Bunker Hill

by Howard Fast

  Prescott, without so much as a by your leave, pushed the militia officers aside and leaned over the table, facing Ward, who looked up in surprise at the appearance of the colonel.

  “Prescott? I thought you were at the redoubt?”

  His voice as cold as ice, Prescott said, “Will you clear the tent, General? I must talk to you. Just the two of us, alone.”

  The two men were the same age, forty-eight years: Prescott a tall, broad-shouldered, powerful, and athletic man; Artemus Ward, small, paunchy, prematurely aged, with the precise, didactic manner of a schoolmaster.

  “Why, sir?”

  Prescott leaned over and whispered, “Concerning Johnny Lovell.”

  Troubled, Ward stared at him.

  “Did he ever find you?” Prescott asked softly.

  “When, sir? Do you mean today?”

  “I mean today.”

  “No, not today.”

  “Then let me inform you of his intelligence,” Prescott said coldly. “The entire British army of more than three thousand disciplined regulars is at this moment landing in the meadows at the foot of Breed’s Hill. They will launch a frontal attack upon Breed’s Hill and the redoubt within three or four hours from now. We cannot defend either the redoubt or the fortifications we have been trying to build between the redoubt and Johnny Stark’s riflemen, who hold the left flank down to the Mystic River. The few men we have are exhausted.”

  Ward protested. “General Putnam says the attack will come on Bunker Hill.”

  “He’s wrong.”

  “How do I know he’s wrong?”

  “General Ward,” Prescott said deliberately, “you know me a little. Then believe me. I will not allow Johnny Stark and his riflemen, and Tom Knowlton and his Connecticut men, and the men who built the redoubt and are too tired to stand on their feet to die on that hill. And die they will unless you give me a thousand Massachusetts men to defend Breed’s Hill. They’re sitting on their asses outside this tent.”

  “They are here to defend the Charlestown Neck.”

  “General, the British will not attack the neck. They have no men left to attack the neck. Their entire army is committed to the attack on Breed’s Hill.”

  “So you say,” Ward replied defensively. “Putnam says otherwise. If Johnny Lovell had this intelligence, why didn’t he come here?”

  “I don’t know that,” Prescott said, “and I don’t give a tinker’s fart for what Putnam said. The Committee of Safety gave me the command and the responsibility for the Charlestown peninsula. We have more damn generals and major generals than we know what to do with, but the command is mine, and I don’t give a damn who calls himself a general.”

  “I sent four brigades to Bunker Hill. They are there right now, under the command of General Putnam.” Ward’s voice sank to a whimper.

  “No, sir. I need a thousand men on Breed’s Hill, and you will either order them to follow me now, immediately, or so help me God, I will put you under arrest and order them myself.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Prescott put his hand on the butt of his pistol. “Don’t try me, General Ward! Don’t try me.”

  A long moment stretched itself between the two men, and then Ward bowed his head. “Very well, Colonel Prescott. Be it upon your head. You can have the men.”

  “Be it on my head,” Prescott said.

  JUNE 17, 11:00 A.M.

  At eleven o’clock, on the morning of June 17th, 1775, Elizabeth Loring and Prudence Hallsbury stepped out of a lighter that had taken them to the side of Vindicator, a two-masted mail and supply ship attached to the British fleet in Boston Harbor. They were lifted to the deck very carefully, the winch under the direction of Lt. Horace Threadberry. Lieutenant Threadberry, second in command of Vindicator, twenty-three years old, had been torn between his desire to enter Vindicator into the bombardment of Breed’s Hill and his equally pressing desire to entertain the already notorious Mrs. Joshua Loring and the somewhat less notorious Prudence Hallsbury. Vindicator carried ten guns, six-pounders, which might be of some use against a pirate but were of no consequence in this one-sided bombardment. Orders from Admiral Graves had advised Capt. Alex Woodly not to fire his guns and to take up a position between the frigate Somerset and the frigate Falcon, but at least three-quarters of a mile from the Charlestown shore, which would place it out of any possible cannon shot from the redoubt. Thus, Vindicator was in an excellent position from which to observe both the cannonading and the ascent of the hill which would follow. The ship was placed there in response to the pleading of Mrs. Loring, who argued that she had never seen a battle. Since Sir William had assured her that this battle would end the rebellion, she would probably never have an opportunity to witness another one. At this point in his romance, General Howe found it almost impossible to refuse any request of Mrs. Loring’s, reasonable or unreasonable, and he instructed Admiral Graves to make Vindicator available.

