden church steeples rising over the rest like fiery pyramids. Behind him, Boston’s rooftops swarmed with men and women who had come out to shudder at the spectacle or gloat over it. Burgoyne reflected that a defeat today could spell the loss of America to the British Empire.

—

With his men crouching behind their stones on the beach, John Stark knew exactly how little ammunition they had. Before Howe’s men came into sight, Stark had made a mark in the river-bank about forty yards from their hiding place. Don’t fire, he told them, until the British have reached that mark. Moving up to the men at the fence, who were peering out through holes in the hay, Stark calculated the rise to the ground and told them not to fire until they could see the enemy’s half gaiters. Israel Putnam had come down briefly from Bunker Hill to repeat a well-known phrase spoken by a Prussian prince thirty years earlier: “Don’t fire until you see the
whites of their eyes.”

The British plodded forward, unaware of what lay behind the stones they could see in the distance.

The fusiliers were the first to pass Stark’s line. A row of muskets rose on the stone wall, and blasts of ball tore into the British ranks and cut them down. Before they could escape, ninety-six British soldiers were killed. The survivors quickly backed out of range. Behind the fusiliers, the infantrymen formed for their own charge and marched over the fallen bodies until they were also driven back by fire from the wall. Once more the British officers urged their men forward. Again they were mowed down. To John Stark, the dead seemed to be lying as thick as sheep in a
fold. The water at the edge of the beach was running red, and British corpses were being lifted out on the tide.

There was no fourth attempt. The infantrymen were running back along the narrow strand to where they had landed. Some were trying to get into the landing boats, hoping to row to safety. Their officers were swearing and gesturing wildly with their swords to force the men back. General Howe’s strategy had failed.

Howe’s only choice was to send all of his remaining forces head on against Prescott’s earthen fort. He decided to attack on three sides. The Forty-seventh Regiment and the Marine battalion would move to his left. The Fifth, Thirty-eighth and Forty-third Regiments would go to the center under Brigadier General Robert Pigot, who had helped to get the survivors of Lexington back safely to Charlestown. Howe would take the grenadiers and the Forty-second Regiment to the right. He would avoid the stone barricade that had been so lethal to the fusiliers, but his march would take him past the rail fence draped with hay.

—

Prescott and Stark had no joint battle plan. Each was fighting according to his own judgment. But Prescott had also urged his men to let the British get within close range before opening fire. Prescott had fewer than four hundred men in his fort and behind a sketchy breastwork. Stark had four to five hundred crouched behind the stones and the rail fence.

When Howe’s men were within sixty yards of the fence, they halted to shoot. When the British stopped, the Americans opened fire from behind their curtain of hay and ripped through the British front line. Howe himself wasn’t struck, but the Americans were determined to hit every officer on the hill. Whenever someone spotted a British insignia, he shouted, “There!” or “See that officer!” Two or three others then rested their gun barrels on the rail fence and took aim. “Let us have a shot at him!” Since they all opened fire at once, they could usually drop their target.

Inside the fort, dirt had been piled up three feet high and the best shot among Prescott’s men climbed to the top of the mound. He stood there exposed while the men below him remained protected. One by one, he picked off his prey. As soon as he fired one musket, another loaded weapon was handed up to him. At last a grenadier took careful aim and brought him down, but not before
Prescott’s lone marksman had killed or wounded twenty British regulars.

William Howe couldn’t believe what was happening. It was a moment and an emotion he had never experienced. In the face of the most sustained fire his troops had ever confronted, they had broken and were running away through the high grass. Writhing and groaning among the dead, wounded British soldiers were trying to crawl from the line of fire. Howe saw his army in full retreat. Up and down the rail fence and inside the fortress, the Americans cheered loudly. Prescott and Stark moved among them, praising their skill and bravery but reminding them that the afternoon wasn’t over.

