Bunker Hill

by Howard Fast

  * * *

  1. Title Page

  2. Copyright

  3. Contents

  4. BUNKER HILL: AN INTRODUCTION

  5. Intro

  6. The Major Characters

  7. Language Warning

  8. Bunker Hill Map

  9. June 12

  10. June 13

  11. June 14

  12. June 15

  13. June 16

  14. June 17

  15. June 17, 9:00 A.M.

  16. June 17, 11:00 A.M.

  17. June 17, 2:00 P.M.

  18. June 17, 4:00 P.M.

  19. June 17, 5:00 P.M.

  20. June 18, 8:00 A.M.

  21. Afterword

  22. Reading Group Guide

  23. Back Cover

  bunker hill

  For my wonderful wife, Bette Fast

  Copyright © 1977, 2000 by Howard Fast. Introduction copyright © 2000 by Howard Fast. Copyright renewed. Reprinted by arrangement with the Howard Fast Literary Trust. Cover and internal design © 2010 by Sourcebooks, Inc. Cover design by Kirk DouPonce/Dog Earred Design Cover images © Kirk DouPonce

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900 Fax: (630) 961-2168 www.sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress CIP data is on file with the publisher.

  Printed and bound in the United States of America. VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Bunker Hill: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v The Major Characters................................ ix

  June 12 ...........................................1 June 13 ...........................................3 June 14 ..........................................39 June 15 ..........................................65 June 16 ..........................................79 June 17 ..........................................95 June 17, 9:00 A.M.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 June 17, 11:00 A.M.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 June 17, 2:00 P.M.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 June 17, 4:00 P.M.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 June 17, 5:00 P.M.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 June 18, 8:00 A.M.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

  Afterword .......................................221

  BUNKER HILL: AN INTRODUCTION

  Very little history enters the history books as it really happened; and in the thousand or so legends and stories of what happened on Bunker Hill during a week in June of 1775, there are only shadows of the truth. For one thing, the battle known as “Bunker Hill” did not happen on Bunker Hill. It took place on Breed’s Hill, half a mile away. But if I called it Breed’s Hill, no one would connect it with the incident in our history books.

  Also, the commanders of the American forces (this being before Washington took command), either through stupidity or cowardice, refused to allow any of the fifteen thousand American troops in Boston to support the handful of men and boys who were defending Breed’s Hill.

  All that is remembered is an American officer saying, “Hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes,” probably an invention by the same writer who described it as a great victory.

  It was no victory. In terms of the small number of Americans involved, it was a defeat—perhaps the most heartbreaking defeat of the coming war. The historians called it a victory because of the terrible damage this handful of American volunteers inflicted on the best troops in the British empire. It was also the first evidence of the superiority of riflemen over men with muskets under certain conditions.

  Above all, in this reconstruction of history, I have attempted to show the brutal horror of war, even when men fight for what they believe to be a holy cause. It also says a good deal about the military physicians of the time, something that has been ignored in most other accounts.

  Like any book of fiction, it can only try to give the reader an approximation of what had really occurred. Howard Fast March 2001

  On April 19, 1775, the first military encounter of the American Revolution took place on the village green at Lexington, Massachusetts, where a group of armed farmers contested the right of passage of British troops. The British regulars were on their way to Concord, a few miles distant, to destroy military supplies the Americans had stored there. A second battle took place at Concord, followed by a running fight as the British retreated to Boston, which they had occupied. For the next six weeks, American armed civilians and militiamen crowded the roads to Boston, until presently a loosely organized army of about fourteen thousand men held Boston under close siege.

  THE MAJOR CHARACTERS

  The Committee of Safety

  Organized in October of 1774, by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. This was a leadership group for the anticipated military conflict.

  Dr. Joseph Warren (later appointed commander in chief of the militia) John Hancock Dr. Benjamin Church Richard Devins Benjamin White Artemus Ward (later general of the army) Abraham Watson Joseph Palmer Azor Orne John Pigeon Thomas Gardner William Heath (Not all of the above play a part in the story)

  The American Officers

  General Israel Putnam, commander of the Connecticut militia. Colonel William Prescott, in command at Breed’s Hill. Major Thomas Knowlton, commanding the center at Breed’s Hill. Colonel John Stark, frontiersman, hero of the French and Indian

  War, commander of the New Hampshire Riflemen, in command of the left flank at Breed’s Hill. Major General Richard Gridley, engineer, in command of the redoubt. Captain Abel Nutting, forward post at Breed’s Hill. Colonel Moses Little, in command of the Ipswich volunteers.