  Captain Woodly was a thin-lipped, moralistic man who had no tolerance for the loose and amiable ethics of the ruling class. He had worked and fought his way up from bosun to captain, a rare achievement in the British navy. He came from a Methodist background and a poor farm family. When he was handed Admiral Graves’s instructions, he decided that he would remain in his cabin and have no intercourse with, as he thought of it, two notorious sluts. He handed the whole business over to Lieutenant Threadberry, much to the delight of the latter.

  General Howe’s infatuation with Mrs. Loring was already the delicious gossip of the fleet, and the opportunity of being with these two fascinating women was an answer to the lieutenant’s own sexual fantasies. He had rigged an awning over a table and chairs on the stern deck of the ship and had warned the crew against any show of impertinence, whether by remarks or snickers. He had also provided tea and a tin box of sweets out of his own store, and he looked forward to being an enviable source of gossip on his return to London.

  He welcomed the two women personally, in no way disappointed by their holiday costume and their beauty, deciding that neither Sir William nor General Clinton were to be faulted for their choice of companionship. He had assigned Midshipman Andrews, sixteen years old, to see to the service.

  The ladies were seated with a clear view of the Charlestown docks, the long slope of Breed’s Hill, and the redoubt and the entrenchments that stretched away on either side of the fortification. Lieutenant Threadberry then took it upon himself to explain the schematic of the battle. “Those are the grenadiers. You can see them lining up on the shore, there with their tall hats.” Indeed, the shore was no more than half a mile away. “General Howe’s own command. He will lead them himself, from what I hear. They are just about the jolly best troops on earth, you know.”

  Mrs. Loring clapped her hands. “Hear! Hear!”

  Gripped by the excitement of the moment, Prudence wondered whether she could bear to watch a real battle. “But some of them will die. Isn’t that what happens?”

  “Oh, some do, some do,” Threadberry agreed. “It’s in the nature of a battle. On the other hand, who knows? You see, my dear ladies, the grenadiers are very special. Each man is chosen for his height and bearing, and with their great shakos, they are seven feet tall. Oh, believe me, my dear ladies, there is nothing more fearsome than a charge of the grenadiers. Most likely, when the rebels see them coming, they will cut and run. From all I hear, the rebels dread our bayonets. And those others, over to the left, they are the light infantry, and still farther to the left, the marines. When they have all of them landed and formed their ranks, they will march up the hill, and that will be the end of these presumptuous colonials. With due apology, I recognize the difference between a loyalist and a rebel.”

  “Please, Lieutenant,” Mrs. Loring said generously, “no apologies are necessary. Your own contempt for the rebels surely does not exceed mine.”

  “But there is no one up there to fight you,” Prudence said.

  Threadberry handed her his spyglass, and she peered thr
ough it. “Yes, I can see the fort they have built. You call it a redoubt, don’t you?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “But no one is there. Oh, yes; I see one man, and there’s another.” She handed the spyglass to Mrs. Loring. “Do look through it, Betsy. It makes one feel that one is up there. Isn’t it wonderful how close we are!”

  She turned to Threadberry. “I can’t see anyone there on the hill. I’m sure they have all run away. I know I would, with those terrible grenadiers of Sir William ready to come and do such awful things.”

  Threadberry laughed tolerantly. “Oh, no, ma’am. I assure you, they have not run away. Not yet. But with our cannonading, they keep their heads down.”

  “I see three of them now, standing on the redoubt,” Mrs. Loring said. “Why can’t you hit them, with all those cannon thundering away? I can see where the shots land, all along the hill, and those men just stand there as if all your cannon don’t bother them at all.”

  “Well, ma’am, you can’t aim a cannon the way you aim a musket. We count on the guns to frighten more than to kill.”

