by Howard Fast
“Leave that to Captain Loring. The little swine’s our jailer now, and if he can find a surgeon in Boston, let him tend them. We can’t spare a surgeon. What is our toll, Pigot? Do you have any kind of a count?”
“Not yet. I’ll make a guess. Almost three hundred dead and perhaps a thousand wounded, most badly. You don’t live with a bullet in the gut. We’ve taken almost fifty percent casualties.”
Howe closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. “The grenadiers?” he whispered.
“Seven of them survived unwounded.”
“I wonder,” Howe said, almost to himself, “has there ever been a battle like this?”
“It’s a victory,” Clinton said flatly.
Burgoyne joined them and said, “I’ll write the report. They don’t count the dead in London. They’ll have torchlight parades.” And to Clinton, half-mockingly: “Sir Henry, you’ll be Lord Henry before your knighthood arrives.”
“Go to hell,” Clinton said.
“Get on with it,” Sir William told them harshly. “I want the wounded out of here before dark.”
Colonel Prescott and General Putnam organized a defense line across the Charlestown Neck, about two hundred yards from the British line. Like the British, Prescott ordered the single cannon available to be loaded with grape to face the enemy. But on neither side was there any plan or desire to attack. The battle was over. The British held Charlestown peninsula, and Prescott’s feeling was: Good riddance and be damned!
Prescott’s body cried out for rest, but he had one more task before this day was over. He found his horse, thanked the young militiaman who had taken the responsibility for the officers’ horses, and rode to Clement House on Willis Creek, where, he had been told, the Committee of Safety was meeting. Prescott stormed into the holding room of Clement House, where he found Artemus Ward seated at a table with Dr. Benjamin Church and Thomas Gardner, maps spread out in front of them, and a young clerk at the end of the table.
They all looked up in astonishment at the appearance of Prescott, the big man covered with blood and dirt, his shirt hanging in shreds, three days’ growth of beard on his face. He stalked over to the table, leaned across it, grabbed Artemus Ward by his jabot, and snarled, “You filthy, scabrous bastard. I ought to kill you.”
“Let go of me, sir.” Ward’s voice was a squeak of anger mixed with fear. “How dare you.”
Prescott flung Ward back in his seat.
“What is the meaning of this?” Gardner cried. “Have you lost your senses, Colonel Prescott?”
“Come to them, come to them!” And to Ward: “Why did you do it, you lousy wretch? Who paid you? What price did you get for our blood? Three hundred of the best men in this army—men whose boots you’re not fit to lick—are dead on Breed’s Hill. We pleaded for help, and you let us die.”
“Get hold of yourself, sir,” Dr. Church said. “You are talking to your commanding general.”
“You fuckin’ little toad!” Prescott snarled, turning on Church. “Sitting here on your ass while my men bleed to death! Get out of here and do your duty before I kill you. Out!” He dragged Church from his chair and flung him across the room. Church fought for his footing and then fled through the door.
“Oh, this is unseemly, sir,” Gardner cried.
“I had to think of my army,” Ward pleaded, cowed now. “My army came first. Supposed the British had attacked us at Roxbury? What then?”
“You dare to say that to me. The whole damned British army was there on Breed’s Hill. And you dare to plead the defense of Roxbury. Well, sir, I am not finished with you. Be thankful that I don’t draw my pistol and kill you where you sit. More will be said on this subject.”
“I am your superior officer,” Ward wailed.
“You are shit, sir,” Prescott told him, and then Prescott turned on his heel and left.
“We must find you a horse,” Feversham said to Gonzales as the wounded were being laid, as gently as possible, in carts that had been brought to the Charlestown Neck. Two houses in Cambridge had been converted into hospitals, and Feversham had been told that there were eight doctors already present and waiting to help.
“Yes,” Feversham told Gonzales, “just as there were twelve thousand militia waiting for a few hundred men to hold the British. It’s an interesting world, Doctor.” They walked down the road to where a group of boys had tended to the officers’ horses. Feversham found his horse and explained the situation.
