by Ron Carter
The buildings were deserted when the regulars knocked the front doors down, and for the first time the soldiers disobeyed Smith’s standing orders against looting. Before they dropped their torches, the soldiers looted the homes, taking anything of value they wished, and moved on to the next. When they returned to report to Percy they did not mention the looting, only that the buildings were vacant and burning and the stone fences were kicked down. But the regulars all knew. They saw the stolen jewelry and coin, and they held their silence and waited.
At three-thirty p.m. Percy made one last round of his hilltop position, studying the position of the rebels and reflecting on what he knew. He had passed through Menotomy but three hours earlier, and it had been deserted and shuttered. There was no chance the militia could raise enough men at Menotomy in three hours to pose a threat. If he waited longer where he was, the colonials would have time to take positions on both sides of the road back to Boston as they had done with Smith’s column as it came from Concord, and if they did so and blocked the road, they could pound his command into the ground as they had done Smith’s, perhaps annihilate both.
He made his decision and gave his orders. Freshest troops at the rear of the column, since that was where the fighting was expected to be, and resume the march immediately.
The road from Lexington to Menotomy passed through rolling hills, some of which overlooked the road on the north, with woods on the south side of the road. As Percy’s column plodded onward, the firing increased with each mile, and when finally Percy saw Menotomy in the distance he was certain he would be free of the unending musket fire once he was past the small town. He ordered an advance company to move into the empty and shuttered town to be certain it was not filled with colonials waiting in ambush.
The advance company moved into the town and began battering down doors, looting and plundering at will as they had seen done in Lexington. The third door they smashed was the home of Jason Russell, and inside, a dozen militiamen waited. The fight was short-lived and intense, with eleven militia killed or wounded, and twelve British, and as the advance company continued, they were stunned to find militia in nearly every building, hiding in barns and hay lofts and attics, waiting.
Onward Percy marched, past Peirce’s Hill and Foot of Rocks, and the weary companies stumbled towards Menotomy, unaware of what lay ahead, taking courage and relief from their belief there would be little resistance.
Behind Percy, two thousand militiamen were decimating his rear companies. Ahead, men from Framingham, Newton, Beverly, Cambridge, Westford, Watertown, Salem, Danvers, Mystic, Roxbury, Concord, Needham, Lynn, Dedham, and Menotomy were hidden everywhere, dug in, waiting for him to try for Boston.
Percy had his cannon at the head of his column where he could position them instantly to give cover for the column behind if needed. The officers in command were twisting in their saddles, watching the incessant musket fire continue to shred the ranks. Buchanan’s face was twisted in torment as red-coated infantrymen staggered and went down, and those who filled in the gaps buckled and fell.
He turned anxious eyes back to Percy, waiting for orders to stop and set the cannon and cover the column until they reached Menotomy, but the order never came.
“Do not stop,” Percy shouted. “Keep moving on through the town. It is deserted.”
Flanked by open fields on both sides of the road as it approached town, Buchanan spurred his mount to the near horse harnessed to his cannon and grabbed the bit and kicked his horse to a trot, jerking, pulling the harnessed team. The lieutenant in front of him could not control his mount in the wild confusion, and Buchanan came back on his reins and slowed his cannon to avoid running over the one ahead.
“Move,” he shouted to the white-faced lieutenant ahead of him.
The young officer jammed his horse into the near horse of the team pulling his cannon and made a wild lunge for the bit, but the horse shied and reared and came down with his right foreleg over the withers of the horse harnessed beside him. They went down in a tangle, and the cannon careened onto one wheel and would not settle.
Buchanan jammed his spurs home, and in four jumps his horse was beside those that were down. He leaped to the ground to grab the bits of the scrambling horses. In thirty seconds he had them separated and standing, and he led them twenty feet off the road and jerked the kingpin from the double tree and released the cannon. Then he slapped the horses on the rump with the reins, and they bolted away into the adjoining field.