  Mrs. Loring put down the spyglass and clapped her hands. “Splendid!” she cried. “That was right in front of them. They’re gone now.”

  Midshipman Andrews arrived with the teapot, feasting his eyes on Mrs. Loring as he asked whether he might pour the tea? After he had done so and had dared to hold forth on the virtues of the sweets, he still lingered, unable to take his eyes from the abundant mounds of Mrs. Loring’s bosom. Threadberry said, “That will be all, Anderson.”

  “What a darling lad,” Prudence said. “How old is he?”

  “About sixteen years, I suppose.”

  “Very manly for his age,” Mrs. Loring observed, not unaware of Midshipman Andrews fairly salivating as he looked at her. A healthy, handsome young man like that, she thought. How much she could teach him!

  Shortly after 11:00 a.m., Dr. Warren returned to the redoubt, bringing with him two pigskins of water attached to the pommel of his saddle and pen and ink and a sheaf of paper in a box behind his saddle. Gridley almost embraced him. “God bless you, Doctor. We were dying of our thirst.” The forty-odd men who had been digging all morning under the burning sun saw the water bags, dropped their spades, and ran toward Warren’s horse. “Easy, easy,” Gridley said. “There’s enough for everyone, laddies. Make two lines, and I’ll trust you to take one swig and give way. We have a long, hot day ahead of us.”

  “God’s blessing on you, Doctor!” came from the men.

  Feversham, Bones, and Gonzales joined the group, refusing water. “We’ll wait our turn,” Feversham said.

  “It’s all right,” Warren told them. “Prescott’s on his way, and he’ll have a thousand Massachusetts militia. Good men. We squeezed that out of Ward. Putnam still believes the main attack will be at Bunker Hill.”

  “That’s Putnam,” Gridley said. “He’s a stonehead. He makes up his mind, and that’s the way it is. Did you tell him what’s happening down there on the beach? Why doesn’t he ride up and see? What on God’s earth is wrong with him?”

  “Born stubborn,” Warren said. “Any more casualties?”

  “Just one poor devil with his head blown off.”

  “Thank God.”

  “They keep their heads down now. Those ships in the bay have thrown at least five hundred balls at us. They mounted guns on Copp’s Hill, and they’re firing from there. They’re as stubborn and brainless as Putnam.”

  “I think we’ll find something that fits your cannon,” Warren said. “They’ve been searching.”

  “We don’t need it,” Gridley said. “We’ve loaded the guns with pebbles. That’s better than balls. If we get one round off when they attack, it will mean something.”

  Feversham drew Warren aside. “How do you feel?”

  “Better.”

  Feversham touched his brow. “The fever’s broken. It can happen that way. You put the body to it. I’ve seen that before.”

  Warren smiled. “I’m all right, Feversham. It was ridiculous making me the commander in chief. I brought my fowling piece, and I’ll fight under Gridley. He has more knowledge of this business in his little finger than I have in my head. I also brought my writing box, if you want to make a letter to your wife?”

  “I would like that,” Feversham said. Warren handed him the box. “You don’t want it now?” “Later, perhaps,” Warren said. “If we beat them off, I’ll make notes. There ought to be a record of what happens here.”

  In the redoubt, Feversham spread a sheet of paper, using the box and the parapet as a desk and kneeling in front of it. The box contained an ink bottle and two wooden pens, fitted with copper points, a new departure from the quills commonly used.

  “My dear and beloved Alice,” he wrote.

  A great deal has happened since I last wrote to you from the Hunt house in Watertown, and perhaps someone has already delivered my letter to Ridgefield. I shall keep this letter with me until today is over, and if I send it off to you tomorrow, you will know that I have lived through the worst that might befall me. Now it is still before noon on the seventeenth of June, and I am writing this in the redoubt on Breed’s Hill, across the Charles River from British-occupied Boston. I will attempt to be not too dismal about our situation here, since you frequently complain about my lack of humor. I say this not as criticism but as agreement, since a long life in the company of war and death turns a man moody or cynical. We have discussed this uprising of the Massachusetts people at length, and you helped to convince me that an opportunity for a sane society exists here in the colonies. However, if I chose humor, I could find ample substance for such an attitude, since we have no shortage of fools and clowns.

