Bunker Hill (9 page)

“What do
they want to do?” Feversham asked.

“Warren, get the map.”

Warren
left the room and returned a moment later and unrolled a large map of Boston
and its environs. The three men huddled over it.

“You’ve
been to Boston before? Or is this your first visit, Feversham?”

“My first time, I’m afraid.”

“Then
you’ll follow me. Here are two islands in the harbor, Boston and Charlestown.
Properly
speaking,
neither is an island, because each
of them has a neck of land connecting with the main. Then again, both are
islands, because in each case the neck is narrow and of no consequence. Now
here is the spread of our men—” His finger moved north in a circle. “From
Roxbury here up the bank of the Charles River, where we have built some
defenses around the Great Bridge across the Charles. Then our lines go past
Harvard College, through Cambridge to the Charlestown Neck. We are on both
sides of the Mystic River, here and here, and we have men in Chelsea and men in
Maiden.”

“How many men all told?” Feversham asked.

“Thirteen thousand, we think.”

“It’s
always in flux,” Warren explained. “You must understand, Feversham, they are
all volunteers, just ordinary men and boys. No one is paid. There are no
enlistment papers, no controls.”

“You mean there are no regular troops anywhere?”

“Good
heavens, man, from where? These are New Englanders. We have no army. Oh, yes,
you’ll find a company in uniform here and there, local militia, made uniforms,
marched a little. But it was a game, like a turkey shoot or a clambake. No, we
haven’t any soldiers as such.”

“Do the British know all this?”

“We must
presume that they know as much about us as we know about them.”

“And what do the British have in Boston?”

“Well over
three thousand men if you include the marines.
The Fifth and
Fifty-second of light infantry, the Forty-third and Thirty-eighth, and the
grenadiers.
They have a fleet of warships in the harbor, and I suppose
they could arm and put ashore a thousand sailors if they wanted to.” Warren
looked up at Feversham and said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

“They’re
as good as any troops in the world.”

“They
don’t have to be that good,” Ward said.

“If they
have the warships,” Feversham said, “they can come ashore anywhere. How can you
stop them?”

“We
can’t.”

“Not the
way you’re spread out. I rode through Cambridge. I saw the encampment.”

“What are
we to do?” Ward asked plaintively. “Suppose we fortify one spot. All they have
to do is to land in another place and walk around us. Then it would be panic.
It’s one thing to be a soldier. It’s another thing to be a seventeen-year-old
kid with a fowling piece and off you go to fight the British because everyone
else is doing so. We don’t even have a command they’ll listen to. I’m in
command of the Massachusetts men, when they listen. And if they say, ‘Shut your
yap, old man, and I’ll do it may own way,’ there’s nothing I can do but let
them. Putnam’s in command of the Connecticut men, except when they tell him
he’s not, and today, Warren here is put in command of everyone by the Congress,
who are in Philadelphia and don’t have a notion of things. But he doesn’t want
any command and—forgive me, Joseph—damned if he knows one blessed thing about
war.”

“It’s as
senseless as everything else,” Warren admitted.
“Why me?
I’m a physician, not a soldier.” He turned to Ward and demanded querulously,
“Feversham would have made more damn sense. He’s been on half a dozen
battlefields in Europe. Even Putnam says he knows the lousy game better than
any of us.”

“I’m
British,” Feversham said, “and I’m a physician, and I am no commander.”

“Lee is
British, and so is
Gates,
and no one holds that
against them.”

“What
is—well, it is,” Feversham said. “The point at hand is this: What will happen
when the British attack?”

“If they
attack,” Ward said.

“They must
attack. Otherwise, they’ll starve, and Boston will starve.”

“It’s not
quite that simple,” said Warren. “The question is whether we are at war or who
is at war.
Massachusetts against the empire?
Does that
make sense, Feversham?”

“And the Connecticut men and the others?”

“It’s a
matter of emotion. We don’t truly know whether any of the colonies will support
us. They don’t know, either, but if they attack, well, it’s a war then, isn’t
it? That’s how the whole question of the hill comes into it, the question of
Charlestown.”

He pointed
to the map. “As I said before, there are two islands. They have causeways to
the main, but to all effects they are islands. The British hold Boston. We have
a perimeter around them, and it’s not worth two damns. But no one holds this
island, Charlestown and Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill. That’s the argument now,
Feversham. Putnam and Prescott and Gridley—yes, and Ward, too—they say, occupy
Bunker Hill and hold the Charlestown
island
and we
force the British hand.”

“How do
you force the British hand?” Feversham asked.

“We mount
cannon there. Then we can blow them out of the city and their stinking ships
out of the bay.”

“I saw no
cannon,” Feversham said.

For the
first time, Ward smiled. “We got the cannon, Doctor.
Just a
matter of getting them here.
We took them at Ticonderoga, seventy-eight
cannon, every kind you can think of—howitzers, mortars. By God, we even got
twenty-four-pounders that can throw a ball for a mile—more balls and gunpowder
than you can shake a stick at.”

“Still,
that’s at Ticonderoga, and how far away?
A hundred miles, two
hundred miles?
How do you bring them here? If I remember, there’s not
even a road.”

“We sent
Harry Knox up there,” Warren said. “He’s a very solid young fellow, a
bookseller, but then he’s read every book on artillery that’s been published.
It’s just our good luck that it’s been a hobby of his.”

Feversham
could hardly believe his ears. “How old is this Harry Knox?”

“How old
is Harry, Artemus?”

“Twenty-two?”

“No, he must be older than that.
Twenty-three
at least.”

“Then he
never fought with guns.”

