by Ron Carter
Wednesday, April 19, 1775
Chapter XV
* * *
“Move!”
John grasped Matthew’s arm and pushed him, then Billy Weems, and they broke from the ditch where they had crouched, and John crowded them to a trot ahead of him, with Tom following. The men around them stood still, gaping at the British as though mesmerized by the realization they were in battle, and John grabbed the nearest one as he passed him and turned him east and shoved him roughly.
“Move! Load while you run! Head for Hardy’s Hill!”
The man shook his head as though coming back from a far place, then fell in behind John.
“Move!” Tom shouted to others they passed. “Shoot and move! Get away from the gun smoke. Load while you move. Find cover and fire and keep moving.”
Slowly the militiamen began to shake off the shock of the first moments of cracking muskets, and their brains began to function once more, and those nearest John and Tom began to follow, loading while they ran, looking for a place to stop and fire once more. It spread outward from the few, and small groups of the colonial force began to move eastward from Meriam’s Corner.
“Small groups,” John shouted again. “Gather at Hardy’s Hill!” On the road, the British officers spurred their horses into their own men, sabers raised high, herding them into a semblance of order. “Keep marching!” they shouted above the din. “Do not stop—keep marching!”
By threes and fours, the militiamen ran ahead, watching the British as they continued their march, and they saw them raise their muskets once more and fire their second ragged volley. And once again the big lead balls whistled high, over their heads.
Tom slammed his ramrod back into its slot beneath his musket barrel, primed the pan, snapped the cover down, and went to one knee beside an oak. John stopped beside him, and they both levelled their muskets and fired. A British captain flung his sword high and sagged in his saddle and toppled to the ground, and a sergeant carrying the Union Jack grasped his chest and sat down. The proud flag dropped into the dust, and no one noticed or stopped to pick it up.
John took one quick glance at the pans on the muskets of Matthew and Billy. They had not been fired. He glanced at their eyes and saw the boy inside trembling as they faced the white-hot fires, searching to know if they could cross a line drawn in their souls by lifelong teaching and their own conscience against killing a man. The talk by kings and generals of the glories and drama of war was forgotten with lead balls whistling and men dropping. At that moment, the single harsh reality for both boys was the war within themselves. Could they kill? Only they could decide. John saw it and he turned away and said nothing.
With John leading, they dodged from the cover of the oak and continued east at a trot, measuring powder from their powder horns and seating the patch and ball for the next shot as they moved.
Tom paused for one moment to look back. The militia were strung out behind them for half a mile, but they were moving, and they were beginning to develop a rhythm. Take cover, shoot, move, load, take cover, shoot. Tom saw the beginnings of coolheadedness and the first hint of confidence. The British volleys had both been high—the universal sign of panic-stricken, untested troops firing too quickly. The return volleys by the militia had not been high, and the British were leaving dead and wounded at every step. And not one British officer had yet shown the first sign of knowing how to fight a fragmented army that would not stay in one place long enough to become a target and that kept up an unending stream of fire.
“Keep moving!” Tom shouted once more to those behind. “Small groups.”
The last company in the British column cleared the low hill at Meriam’s Corner and took their first volley. They raised their muskets to return fire, only to see the militiamen streaming east, loading as they ran, moving in small groups, using every rock, tree, ditch, and groundswell for cover to stop and fire again and keep moving.
A grizzled sergeant raised an anguished fist against the colonials and shouted, “Stand and fight, you bloody cowards!” and a moment later a colonial musket ball slammed into his right shoulder and he groaned and spun and crumpled to the ground. The corporal nearest him tried to pick him up and could not, and he laid down his musket and stayed with his fallen sergeant, using his red coat to try to bind the torn, bleeding wound.
At the front of the column, half a mile ahead, the leading company raised frightened eyes to peer eight hundred yards up the road, at Hardy’s Hill, where a groundswell rose forty feet on the left side of the road and a heavy stand of oak and maple trees came to road’s edge on the right. The regulars glanced at their officers, pleading in their faces, but one thing was clear to Colonel Francis Smith: if he stopped his column, he would be instantly committed to a fight he would lose because his regulars were already beginning to count their ammunition. If he left the roadbed he would be on ground with which he was not familiar, while militiamen knew every tree, every creek, every rock. If he unwittingly marched his men into a bog or a marsh, he could lose every soldier in his command. Boston was yet seventeen miles distant, and the reinforcements he had sent for had not appeared. Smith had no choice. He barked orders. “Stay on the road, and at all costs do not stop!”
The column doggedly continued marching while the incessant firing poured in from their left, from muskets they could not see fired by hidden men who were ever moving in small groups. The British flankers were driven back into the column. The regulars fired when they could see a target, and finally they began firing without one. The taste of acrid gun smoke was thick on their tongues, and rivulets of sweat streaked their faces as they moved on, reloading, searching for a way to stop the nightmare. Thirst began to set in, and they drained their canteens and then licked parched lips while they marched.