General Howe needed about fifteen minutes to collect his troops and line them up for another charge. This time, General Pigot’s men would storm the fort, and Howe’s men would assault the rail fence. Once again, there was no fire from the Americans until the British were within a hundred feet. Then the Americans sprayed a hail of lead, driving the British front rank back into the men behind them. Three fourths—and as many as nine tenths—of each company fell to the ground. For the second time, Howe watched his army turn and run for their lives.

—

Despite their success, many American soldiers were feeling the same fear. A dozen men were helping to move the wounded to safety on Bunker Hill when only three or four could have done the job. Other Americans slipped away. When challenged, they claimed to have permission to go because they had been digging all night and firing all afternoon and were famished and parched and exhausted. One captain from Connecticut saw an American company retreating from the hill with its officers in the lead, and he ordered his own men to cock their muskets and drive the deserters back to Colonel Prescott.

But Prescott faced a shortage more serious than defections. If Howe asked his men to make a third charge, Prescott’s troops had almost no powder left to drive them back.

Howe was weighing his next move. Some officers were begging him not to charge the American line again. His wounded were being carried to boats to be ferried back to Boston. Many of his dead still lay in front of the American fort, too near the rebel muskets to drag away. But Howe had reinforcements to draw
upon. Henry Clinton had joined those troops who had only feinted at the left side of the fort while Howe led the main charge. Clinton’s men hadn’t taken many casualties, and if Howe chose to try again, he could count on them.

Colonel Prescott thought he also had available reinforcements among the hundreds of men wandering aimlessly on Bunker Hill. Israel Putnam was trying to get them into fighting ranks, but he was short of officers and even those he had weren’t all willing to face a new attack. At the first sight of the redcoats advancing, Colonel Samuel Gerrish had trembled and cried, “Retreat! Retreat! Or you’ll all be cut off!” His men had followed him to the safe side of the hill. Now Gerrish lay flat on the ground, fat and immobile, claiming he was too exhausted to go on. Putnam tried cajoling him and slapped some of Gerrish’s more hysterical men with the flat of his sword. It was no use. Colonel Prescott’s troops would not receive reinforcements.

Meantime, William Howe had made his choice. His drummers beat the tattoo to rally the men. Many were bleeding or bandaged, but again they formed a line twelve feet apart and moved toward the breastwork and the redoubt. Behind that front line, the British were massed in files that looked impossibly deep to the Americans inside the fort. The gallantry of the British in their beautiful, impractical uniforms—and memories of fighting alongside such men in past battles—stirred profound feelings among the Americans. One rebel from Ipswich thought they were too handsome to fire at. All the same, he raised his musket.

This time, pride or desperation kept Howe’s ranks intact. As a man fell in front, the man behind him stepped over his body as though it were a log in the meadow and took his place. But once more the American fire was so accurate that the line could only move forward very slowly. At last a British captain, George Harris, got close enough to lead his grenadiers in a rush up the slope between the breastwork and the fort. Twice they had to fall back. On the third charge, a musket ball scraped the top of Harris’ head. Four soldiers leaped forward to carry him out of range, but when three were hit Harris snapped, “For God’s sake,
let me die in peace.” The men ignored him and got him to a boat for Boston.

Major Pitcairn, who had damned the Americans on the Lexington green, led a unit of marines up the hill. The burning houses at Charlestown were sending up waves of intense heat, the afternoon
sun was unbearable, and the fire from the fort was worse than anything one of Pitcairn’s young captains had imagined. When he complained of feeling hot, Pitcairn offered no sympathy. Soldiers must inure themselves to any hardship, he said. They shouldn’t even recognize heat or cold. Pitcairn added that doing his duty took all of his attention.

Behind his walls, Colonel Prescott sent a series of messengers to the rear, appealing to General Putnam for reinforcements. Putnam, who was riding around Bunker Hill with entrenchment tools slung across his horse, could hear the battle roaring on the next hill but didn’t join it. By now, Prescott and his men were out of ammunition. Some fired nails or other bits of metal they could pick up from the ground. Others tried to hold back the approaching line of bayonets by hurling rocks from the top of the fortress wall.