“Lieutenant Berry from Marblehead, he’s dead,” one of the boys said. “We’ll be sending his horse back home, but if the doctor here needs a horse, he can have it and deliver it to Marblehead when he’s finished with it. Jack Berry. They’ll know him there.”
“We’ll get it to Marblehead,” Feversham assured him.
Both Feversham and Gonzales were stripped to the waist, having torn their shirts into bandages. Head to foot, they were covered with blood and dirt, both of them with their instrument bags hanging from their shoulders. In the milling crowd of militiamen who had crossed the Charlestown Neck, sweating, most of them naked to the waist, they brought a worshiping respect from the boys. Women were present with bottles of water and pots of coffee. News and details of the battle had already spread through the area around Boston. The tired, limping Americans were the heroes of the moment, and as the sun began to set, people with torches lit up the area around Willis Creek, talking excitedly, asking questions.
Major Knowlton sought out the two doctors and shook Gonzales’s hand warmly. “We’ll be making an army out of this, Doctor,” he said. “This is no time for details, but if I have a command, I want you with me.”
Gonzales nodded. Evidently the thought of a regular army had never occurred to him. After he mounted Jack Berry’s horse and rode alongside of Feversham on the road to Cambridge, he spoke of the offer to Feversham. “What do you think?” he asked Feversham. “Will they make an army?”
“Who knows? They don’t appear to have any leader who knows what to do now.”
“Prescott?”
Feversham shrugged. He had trouble keeping his eyes open, and a moment or two later, he dozed off. Their horses didn’t need guidance. They moved along with the crowd of carts and men on foot headed toward Cambridge. As night fell, men with torches joined the procession, lighting the way. The summer night air was warm and benign, so neither man suffered from his nakedness.
Awakened from his doze, Feversham gave into the man’s need to speak.
“You were sleeping,” Gonzales apologized.
“I could fall off my horse. It’s happened to me.”
“No. You ride too well. Feversham, I never saw a man killed before. I never saw a battle.”
“The first time is hard.”
“You’ve seen battles?”
“Yes.”
“Like this one?”
Feversham thought about it before he replied. “No. Not like this one.”
“Someone wins, someone loses.”
“So they say.”
“Feversham, who won and who lost?” And when Feversham rode on without replying, Gonzales said, “Did they win?”
“I don’t know.”
“I stood behind Major Knowlton’s line when the men with the great hats attacked.”
“The grenadiers.”
“I couldn’t take my eyes away. They marched up to us, and we shot them down. Then the next rank stepped forward, and we shot them down. Then they walked over the bodies of the dead, and we shot them down. Then the whole place in front of us was covered with their bodies, and they walked over the bodies of their own men, and we shot them down.”
Feversham could think of nothing to say.
“I have been trying to understand,” Gonzales said, almost plaintively.
“There’s no understanding,” Feversham said. “When our men were frightened and ran, Prescott let them run.”
“Yes.”
“But the grenadiers. They didn’t.”
“No, D
octor,” Feversham said tiredly, “if the grenadiers had turned their backs on us, they would have been shot by their own men.”
Israel Putnam walked slowly along the Cambridge Road, leading his horse and debating with himself whether it would be reasonable to strangle Artemus Ward with his naked hands. He didn’t climb into the saddle, for he was convinced that if he tried to ride, he would fall asleep and fall out of the saddle and break his neck. The adulation of the militiamen who recognized him in the darkness was pleasant, but he would have preferred at this time to be left alone. He knew that he should be doing something to pull the Connecticut volunteers together into some kind of order, but he couldn’t bring himself to take any positive action. He was naked to the waist, his shirt having gone the way of other shirts, and the night air was cool. Finally, he tethered his horse to one hand, took his field blanket from the saddle, wrapped himself in it, and stretched out on the roadside. In a few moments, he was asleep.