Ahead at Hardy’s Hill, the minutemen from Sudbury and Framingham hid in the dense maple and oak grove on the south side of the road and studied the incoming column for several minutes. “Scatter and hide,” came the command, and one minute later both companies were scattered for one hundred yards, invisible behind trees and rocks and in a small streambed that ran parallel to the road.
On the north side of the road, John and Tom led militia to the lip of the hill, studied the British, now a scant four hundred yards distant, and gave hand signals. Within moments, two hundred militiamen lay in the warm spring grass, just over the crest of the hill, invisible from the road.
The leading British company was nearly past Hardy’s Hill before the first musket volley came blasting from the woods, and they turned to look as the balls smashed into them. An instant later, while they were frantically trying to locate targets to return fire, John led the militia ten feet forward to the crest of Hardy’s Hill, and two hundred men knelt to steady their muskets and pulled the triggers. Regulars went down all up and down the roadbed, and those left standing surged on, confused at the incoming fire from both sides, unable to decide which direction they should return fire.
“Move!” John shouted, and stood and waved the militia farther on, glancing once at the pans on the muskets of Matthew and Billy. The covers were open. They had fired. He glanced at their faces and read the set of their jaws and the look in their eyes, and he watched as they worked mechanically, reloading while their minds and hearts tentatively accepted the fact they had fired and they waited to see if they could approve the act of killing another man. Once more John signalled and they stopped and took cover and waited, and as the regulars came beneath them, they once again sent a volley ripping into the column leaders.
Regulars all through the first three British companies gasped and sagged and went down, and they turned and tried to run back into the column. The officers in the column drew their pistols and aimed them point-blank at their own troops and shouted, “One more step and we shoot you on the spot!” The regulars stared into the bores of a score of aimed pistols and then into the eyes of their own officers, and turned back and once again started east, while the colonials on both sides fire
d their second volley. Then the colonials broke cover and moved on east, past Hardy’s Hill.
Beyond the hill, the road continued through open meadows and fields, only to pass beneath the crest of another hill on the left where the road made an abrupt left turn around the base of the rise, ran for five hundred yards, then turned sharply once again to continue east. At the turn, the trees on the right side of the road again came to road’s edge.
The regulars in the British column looked and dropped tortured eyes for a moment, and groaned.
Ahead of them, at the place where the road made the sharp-angle turn to the left, Major Loammi Baldwin lay behind the decaying remains of a fallen oak. Scattered through the dense growth of trees behind him, his Woburn company lay hidden while they studied the incoming British. Baldwin watched them continue on the road, and he knew they dared not leave it. He gave his orders.
Across the road, the first of the militia arrived and came to the crest of the hill and looked back to watch the British moving steadily towards them. With the unending rattle of musket fire driving them on, it was clear they would not leave the roadbed. A moment later John and Tom arrived, and John gave orders, and although he had no command authority over the militia, not one man, including the officers, failed to instantly obey.
Coming into the abrupt turn, the companies leading the British column, out of formation, struggling with their walking wounded, tried to watch both sides of the road, knowing in their hearts they were about to be caught again in a deadly, point-blank cross fire.
On the crest of the hill, John signalled the militia forward, and in five seconds the ridge was lined with kneeling colonials, and before the British could raise their muskets the first volley plowed into them. Three seconds later Major Baldwin’s musket roared on the wooded side of the road, and instantly every man in the Woburn company fired. Once more the first three battered British companies reeled from the barrage of bullets.
Then the colonials were on their feet, moving around the abrupt turn, loading, taking cover, waiting, and two hundred yards past the turn they blasted out their second volley and moved on. One hundred yards past the second sharp turn in the road, the colonials ripped loose with their third volley, and this time men went down the entire length of the British column. The sole remaining captain of the Forty-third Infantry slumped in his saddle and pitched headlong, and the single remaining officer in that company—a young, white-faced lieutenant—assumed command. Of the eight officers assigned to the Forty-third, seven were dead. The British had not yet learned that the gold on the shoulders of their officers drew the heaviest fire.
Nearly three miles ahead, at Lexington, a breathless militiaman pulled his horse from a stampede gait to a sliding halt at the front door of Captain John Parker, leaped to the ground, and pounded on the front door. A moment later Parker threw the door open.
“Sir, we turned ’em around at Concord, and we been chasin’ ’em all the way back, and they’re comin’, sir. They’re comin’, and we’re pourin’ the fear into ’em!”
Instantly Parker spun on his heel, and five minutes later he marched onto the Green with his drummer and ordered him to sound assembly. Within ten minutes Parker had the remains of his Lexington command facing him.
“Men, the column of regulars is coming down the road, and by the Almighty, we’re going to go meet them and give them what they gave us this morning. Are you with me?”
Their shout became a roar as Parker led them west on the Lexington Road, striding briskly at the front of his command and carrying his musket in his left hand, with his right arm and hand held tightly against his wounded side.
West of Lexington the road crossed Nelson’s Bridge, which spanned a small stream, and the approach to the bridge was beneath another hill, over one hundred yards in length, fifty feet above the road. As Parker approached Nelson’s Bridge he could hear the distant cracking of musketry, and he stopped for a moment to consider. Past Nelson’s Bridge, the land was open and rolling, with stone fences and a great field of boulders on the right, and scattered brush and scrub oak on the left. He hesitated but a moment.