Twenty seconds later Buchanan was back at his cannon and had the column moving forward once more, at a trot. They cleared the outskirts of the small town, and then they were at Cooper’s tavern, and suddenly, from nowhere, the town was filled with colonials, and the cannoneers and infantry directly behind them were looking into the muzzles of a thousand muskets.
It seemed the world was instantly filled with blasts from every place a man could hide, and once again the British regulars were sent reeling back in a mindless retreat into their own troops following behind. And once again, those behind continued marching to escape the hot fire from the two thousand militia now firing at near point-blank range from behind, and the British column began to collapse onto itself.
At the front, Buchanan saw what was happening. He stood in his stirrups and shouted, “Forward at the trot,” and he tried to lead the column through the ambush at a run but it was too late. On the second volley he felt the smashing hit above his left elbow and his arm dropped numb, useless, and he knew it was badly broken. Then his sergeant was beside him, trying to hold him in the saddle, and then the sergeant gasped and clutched his throat and fell backwards. Buchanan half fell, half dismounted to help him, and he saw that he was dead. He somehow remounted with the white-hot wires in his left arm burning, and something slammed into the right side of his head and the world went dark. He felt himself falling, and he reached with his right arm to hold his left tight to his body and tried to kick his feet free of the stirrups to keep from being dragged. Then the sounds and sights of war faded into black silence.
One hundred yards behind, Percy’s mouth dropped open in utter terror. He had made the same tragic mistake made by Smith, Pitcairn, and Laurie. None had believed the colonials could gather an army within hours, and to a man, none of them could believe they were now facing over four thousand colonials, each waiting for his chance to fire at the hated redcoats. In Menotomy, the fighting became savage, face to face, hand to hand, and the regulars found themselves swarmed by men who had no fear.
Chief among those was seventy-eight-year-old Sam Whittemore, who heard them coming and quickly cleaned and loaded his two pistols and his musket, and shoved his saber in his belt. When they reached his home he jerked the door open and stepped into the yard facing more than fifty regulars. He fired both pistols simultaneously, and two redcoats dropped. He threw the pistols aside and swept his musket from the doorjamb and fired, and a third regular dropped. He cast the musket aside and jerked his saber out and was advancing to meet them when a Brown Bess musket ball tore into his face, taking flesh and bone from the left side. Sam went down and the regulars ran over him, pausing only to bayonet him thirteen times, then ransack and set fire to his house. Half an hour later Sam regained consciousness, pulled himself into the half of his house that had not burned, cleaned and bound up his own wounds, and reloaded his two pistols and his musket and made ready for the next regulars that ventured into his yard.
In the midst of the heaviest fighting, Joseph Warren of the Committee of Safety and General William Heath, who had come from Boston to join the fight, stood in open sight of the British. Warren shook his fist at them as he shouted his defiance. A British marksman took careful aim and fired, and the big slug knocked the pin loose that was holding Warren’s hair. Warren did not miss a step as he continued to parade before them, waving his fist, encouraging the colonials, defying the British.
Colonel Smith called for Percy. “It’s happening all over again,” he said through the pain of a
leg torn by Parker’s musket ball. “In the name of heaven, keep the column moving. If we’re stopped here, we’ll never see another dawn. Take the road to Charlestown and stop there for the night. We’ll never make it through Cambridge to the longboats.”
Percy gave orders, but few of the regulars heeded or obeyed. The column began to fragment as the lead companies cleared Menotomy. Galloping to the front, Percy wheeled his gelding before the officers in the lead and shouted to them.
“You will regroup your men or stand for a court-martial, and you will take the road to Charlestown, where we will spend the night.”
Slowly the column began to regroup into some semblance of organization, and the men plodded on, with the sun reaching for the western rim of the world.
John and Tom worked their way past the place where the road turned south at Mystic and, with the Mystic River at their backs, once again reloaded and waited, with four hundred militiamen clustered about. They fired in the gathering dusk, and the orange flame leaped two feet from the muzzles of their muskets, and they were instantly on their feet moving farther south, reloading. They passed Winter Hill on their right, across the road, and then Prospect Hill, and they saw the orange muzzle blasts and heard the popping of militia muskets from the far side of the road and watched the British column take the volley and shuffle on, demoralized, decimated, beaten.
