Bunker Hill (23 page)

Gonzales
was crouched to the rear of the wall, his instruments
laid
out and ready. He realized that no American had even been wounded.

Miraculously,
Howe was untouched, for all of Israel Putnam’s determination, and he roared for
the advance to continue. Slipping on the blood and stumbling over the dead of
the front rank, the grenadiers tried to advance.

Meanwhile,
the loaders were passing fresh guns, and those Connecticut men who were not
backed by loaders reloaded desperately. The grenadiers were only yards from the
wall when Knowlton’s whistle brought a second storm of fire, and once again the
entire front of the four columns of grenadiers went down in a tangle of dying
men.

Still Howe
urged them on, laying about him with the flat of his sword, but now the
Connecticut men were firing as fast as they could reload, and in spite of
themselves, the grenadiers gave back, firing their muskets as they retreated,
leaving the ground between their shattered ranks and the stone wall covered
with blood and bodies.

This time, the Connecticut
men paid a price. Six of them were dead, and nine others had been wounded, two
with shattered arms that called for amputation. Dr. Gonzales had never been in
a battle before, and in his lifetime of practice, he had only three times dealt
with bullet wounds, all of them hunting accidents. He did what he could,
forcing the wounded men to submit to the pain of raw rum, bandaging and
suturing while the men cursed him for a damned sadistic Spaniard.

Feversham
was one of that strange
group
of humans who are
destined to be outsiders and thus observe everything differently than the
majority of the human race. In all of his encounters with war, he had been a
surgeon, thereby watching the horror that brought him his practice as a
theatergoer might watch a play that menaced him without including him. A bullet
in his thigh, which still caused him to walk with a slight limp, had proved
that there were hazards to his profession, and in his time he had seen other
surgeons killed at their work. He had come to Boston for two reasons: firstly,
because he had married an American woman, whom he loved dearly, which made his
presence as a Catholic—even a fallen Catholic—and an Englishman in the bigoted
white Protestant town of Ridgefield difficult, to put it mildly; and secondly,
because for the first time in his life he felt that he had found some
principles worth believing in.

He had
joined the huge, loosely organized mob around Boston that called itself an army
with a good deal of cynicism, yet he found himself accepted without prejudice
and with open arms. And in the few hours he had been with this handful of men
who were willing to face the best soldiers in the world with simple decision
and without vainglory, he had forged a very real attachment to them. He was not
the kind of man who indulged dramatics, who might say to himself, I believe in
what these men are willing to die for, and I have decided to stay with them and
offer whatever comfort I can, even if it should result in my own death, as it
probably will. Yet that was the case, and he knew perhaps better than anyone on
Breed’s Hill how hopeless their situation was, even if they should manage to
slow the attack with their handful of men.

Feversham
was filled with admiration for Warren and Prescott and Gridley. He had never
really known such men before—their easy comradeship with the volunteers they
led, their lack of pretension, Warren’s willingness to laugh off the fact that
he had been made a general by the witless Committee of Safety, Prescott’s
flexibility with old Putnam, Gridley’s rocklike patience and fortitude.
Feversham felt strongly that they were as convinced as he was that somewhere
along the line they had been betrayed, left on this little peninsula with a comparative
handful of men. Yet they accused no one and never even entertained the notion
of retreat.

When the
drums first sounded from the beach below, he had found himself a slightly
sheltered spot, a small hollow about ten paces behind the entrenchment. There
he had meticulously laid out his instruments: his needles, strung with catgut;
his tourniquets, tied and ready for use; his dressings and bandages; his jug of
water and quart flask of rum; his shears and bone saw and probes and forceps.
He had in his jacket pocket a piece of linen, about a yard square, upon which
his wife, Alice, had embroidered the word
surgeon
.
It might help if he were trapped with wounded in a retreat. But in spite of his
commitment to what he was supposed to do, he could not remain there as the
sound of drums came closer, and when the crash of rifle fire exploded from
Stark’s position, he joined Prescott on the parapet.