“Up the hill, men. Form a skirmish line on this side, just below the top, and hide. Don’t fire until I do.”
Minutes later the Lexington men were strung out for the full hundred yards, fifteen feet below the crest of the hill, every man invisible behind a rock or some brush. Parker was in the center of the line, flat on his belly behind a boulder, peering around one side for the first sign of the British. Then they were there, and Parker saw the white musket smoke from the invisible militia on both sides of the road and watched the column take the unending punishment. A look of grim satisfaction crossed his face, and he waited, with the image of Jonas, dead, clear in his mind.
On the roadbed, Colonel Smith turned in the dust and looked at the rear of his column. He saw the orange musket flashes from the militia on the roadsides and the white smoke from their muskets, and he understood but one thing: he had to keep the column moving or the rear companies were going to be annihilated. He watched his men, stumbling, ignoring their wounded, thoughts fragmenting, and he knew that if he did not keep the column moving fast, none of them would see Boston again.
Once more he ordered out his flankers, one hundred yards into the fields and woods at the sides of the road, in the desperate hope they would be able to engage the militia and take some of the pressure off the column. The flankers moved out, but the colonials simply fell back one hundred yards and moved on. When the flankers pursued, other militia moved in where they had been, and there was hardly a break in the firing.
Anxiously Smith peered ahead and his heart sank when he remembered the Nelson Bridge crossing, with its hill on the north side. His only hope was to get past it as fast as he could. He galloped to the head of the column, giving orders to his officers as he passed them. “Move past the bridge as fast as possible!”
Coming to the bridge, the regulars were obsessed with but one thing: if they moved fast enough they might outrun the holocaust. The leading company ran across the bridge, with those behind breaking into a trot, then a run, following, heedless of the hill to their left or the threat it posed.
Parker did not move as he studied the incoming column, picking out the officers, and suddenly his eyes widened. That’s him! He was at the Lexington Green this morning. He commands this column! He shifted his musket and brought it to bear on Colonel Francis Smith. He waited until Smith was directly below him, less than thirty yards away, and he sighted and pulled the trigger. Instantly every man in Parker’s command fired, and Parker moved his head to look beneath the rising cloud of white gun smoke and saw Smith grab his upper thigh and pitch from his horse into the dirt. Behind him a captain grasped his throat and toppled backwards from his horse. Major Pitcairn came forward at a gallop to assume command, while two regulars pulled Colonel Smith to his feet and attempted to put him back on his rearing, prancing horse but could not.
Pitcairn shouted his orders. “Lead companies, charge them! Up the hill!” He spun his horse and sprinted back four hundred yards and shouted to his marines, “Climb that hill and rout those militiamen!” The marines surged forward from the field and across Nelson’s Bridge, and started up the hill.
Parker’s men held their ground and maintained their deadly, point-blank fire, and the regulars charging up the hill directly below them sagged. Then the marines came at them from their right, and the militia shifted their fire. The marines began dropping but continued up the hill.
Parker cooly stood and shouted to his Lexington men, “Fall back to the far side of the hill and regroup and wait for them.”
The marines watched them disappear over the crest of the hill and followed them, scrambling, and reached the crest and looked down the north slope. They saw no one, and suddenly from behind the trees and rocks another volley came whistling. The marines stopped in their tracks and took cover, and not one of them returned fire.
When Parker’s first and second volleys
stopped the column at Nelson’s Bridge, the rear companies had kept marching and had run into those in front and stopped. The militia, swarming both sides of the road, had now nearly pinned down the six companies at the rear, and Smith understood that if they were pinned, unable to move, it would all be over before sunset. Desperately he shouted to Pitcairn, “Keep them moving!”
Pitcairn nodded his understanding and once more galloped back to the rear of the column, with incoming musket balls whistling on all sides. “Move on to the Bluff. Take the Bluff. Rally on the far side of the Bluff.”
Five hundred yards past Nelson’s Bridge a single hill known as the Bluff rose beside the road, and it was Pitcairn’s desperate hope that if he could take it and make a stand, he could create a little time for his beaten army to breathe and regroup. He charged again from the rear to the front, frantically shouting the same orders, and slowly the column once more began to advance.
The light grenadiers marched up the Bluff, taking heavy fire and casualties, and the colonials fell back and gave the hill to them. Pitcairn held his breath as other companies of his regulars followed to the commanding position of the high ground, and the balance of the column continued until they were under the protection of the muzzles of their own grenadiers and marines at the top of the Bluff. For the first time since they took the heavy volley at Meriam’s Corner, they had time to regroup and do what they could for their walking wounded.
What Pitcairn did not recognize was that in buying the time for his own bleeding, decimated army, he had given time to the colonials. Those at the rear of the column now came sprinting past the Bluff, on towards Fiske Hill nearly a mile beyond, and began selecting the rocks and trees and bushes where they would once again be invisible and within fifty yards of the road on both sides.