“They’re going into Charlestown,” Tom said as they trotted on.
“They’ll stay there tonight,” John replied. He looked ahead at the lights of Charlestown less than half a mile distant. The roads leading out of town were plugged with outbound citizens who had heard the battle for the last hour and knew the regulars were going to take refuge in town. Reports had trickled into town during the day—the colonials had mauled the regulars with an eighteen-mile ambush; the redcoats had taken the worst beating in North American history. The Charlestown citizenry feared re-prisals, and they did not want to be in town when the British arrived. They packed what they could in an hour and were leaving town in droves, by foot, horseback, carriage, wagon, cart.
John slowed. “I think it’s finished. They’re beaten. We can’t see to shoot in this light. Watch for anyone who got separated from their companies, ours and theirs.” He wiped his sleeve across his face and glanced at Tom and allowed himself a brief smile. “We made it.”
Their faces were both streaked from sweat and dirt and grime and gun smoke. Their clothing was filthy with caked mud from the river and stream crossings and with dirt from crawling on their bellies behind rock fences.
Tom grinned back at him, open and easy. “That was a long day, but—”
He sensed it and a premonition struck terror in his heart, and then he heard the faint click of a musket hammer coming to full cock somewhere behind them, and Tom was turning when John tensed and started around.
The crack of the Brown Bess and the heavy thud of the big ball striking and John’s grunt all came on top of each other, and John pitched forward onto his hands and knees as Tom wheeled around and peered into the deep dusk, balanced, ready. He saw the white crossed belts in the gloom and then three regulars running directly at him, and he understood that behind them somewhere was an officer mounted on a horse, and that they had gotten separated from their column in the wild fighting and the fading light, and that he and John had unknowingly walked between them and the road.
Tom saw the orange muzzle flame of a second musket, and the ball tugged at Tom’s shirt as the blast rolled past him. Tom fired and the lead regular buckled and went down. Tom threw down his musket and grabbed John’s and fired from the hip at the two running men, and the second one went down, finished. The third regular came sprinting to reach Tom with his bayonet before Tom could reload, and Tom measured powder into John’s musket barrel, rammed it home with the ramrod, left the ramrod in the barrel, primed the pan, slapped it shut, planted the butt of the gun in the hollow of his hip, levelled it, and cocked and pulled the trigger. The blast twisted Tom back a step and blew the ramrod halfway through the man, who fell at Tom’s feet, his eyes wide in surprise as he tried to move and then lay still.
The mounted officer, twenty-five yards behind the regulars, jerked his saber from its scabbard and rammed his spurs home and came thundering, hunched forward over the neck of his horse, saber held at full arm’s length, levelled at Tom.
Tom’s hand darted beneath his coat and his tomahawk was out. He danced to one side, waiting, gauging distance and speed, and when the officer was forty feet away Tom’s arm flashed back and then forward and the tomahawk leaped from his hand. It struck just above the place the belts crossed, and the officer recoiled, his saber fell into the grass, and he pitched headlong from his horse. The horse slowed as the officer hit the ground and rolled, and Tom stepped into its path and raised both hands. It threw back its head and set its front feet and then danced to one side, and Tom lunged and caught the dragging reins and held on while the horse fought, jerking. Tom spoke low to it, “Huuuuu, huuuu,” and slowly the horse came to a trembling, nervous stop, eyes wide and white rimmed with fear. Tom spun and led it running back to John, who was still on his hands and knees, head down, gasping, and Tom saw the great gout of blood on John’s shirt below his right shoulder blade. Tom fought back the sick panic as he dropped to his knees beside John, still holding the reins with his left hand while he reached under John with his right to support him and exclaimed, “Can you hear me?”