“You
shouldn’t be here, Doctor.”

“Forgive me. My teacher swore I was born to be
hanged.”

“Then look
and tell me what on earth they’re waiting for. Stark beat
them
back. The kid said they took terrible losses.”

“Now,”
Feversham said as the drummers beat their furious tattoo and the line of light
infantry began their advance, even as Howe ordered his grenadiers forward
against Major Knowlton’s Connecticut militia. Both men leaped off the parapet,
and Prescott raced along his line of defense, pleading,
“Don’t
shoot. Don’t shoot. Keep your heads down. Wait till you see the whites of their
eyes. Wait! Wait!”

At sixty
yards, the light infantry and the marines paused and fired. As with the
grenadiers, they were in columns of eight, with the marines, ten columns, an
advancing front of eight men, two hundred feet across, the marines facing the
redoubt, the light infantry facing Prescott’s long earthworks, the long front
bursting into a sheet of flame. Feversham felt the wind of bullets inches from
his face, and still he stood erect, gripped with a fascination stronger than
fear. Then the whole front of the British, the ten columns of men—egged on by
their shouting officers and their bayonets fixed—surged forward at the
barricade.

At forty
feet, Prescott shouted at the top of his lungs, “Now!
Now!”
And the Massachusetts farmers stood up and emptied two hundred muskets and rifles
at point-blank range, even as the men in the redoubt fired.

As with
the grenadiers, the whole front of the British force buckled, as if some
flaming scythe had ripped the eight men into shreds of torn flesh. The ranks
behind them pulled back, stunned by the execution of their entire front,
staring for a long moment at the carpet of broken bodies, while Prescott dashed
back and forth shouting: “Reload! Reload and stay down! Reload!”

They had
less than fifty second guns, and the loaders passed them forward. The single
British officer who remained on his feet screamed for his men to follow him and
raced for the embankment.

As he mounted it, Prescott
killed him with his pistol. In front of the redoubt, General Pigot staggered
away with a bullet in his thigh. As the light infantry swayed back and forth,
caught between the desire to run and the training that urged them to advance,
the Massachusetts farmers loaded and shot methodically.

In the
redoubt as at the embankment, the rush of flame from the American muskets had
sent the marines reeling back, but they formed again in better order than the
light infantry and charged the redoubt once more. Prescott waved his reserve
loaders into the redoubt, and a wild hand-to-hand struggle raged on the firing
step until the marines were beaten back. Eight of the defenders of the redoubt
were killed, and Gridley had a bayonet thrust in his arm.

Bit by
bit, the light infantry and the marines gave back, even as the grenadiers had
given back, the whole British force retreating down the slope of Breed’s Hill,
leaving the grassy slope red with blood and carpeted with their dead.

Feversham
had torn himself away from the awful struggle, and now he was at work,
surrounded by bleeding men. There was no time to be careful, to take pains.
Stop the bleeding.
Suture where he had to.
No time to
probe for bullets. Use dressings, bandages, tourniquets. He was being
overwhelmed, and he shouted, “Warren! Warren, can you help me?” He had no idea
of what had happened in the redoubt.

Gridley
appeared and said, “Warren has all he can handle.” He was holding the cut in
his arm. “We’re out of bandages. Can you spare something for my arm?” He was
trying to stanch the flow of blood with his other hand.

“Let me,”
Feversham said, cursing the lack of foresightedness. He needed more of
everything. He applied a tourniquet. “I’ll suture it later.”

“Yes, of
course, it’s nothing,” Gridley said, wincing, as Feversham sprinkled rum on the
raw wound.

Some of
Prescott’s men leaped the barricade and picked up muskets from the dead light
infantry. They wanted the bayonets. Prescott roared at them to get back behind
the earthworks. Feversham glanced up and saw Gonzales. “I can help,” Gonzales
said, and told Gridley, “Tear up shirts for bandages.” Knowlton’s Connecticut
men had few wounded.