Gridley found Elizabeth Warren, Dr. Warren’s wife, at the Palmers’ house. She was a good-looking woman of thirty years, with bright blue eyes and a head of soft, honey-colored hair. She and her husband had a house in Boston, now occupied by the British. She pleaded with Gridley for a shred of hope.
“It’s no use to hope, Mrs. Warren,” Gridley told her. “I was there beside him.”
“And you saw it?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me. I must know.”
“Isn’t it enough to know that he died?”
She shook her head. She whispered, “Why was he there when he was so sick?”
“He had to be there.”
“I must know, Colonel Gridley.”
Gridley, tired, weak from loss of blood, said unhappily, “He was shot in the head. I killed the man who killed him. He died without pain.”
“But where is his body?”
“In the redoubt, ma’am, where he fell.”
“You left him there?”
“We were overwhelmed. They poured into the redoubt, and it was either get out or be killed. We had shot away our ammunition, and they came at us with their bayonets. We were only a handful.”
“But how can I bury him?”
“We’ll try to take that up with General Gage. I trust someone will, tomorrow.”
Jacob Bother, fifteen years old, and Levi Goodson, fourteen, were both Boston boys, distantly related to Dr. Warren. At ten o’clock on the night of the seventeenth, they took an old rowboat that was beached on the Mystic River and quietly paddled to the shore of the Charlestown peninsula, landing on the rocky ledge where John Stark and his New Hampshire riflemen had made their line of defense. Their intention, as they afterward confessed, was to find the body of Joseph Warren and bring it back for burial. Since they were well aware that their mission would have been forbidden, they told no one of their intention.
After landing and anchoring their boat with a rock, they made their way up Breed’s Hill toward the redoubt. As they climbed the hill, they saw the flaming torches of the British soldiers, who were still looking for their own dead. They advanced carefully, crawling sometimes. Once they lay absolutely still as a couple of British soldiers passed within a few feet of them. Finally, they reached the redoubt.
There were four dead bodies lying in the redoubt, one of them a black man. Now the moonlight, which had been blocked by clouds, was sufficient for them to recognize the body of Dr. Warren. He lay naked, stripped of all his clothes, his body stained with blood and dirt.
By now the boys, who had started their mission with a high sense of excitement and purpose, were thoroughly frightened. Crouched in the redoubt, they saw torches all around them, and for at least an hour they were trapped where they were, not daring to leave the redoubt. They were gagging and vomiting at the sight of one of the dead militiamen, whose chest and stomach had been ripped wide open. To make matters worse, rats were scampering about, eating the flesh of the dead. They crouched quietly and prayed that no soldier would enter the redoubt.
When the torches finally moved away, they tried to lift the body of Dr. Warren over the port entry. For all of his apparent slenderness, Dr. Warren had been over six feet in height, with wide shoulders and large bones. Rigor mortis had already set in. As much as they struggled, they only managed to lift the body to the firing step when they saw torches approaching up the hill. At that point, their courage failed them, and they tumbled out of the redoubt and ran down the hillside to where their boat was tethered. They pushed off the shore and paddled back up the Mystic River.
Fame, fortune, and the fulfillment of a dream come to people along various avenues, and Joshua Loring was not the first to achieve his ambition through a marriage to a woman who despised him but cherished his wealth. Not only could he boast of his rank as captain in His Majesty’s armed forces, but here he was wearing the red coat, the white britches, and the high black boots of a British officer, not to mention a dress sword by his side. Along with his uniform, a detachment of six British marines was his to command, as well as Sergeant Perkins to relay his orders to the ordinary enlisted men.