  The American Physicians

  Dr. Joseph Warren Dr. Albert Bones Dr. Joseph Gonzales Dr. Evan Feversham

  The British Officers

  General Thomas Gage, nominally in command of the British forces in Boston, but in fact superseded by William Howe. General Sir William Howe, darling of the British Crown, asserting command over Thomas Gage. Major General Sir Henry Clinton Major General John Burgoyne Admiral Thomas Graves Major John Pitcairn Brigadier General Robert Pigot Captain Joshua Loring Major Leeroy Atkins

  The Ladies

  Prudence Hallsbury Elizabeth Loring, wife of Joshua Loring.

  For those readers who may express surprise at the coarse language used in some of the dialogue, may I explain that the expressions used here were common in the eighteenth century, and are to be found in any number of letters and manuscripts I have examined. I use them to heighten the reality of what has been bowdlerized in most writing of the time.

  JUNE 12

  Merton knew the rat; the rat knew Merton. For five months they had lived together in the stinking hold of the frigate, and during those five months they had measured and developed a healthy respect for each other. Merton had a commendable and profound knowledge of rats. They had shared living space with him since his memory began, on land as well as at sea. And the rat had also developed a commendable knowledge of Merto
n. The rat was very large, and Merton was small, only five feet two inches in height; they were both intelligent, ingenious, and agile. Merton simply had the advantage in being a man. As a man, he was determined to kill the rat. The rat, being a rat, was only determined to remain alive.

  The rat was gray, with a white face and white paws, which identified him specifically and was finally his undoing, since it turned Merton’s animosity against all rats into a single direction. Merton devised traps, poisoned bait, and laid ambushes, and all of it failed. Finally, on the twelfth of June, in the year 1775, luck and the mysterious workings of doom coincided. The rat ventured onto the gun deck. Merton happened to have a marlinspike in his hand. He let go with the spike and caught the rat squarely and stunned him, which gave Merton a chance to bash in the rat’s head.

  Dancing a small dance of victory, Merton held up the enormous rat for his shipmates to see. “Now if this ain’t the biggest bleeding son of a bitch that ever lived, then I am a dick’s udder! I said I’d get the bastard, and I got him!”

  “You bloody well got him,” they agreed.

  “Weighs three pounds if he weighs an ounce.”

  “And what are you going to do with the little bastard, Merton?”

  Merton smirked and stared from face to face at his grinning shipmates. “Now what am I going to do with him? And wouldn’t you like to know?” Out with his knife. He gutted the animal, tore out its entrails, and flung them over the side into the water of Boston Harbor. Then, quickly and expertly, disregarding the pool of blood at his feet, he beheaded the rat and skinned it.

  “Looks like a bleeding hare, don’t it?”

  “Looks like a rat to me.”

  “Cook it up and eat it, Merton. It’ll taste better than rotten salt pork.”

  Merton wiped his knife on his pants and grinned.

  “And get a bucket of water and wash down the deck,” said the bosun.

  “Ah, that I will, bosun. That I will.”

  His mates lost interest and wandered away. After he had washed down the deck, Merton took the rat’s body into the galley. The cooks were at the bow fishing, the galley was empty except for a scullery boy, and Merton told him to keep a still tongue in his head. Grinning and chuckling, the scullery boy watched Merton butcher the rat and drop it into a pot of soup that was simmering for the officers’ mess.

  Few enough liked Merton. He had a mean, tortured, shrunken soul, and he lived a mean, tortured, shrunken life. The scullery boy hated him, and the captain’s coxswain hated him, but since the scullery boy hated the captain as well, he waited until after the captain’s dinner before he informed the coxswain of Merton’s addition to the soup pot.

  The coxswain communicated the news to the first officer, and Merton was duly reprimanded. He was bound to a mast to receive fifty lashes across his skinny back.

  JUNE 13

  The party of four men and two women had lunched with the captain of Somerset, a splendid frigate of sixty-four guns, and now they were on their way to the boat that would row them back to Boston when they paused to note the preparations for Merton’s flogging. The first officer, bidding farewells for the captain, who was engaged elsewhere, would have hurried them by; but the tallest of the four, Sir William Howe, stayed him and remarked that this was the business of the rat—was it not?

  “Case of one rat being punished for another rat—nothing the ladies should see.”

  “We ate rats in Germany,” Sir Henry Clinton said, and one of the ladies, Patience Carter, a pretty widow of thirty or so, squealed with horror. Miss Ambleton, her companion, a plump, dull young lady, reacted not at all. “Not bad, either, done properly,” Clinton went on. He knew he was being nasty and that it emerged out of his petulance with the two ladies. Childish behavior for a man of forty-five who was wretchedly lonely and wanted to be in love, or what went for love or at least a pretense of love that would allow him to be amorous with a modicum of passion. The two ladies were dull and stupid and unattractive.

  “Nothing the ladies should see,” the first officer repeated.

  A watch of twenty-two seamen was drawn up on the deck of the frigate to observe. There were two drummer boys and a piper. A large, fat, and brawny seaman, stripped to the waist, fondled a heavy bull-hide whip, and bound to the mast was Seaman Merton, no bigger than a child and as skinny as a plucked chicken. And over all, the warm and gentle June sun and a sky of pure blue.