Panting, Stark appeared,
reported to Prescott, and then loped back across the rise to his own position.
He saw his son standing behind the barricade, unharmed, and he broke into
tears. He had been told that his son had been killed, and stifling his sobs, he
resisted an impulse to embrace the boy, but instead raced back to his position.
Knowlton, shaking, informed Prescott that the grenadiers had been destroyed.

Ninety
percent of Howe’s beloved grenadiers had been killed or wounded. The sloping
meadow in front of Knowlton’s position was covered with their bodies. Weeping
tears of rage and frustration, Sir William stormed at the light infantry and
marines, commanding them to stand and fight. He looked for the junior officers,
but only two were on their feet, Lieutenant Fredericks and Captain Ford. “Form
the men!” he shouted to them. “Form ranks!” Limping and bleeding, Pigot joined
him.

Out of
rifle shot, the British retreat halted. Marine major Sutherman, calm and
reassuring, managed to control his troops and whip them into order. General
Howe took a center position, sword in hand, and pointed to the earthworks that
stretched off to the right of the redoubt. Pitcairn, another marine major, only
slightly wounded, joined Howe and spoke a single word, “Again?”

Only one
of the drummer boys was still alive. “Beat the advance!” Howe said sharply. The
drumbeat began, and Howe, Pitcairn beside him, moved forward deliberately, Sir
William with sword in hand. A British soldier, carrying the blue banner of the
grenadiers, which he had rescued from among the dead, ran forward and took his
place beside Howe. As the three men began to climb the hill once again, the
light infantry and the marines burst out cheering and surged forward. At one
hundred yards, a rifleman killed Major Sutherman, but Howe marched on,
seemingly invulnerable.

Behind the
barricade, Prescott talked to his men.
“Easy, my braves, easy
my darlings, easy now.
Don’t fire. Hold your fire. Hold your fire.”

Feversham
and Gonzales, working with the wounded, heard Prescott’s voice as background.
Occasionally, Feversham glanced at Gonzales, wondering what was in the man’s
mind. Here they were trapped; here they must stay. Under the pressure of what
he did, he could lose his fear and awareness of himself in jeopardy. He had
lived this awful scene before.
But what of Gonzales?
Who was this tall, painfully thin man with his long, dark Spanish face?

“Bones is dead,” Gonzales
said suddenly. “Shot through the head.” He worked meticulously and did not stop
suturing a torn shoulder as he spoke.

With the
death of Sutherman, the heart went out of the British. Yet the light infantry
and the marines continued to advance. Their formation was ragged, and they
began to fire at sixty yards. At thirty-five yards, with no answering fire from
Prescott’s men, they surged forward, and the men behind the earthworks, backed
up now by Knowlton’s Connecticut men, stood up and released a sheet of fire
that literally flung the British back, as if some giant hand had reached out
and swept them away. There was no holding them now. The British line collapsed,
and the light infantry and the marines broke into full retreat, running,
stumbling, falling, as they fled down Breed’s Hill, with a forlorn Sir William
Howe, sword in hand, disdaining to run and marching majestically behind them.

“Give the
stupid bastard his due,” Burgoyne said to Clinton later. “He doesn’t know the
meaning of fear.”

The
Americans shouted and cheered and waved their guns and danced wildly. There
were sixteen dead who did not dance, and another thirty wounded, crowding around
Feversham and Gonzales and Warren, the latter out of bandages and using what
was left of the supplies that Feversham had brought with him. As the enthusiasm
calmed down, the loaders as well as the marksmen began to complain about
powder. Some had no powder left to them, and others had only a charge or two.

The attack
had been directed at the redoubt and at Prescott’s breastworks. Stark had led
his men in a half circle. The New Hampshire riflemen, in loose order, continued
to fire at the retreating light infantry with their long Pennsylvania rifles,
and then, seeing the British out of range as they retreated down to Morton’s
Point, Stark called his men back and led them to join Prescott behind the
barricade. “We’re almost out of powder,” he told Prescott.