At seven o’clock, on the seventeenth of June, Capt. Joshua Loring received thirty-one American prisoners of war on a dock in Boston, brought there by lighter from Breed’s Hill. All of them were wounded, some so badly they could hardly walk. When Sergeant Perkins suggested that litters might be found for the most sorely wounded, Capt. Loring replied that they had come to the battle on foot and they would damn well walk to jail. One of the prisoners, Caleb Johnson, was supporting Col. Moses Parker, who had been seriously wounded with a musket ball that shattered his kneecap in the struggle in the redoubt. Each step was agony for him. Johnson, who had kept a chicken farm in Dorchester, had often sold fresh eggs to the Loring household. He had a nodding acquaintance with Joshua Loring. Now he pleaded, “For God’s sake, Mr. Loring, this man can’t walk. Show some mercy.”
Loring specified his rank with a blow across Johnson’s face. “Captain Loring, you rebellious son of a bitch!”
Then he led his contingent of thirty-one wounded men through the streets of Boston to the jail, a trail of blood marking their passage.
At eleven o’clock, on the night of the seventeenth of June, Sir William Howe was cleansing himself of dirt and perspiration in the anteroom of his commodious bedroom. His personal orderly, Dick Higbe, had filled the tub with hot water and then had been sent packing by Mrs. Loring, with instructions that they were not to be disturbed for any reason whatsoever before ten o’clock on the morning of the following day.
General Howe was a large man, and the tub, typical of the time, was rather small, so he sat in it with his knees drawn up while Betsy Loring soaped him and gently sponged the various parts of his abundant body.
“Not even a scratch anywhere on your dear body,” she observed. “Here I died a thousand deaths and you not even one.”
“Oh, say not so.”
“True, true. And when they brought the news that your wonderful grenadiers had suffered so, I fell into a faint. I cried out for death to overtake me.”
“Forgive me for causing you such pain, my darling, and if you continue to wash that part of me, we shall waste what has been waiting for you all this terrible day.”
“What strength,” she said admiringly. “What wonderful strength and fortitude!”
“You give it to me, my love,” he replied gallantly.
“You were in God’s hands.”
“I find no other explanation. A thousand men took aim at me. Every gallant officer in my grenadiers fell, and I was unharmed. There are ten rents in my clothes where the musket balls tore through, yet my skin—”
“You have the skin of a young man.”
“What have I done to deserve God’s favor?”
“Something noble,” Mrs. Loring assured him. “You were a mountain of courage. God rewards courage.”
“My darling Betsy,” he said gently, lifting her hand away, “don’t deprive me of what we should share.”
“How very well said, Sir William. I have always been of the opinion that a proper man makes love with his speech as well as his hands—”
“Hands?”
“Would you want me to speak less delicately?”
“Say what you will, in prose or poesy.”
“If all the world and love were young,” she said softly, “and truth in every shepherd’s tongue, / these pretty pleasures might me move, / to live with thee and be thy love.”
“You quote me Raleigh,” he said, surprised.
“You thought me no more than an ignorant wench, Sir William,” she replied, feigning hurt.
“Never!”
“And ignorant of the finer things.”
“Never, my dear Betsy. Enough, now. Help me out of this miserable little tub.”
He stood up, and she folded the towels around him.
“And now to bed,” she said. “Give me a moment and I will be with you.”
At midnight, Feversham and Gonzales were still at work in the big holding room of Rev. Samuel Cook. Mrs. Cook had found them clean shirts. Almost three hundred of the militia had been wounded, and the men lay on the floor in the holding room, the adjoining parlor, and the dining room. Three doctors and two leeches were already at work when Feversham and Gonzales arrived, all five of them part of the group Feversham had spoken to earlier. They were full of explanation as to why they had not appeared in Charlestown. They were reluctant to probe for bullets, and only two of them had ever sewn with catgut.
By midnight, Feversham’s hands were shaking with fatigue. He had come to the end of his strength. Feversham said to Mrs. Cook, “I don’t think Dr. Gonzales and I can do anymore. We must rest.”
“Poor man, of course,” Mrs. Cook agreed.
“The worst are taken care of, and these doctors can do for the others. If there’s a place where we can lie down…”
A comfortable, motherly woman, she clucked with sympathetic sounds and offered to feed them. They shook their heads. “Only sleep, please, Mrs. Cook.”