John nodded weakly and said, “Yes,” and Tom choked back his rage. “Can you stand up?” John tried to rise and couldn’t, and Tom felt a sob surge from his chest and he cried out in anguish, “John, don’t you die on me, don’t you die!” He quickly thrust his arm through the looped reins and reached to lift John to his feet.
“I’m putting you on a horse,” he told John, and John raised his head and Tom lifted him onto the horse behind the saddle, then threw the reins over the horse’s head and mounted the saddle seat. He reached behind and found John’s hands and brought them around his own midsection and grasped them with his right hand, and with John leaning his weight against his back, Tom turned the horse towards the lights of Charlestown and kicked it to a high gallop.
He held the horse to a gallop up the middle of the street through Charlestown and people gave way, and he did not stop until he reached the docks on the shore of the Charles River. He leaped from the lathered, exhausted animal, caught John over his shoulder, ran to the first rowboat tied to a wharf, and laid John in the bottom. He ignored the British gunboat Somerset and the shouts from her crew as he rowed beneath her stern, directly to the north shore of the Boston Peninsula. He caught up the first horse he found and mounted it with John behind and raised the horse to a clattering gallop through the dark cobblestone streets of Boston, ignoring the challenges of British regulars as he stampeded through their patrols, down past the South Church, and hauled the winded horse to a stop at the gate of the Dunson home. He dismounted and lowered John from the horse, then looped John’s arm over his shoulders and slid his arm about John’s waist and half carried him to the front door and hammered with the flat of his hand.
______
Notes
The battle that ensued after the colonial minutemen and militia drove the British from Concord has been termed the “longest continuing ambush” in the history of North America. Within one and one-half miles of Concord, colonial forces ambushed the British column at Meriam’s Corner, and thereafter at Hardy’s Hill, the Bloody Angle, Parker’s Revenge, Fiske Hill, Lexington, and Menotomy. The term “Parker’s Revenge” came into being after Captain John Parker, informed that the British column was retreating from Concord and was on its way to Lexington, marshalled his command that had met the British on the Lexington Green that same morning, and marched his men more than two miles to where he personally laid an ambush that devastated the British column. By that time the British force was a decimated, reeling army in full, panic-ridden retreat. Brigadier Percy did appear with his cannon and did delay the col
onials for a short time, and probably saved the British column from total annihilation. However, the delay caused by the British cannon allowed the colonials to circle the guns and lay further ambushes, as far as Menotomy. The events described in chapter 15 are accurate, save for the activities of the fictional characters John Dunson and his son Matthew and Tom Sievers. (See French, The Day of Concord and Lexington, pp. 193–264.)
Wednesday, April 19, 1775
Chapter XVI
* * *
Head bowed in somber and foreboding thoughts, Margaret sat at the dining table staring out the window into the gloom of deep dusk gathering in the street. She had not drawn the shades, nor had she yet lighted the evening lamps. Since morning, when the British column had marched south with the cannon, Margaret had become quiet, then silent, and Brigitte saw the ter-rible apprehension growing. Half a dozen times in the late afternoon mounted criers had ridden horses through the streets, shouting the latest news of the battle. Lexington—Concord—the British in full retreat—heavy fighting—cannon—they will be back in Boston during the night. And each time Margaret’s hands had trembled and she had busied herself with housework to hide her terror from the children. After the supper dishes were finished Brigitte had quietly taken the children to her bedroom to read to them, to give Margaret time to herself.
Margaret slowly worked her hands together, one with the other, struggling to keep control of her fears. They will come back. God hears the prayers of those who love him, and he answers. He will not let harm come to them. He will not. He will not.
She raised her eyes to again peer out the front window, and there were more buggies and wagons in the streets than before, working their way south, leaving the city in fear of what was to come.
Suddenly Margaret’s hands stopped and she straightened in her chair, and then she bolted to her feet and her chair skittered backwards, scraping on the hardwood floor. For a fleeting moment she saw it in her mind—John in a field, on his hands and knees, unable to rise—and then it was gone. Her face turned white, and for a time she could not breathe as the image burned into her heart.