“Now look
here, Feversham,” Warren said a bit testily. “We are not an army. Good heavens,
we have to make out, don’t we? Well, we do what we can. We do have two cannon,
small ones, and Harry Knox has been drilling with those guns for two months
now. He’s a hardheaded young man with guts, and if he says he’ll bring those
guns here, by God he will.”

“When?”

“In two
weeks, three weeks at the most.”

Feversham
said, “Then how in hell’s name can you hold that Charlestown
island
for two or three weeks without guns? And when he brings the guns, how are you
going to get them there? There’s only the narrow neck of land connecting it,
and the British would be a pack of bloody fools if they didn’t bring their
ships in and cover the causeway.”

“The water’s too shallow for their big ships,” Warren
protested. “Then they’ll use gun floats and flatboats. I have seen that
operation. They can put a twenty-four-pound cannon where there’s a

foot
of water, and they can blow that causeway to pieces.
If you try to hold Bunker Hill or Breed’s Hill, they’ll bring up their guns and
blow you off without ever coming into musket range.”

“Gridley
says he can build a redoubt,” Warren explained.

“In full sight of the British?”

“In one
night, he says.”

“Gridley
is a good engineer,” Warren said. “Try to see our position, Feversham. You’re
from the outside, and we appreciate that. You can be objective. But we have to
do something.”

“Why?”

Both men
stared at Feversham in silence for a while before answering, and then Warren
shook his head and said that it would wash out.

“Just wash out, Feversham.
We can’t hold fifteen thousand men around Boston here. We can’t pay them, and
we can’t feed them, and now it’s time for the first cutting of the meadow grass,
and then it’s the first crops, and meanwhile, the wives are bitching like mad.
I suppose you could ask why not let it wash out, but we’re committed, and the
people down in Philadelphia know that we’re committed, and if it ends here, it
does so down the line. We have our dead, and we had our bloodletting. At
Lexington, they shot us down like dogs, and then we fought them, and there’s
more dead
to pay for that. We’re a close-knit lot, and it’s
a cousin here and a nephew there and a son and a husband. So we don’t just let
it wash out. There’s no way we could do that.”

“If this
were a meeting of the Committee of Safety,” Ward said almost sadly, “you’d hear
us rave and rant. We make great orations to each other, and I suppose we do it
to keep up our nerve. But I am a sick and tired old man, Feversham, and tonight
I feel it in every bone. The God’s truth is that it makes me want to say, ‘Give
up and go home.’ But we can’t. We have been here for a hundred and fifty years,
and this is our place. They must go home, and here we must sit until they do.”

“What about the other colonies—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the
South?”
Feversham asked. “Will
they send men to help?”

“God
knows.”

“And if
they do, it will be next month or next year,” Warren said.

“Then you
have to make a move,” Feversham agreed.
“But why
Charlestown?”

“What
else?”

“Boston.
Seize the causeway at night. You have fifteen thousand men. The British have
less than four thousand. Pour into the city and take it back.”

Ward shook
his head. “We have farm boys. They have soldiers.”

“We can’t
attack,” Warren said hopelessly. “We don’t know how. It’s as simple as that.
Our men won’t go up against the regulars. They won’t go up against bayonets.”

Staring at
the map, Feversham said, “The hill is a death trap. Surely you can see that. If
you held Boston, it would be different. But if you go into Charlestown, they
will cut the causeway, and you’ll never get out.”

“We have
bled it enough,” Warren said. “We’ll have some food, and we’ll talk to the women
and pretend for a little while that things are as they should be.” He rose and
took Feversham by the arm. “Come! Be a good colleague and a physician now.
We’ll have a medical talk, which is the best talk of all.” He turned to Ward.
“Eat with us, Artemus. We are all good Englishmen, and God wounds us for hating
our mother. Have you ever felt that way, Feversham?”

“At times, yes.”

That night, five men slept on the rug in
the Hunts’ living room, Putnam and Prescott among them. Feversham shared the
rug for a while, but what with the wheezing and grunting and snoring and his
own thoughts, sleep evaded him, and finally he gave up the attempt and went
into the kitchen. A four-inch-thick night candle burned there, and Feversham
took foolscap and pen and ink from the trestle table and then sat down in the
kitchen to write a letter to his wife.

My
dear Alice, I am here safely at Watertown in Massachusetts, where I have been
welcomed at the house of Mr. Hunt, even though the house is so crowded already
that men sleep on the floor in every room. I myself have been quartered in the
sitting room, where, on a very splendid Chinese rug, I share very distinguished
company. Perhaps you remember an Israel Putnam, who says that he remembers you
and that he dined at your father’s house on two occasions. He has been made a
general in this strange army that is besieging Boston and the British army
there. He is one of the rug sleepers, and I must say that when awake he has by
far the foulest mouth in New England—and asleep,
a snore like
a bugle. I decided that rather than lie in the sitting room awake with my own
thoughts, I would share them with you, and since the kitchen is the only room
in the house without sleeping guests, here I am.

I
must explain that this condition of the little village of Watertown is due to
the fact that half the population of Boston has fled to the suburbs and that
right now Watertown is in the way of being the nerve center of this strange
war. And a very strange war it is—if indeed we are at war—with this tiny colony
of Puritan and Presbyterian farmers facing the might of the British Empire.

Strangely,
I find them a more worldly and understanding lot than your Connecticut
countrymen, for they are not shocked by the fact that I am Catholic, and they
regard my being English and trained in the English army almost with worship.
They are desperately looking for English officers to help them out of the
almost indescribable confusion of affairs that exists here, and they constantly
express the hope that if the colonies to the south decide to send men to
reinforce them, such troops will be put under the command of either Charles Lee
or Horatio Gates, both of them Englishmen, as I am given to understand.