  The other day, Dr. Joseph Warren, a wonderful and remarkable man, gathered together what doctors (sic, leeches and barbers included) are available for a move to defend the Charlestown peninsula. They were fourteen in number, but now they have shrunk to four—myself, Dr. Warren, and two others—one a Welshman, appropriately named Bones, and a Jew, Gonzales by name, out of Providence in Rhode Island, where I am told there is a considerable synagogue of Jews. He is, incidentally, the first Jew I have ever spoken to, a curious gentleman with the manners of a Spanish grandee. So now there are four of us to minister to an army of almost a thousand men who are waiting to engage in a battle with three times that number of the best British regulars that exist, among them the famous grenadiers of Gen. Sir William Howe. If that sounds utterly insane, it is no less insane than everything else about our situation here on Breed’s Hill in Charlestown.

  Let me attempt a small bit of humor. We have intelligence from an informant that General Howe, a person most honored and distinguished in British society and commander in chief of all the British forces here in Boston Harbor, has fallen madly in love with a woman, name of Mrs. Joshua Loring, a lady of exuberant lust and small reputation. He has taken her into his home and heart as a constant companion, having bought off her husband with a commission in the British forces, while Gen. Henry Clinton dallies with the wife of a prominent Church of England priest. I know you enjoy a juicy bit of gossip, and I am sure this will provide entertainment for the ladies of Ridgefield.

  For the past hour, the two excellent surgeons who have committed themselves and myself have been assembling bandages and dressings and tourniquets. We have been trying to enlist stretcher-bearers from among the thin line of men and boys who are at this line of defense. Since I wrote to you that perhaps thirteen or fourteen thousand men have formed an army surrounding Boston, you are probably puzzled as to why we face the British with a comparative handful. Well, there has been an ongoing argument among the leadership of our army, if one could call it that, on whether or not to defend Charlestown. No one is really sure who commands us. The Committee of Safety, who are supposed to be responsible for the conduct of the war, have appointed Dr. Warren as the supreme commander, a title he rejects; and he has stated forthrightly that he will fight as an ordinary under Col. R
ichard Gridley, who, along with Dr. Warren, is responsible for building, in a few hours, a remarkable earthworks fortification.

  The nominal commander of our forces is a gentleman by the name of Artemus Ward, a person whose indecisiveness and ill health makes him as little fitted for his position as I would be. I thank God that we do have two most remarkable men who have taken over the fortification and defense of this high point of ground, which is central to our defense of Charlestown. One is Col. William Prescott, who has been charged with the defense of the high ground. He is an extraordinary man—tall, handsome, gentle in his orders—and as much as I could see, beloved by the men. The other is Colonel Gridley, who is in command of the redoubt, the fortification of which I spoke. Like Prescott, he is calmly in charge, soft-voiced, and not given to excitement. These two men have won my profound respect. I must add that perhaps a thousand paces behind our position here, there is another high point called Bunker Hill. That position is being held by Gen. Israel Putnam, who clings to the belief that the British will attack his position instead of ours—in spite of the fact that we can see the British forming for an attack upon our position even as I write. He is a stubborn man who smarts because Colonel Prescott rather than himself has been given command of the defense of Charlestown.

  Let me explain that the peninsula which we are to defend is about a mile in length and somewhat less than a mile in width, shaped like a humpback whale, with the tail of the whale connecting it with the mainland. Charlestown itself is a tiny village of a few dozen houses at the foot of the hill where we are. If the British attack us head-on, which we think they mean to do, and if we are properly reinforced, we have a small chance of beating back their attack. I write this to you in detail because I must face the fact of my decision to be here. There is a very large possibility that I will be killed or captured, and I leave it to the honor of my captors to see that this letter reaches you. I try not to be pessimistic, but the situation here does not inspire confidence. At least half of the men here are not men at all, but boys of sixteen and seventeen years, wide-eyed, woefully innocent, and very afraid. Overnight, at least a third of them have disappeared, run away, gone home. Those still here are absolutely exhausted from building the redoubt and digging a barricade, yesterday was a day of great confusion—