  Gen. Thomas Gage, fifty-four, by one year the eldest of the party of four and nominally the commander of the British forces in the port of Boston, served as host to the ladies and was also somewhat embarrassed by the situation. He was a rather simple-minded man, slow in his perceptions, yet he felt that fifty lashes on the back of a skinny, undersized British seaman was not a sight and a tale that should be carried back to the town.

  “Suppose we go now, gentlemen,” he said to the others.

  “Curious situation,” Sir William observed. “Rat stew.”

  “Soup, sir,” said the first officer.

  “Tell you what,” said the fourth man in the party, Gen. John Burgoyne—Gentleman Johnny, as they knew him—tall, slender, handsome, meticulously attired, a man who lived secretively inside himself, well hidden by his reputation as the gayest of blades, the most gallant gambler. He would bet on anything, and you make the odds. “Tell you what,” he said. “A fiver says he can’t live through fifty lashes. What about it, Clinton?”

  Clinton frowned in distaste. Sir William Howe said, “Give me ten to five.”

  “Little faith in His Majesty’s seaman.”

  “For heaven’s sake,” General Gage said, beginning a protest. Then he shook his head and asked the first officer to see the ladies to shore. Clinton noticed that they went reluctantly. He would have gone with them, but he could stand their company no longer. Anyway, he was curious.

  “All right, Sir William,” Burgoyne agreed. “A tenner to your five. Trouble is your bloody army background. If your brother were here, he would stand up for the guts and tenacity of an old seadog.”

  “Old seadog,” Clinton muttered. “That skinny little bastard’s no more than twenty years.”

  “Your humanity’s admirable,” Howe said. “I share your compassion, Sir Henry, but a ship’s a ship. Discipline’s discipline.

  You don’t want to double that bet?” he asked Burgoyne.

  “You’re on.”

  The drums rolled, and the first lash fell, curling around Merton’s back and leaving a red welt on the white flesh.

  “Creative little bugger,” said Burgoyne. “Imagine—a rat in the officers’ soup.”

  The second lash, and then the third and the fourth and the fifth. A pattern of red lines appeared on the bony little back. At the tenth lash, Merton began to scream. At twenty-two lashes, he stopped screaming. At thirty lashes, the pattern of red lines disappeared from his back; it was a red, bubbling froth of meat, and he had lost consciousness. At forty-two lashes, the second officer signaled for the flogging to stop. He went over to Merton, lifted the seaman’s head and then an eyelid.

  “Cut him down. He’s dead,” the second officer said.

  “Heart gave out,” Howe said, accepting defeat. “Never know about a man’s heart.”

  “Could we go now, gentlemen?” Clinton asked, an edge of anger and disgust in his voice.

  When they were in the ship’s boat and being rowed to shore, Gage pointed out that it was precisely such an incident as they had just witnessed that produced rage and resentment in the taverns and meeting places of Boston.

  Burgoyne disagreed. “They are a stinking, narrow lot,” he said. “In this time of enlightenment and understanding, they burn witches.”

  “Enlightenment and understanding,” Clinton reflected.

  “They have stopped burning witches,” Howe said.

  “Recently.”

  “I don’t think they give two damns about a seaman’s punishment,” Howe continued. “Use it for agitation—no doubt. I wouldn’t put it be
yond Sam Adams and his crowd. But as far as

  compassion is concerned—pah!”

  “We have compassion,” said Sir Henry Clinton.

  “The trouble with you, Clinton, is that you’re a bloody Continental yourself. Too much time in America.”

  Clinton shook his head and remained silent. He had closed his eyes and given over his body to the sway of the boat. He felt sick and empty and dirty, and he tried to comfort himself by pretending that the salt spray in his face was an anointment of some sort, some holy liquid whose secret God shared with Britain, as in the past he had shared it with other nations that made the sea their wall and salvation. Merton was a single skinny little cockney whose life or death made no difference whatsoever, and this was not the first time, not even the fiftieth time, Clinton had seen a man flogged and often enough flogged to death.

  Gage, on the other hand, was more deeply troubled. He had lived twenty years in America, married the daughter of a wealthy Jersey landowner, and had come to think of himself, at least in part, as a colonial. Here was his home, and here he had a wide circle of friends, Tories most of them, but enough of the Puritan bent to have adopted some of their egalitarian notions. He had fought alongside the Americans during Braddock’s campaign, and he had more respect for their fighting ability than either Howe or Burgoyne. He knew that the story of the whipping of Seaman Merton would soon be all over Boston, and he could picture Presbyterian and Congregational clerics busily scribbling sermons on the subject of British brutality and disregard for human life, while Sam Adams applied himself to the publication of another fiery pamphlet.