The American desperation goaded the British. Howe’s men stormed the fort with cries of “Push on!” One last blaze of muskets cut into their ranks, but by then they were scrambling up the ditch and over the wall. Some Americans raised their heads to fire even as the British were on top of them. Prescott thought one more round of ammunition could have repelled them, but he didn’t even have that. Bellowing with frustration and revenge, the British soldiers swarmed over the fort, stabbing with their bayonets. Through thick black smoke from the final rounds, the Americans groped along the walls for the single narrow exit at the rear of the fort. In the murk, the British didn’t dare fire for fear of hitting their own men. Colonel Prescott was able to beat back the bayonets with his sword and retreat from his fortress with only slashes in his coat.

But as the Americans escaped from the fort, they found themselves trapped between British soldiers on both sides. The rebels behind the rail fence provided their only cover as they stumbled toward Bunker Hill with the British pursuing them. Thirty of John Stark’s men managed to save one cannon, dragging it up the hill and down to Charlestown Neck. A fresh American regiment from Charlestown was firing to keep the British at bay. A few kegs of powder arrived from Portsmouth, and the Americans were covered long enough to gather up many of their wounded as they retreated. The British were exhausted and, with their dead strewn around them, not pressing their advantage. Every one of General Howe’s aides was killed or wounded. Working his way to Howe’s
side, Henry Clinton thought he had never seen such confusion. British officers complained that even in victory their men weren’t obeying them.

On Bunker Hill, Israel Putnam made the same report to Colonel Prescott about the Americans. Prescott knew that Putnam’s disorganized reinforcements, only about six hundred yards from the battle site, might have given him a victory and reminded Putnam of his agreement to come to the fort’s defense. “Why,” Prescott demanded, “did you not support me, General, with your men?”

Putnam said, “I could not
drive
the dogs up.”

But Prescott was in no mood for alibis. “If you could not
drive
them up,” he said, mimicking Old Put, “you
might have
led
them up.”

—

The shooting had lasted less than an hour. Entering the fort in the final moments, Major Pitcairn was shot in the head by a black American named Salem Prince. The Committee of Safety had forbidden enlisting slaves into the army, but several freed blacks fought that day on the hill. Fatally wounded, Pitcairn fell into the arms of his son, who carried him to a boat, kissed him farewell and went back to fight. Henry Clinton led a force chasing after the Americans. He expected them to make a last stand on Bunker Hill, but by the time he got there the rebels had gone.

When he went out to make sure that the British had left the scene, Andrew McClary, the American major who had bulled his way through Charlestown Neck five hours earlier, was struck dead by a last random cannonball from the harbor. Outside the fort, a British soldier came upon the body of Joseph Warren lying in a trench. America’s newest general was dead before he could receive formal notice of his commission. Warren had been one of the last men to leave the fort. When a bullet struck the back of his head, a reflex jerked his hand to the wound. But he had been killed instantly. The British soldier cursed his corpse and said Warren had done more mischief than anyone else in the colonies. Later, when General Gage heard the news, he agreed and said that
Warren’s death was worth five hundred men to him. On the hill, the soldier stripped Warren of his coat, his satin waistcoat and his white breeches with silver loops. Walter Sloane Laurie, the British
captain who had been forced to back his men across the North Bridge at Concord, was also present. Laurie ordered a grave dug and took pleasure in seeing Warren wrapped in a farmer’s coat and stuffed into the ground along with another dead rebel.

Dr. Warren had been Samuel Adams’ most diligent student. But he hadn’t mastered the lesson of secrecy and had carried to the hill letters from James Lovell in Boston that revealed information about British troop strength and deployment. Lovell’s father was the loyalist schoolmaster who had dismissed his class on the morning Percy’s troops marched on Lexington. His son was such a dependable patriot that in 1771 Samuel Adams had chosen him as the first orator to commemorate the Boston Massacre. Because of Dr. Warren’s indiscretion, James Lovell was arrested and locked in the Boston jail.