Bunker Hill

embarrassing loss of the
Diana
at the mouth of Chelsea Creek, the shade of a doubt had entered the minds of more than a few British officers. Despite his bold talk about “elbowroom” back in May, Burgoyne could not help but speculate that a loss today might mean “a final loss to the British Empire in America.”
    Somehow it had come to this: a battle that could very well determine the fate of the English-speaking world. And here they now were, on rooftops and on hills—a city of loyalists, patriots, soldiers, and refugees—awaiting the outcome.

CHAPTER TEN

    The Battle
    C aptain John Chester of Wethersfield, Connecticut, had just finished his midday dinner in Cambridge. It was about 1:00 p.m. “I was walking out from my lodgings,” he remembered, “quite calm and composed and all at once the drums beat to arms and bells rang and a great noise in Cambridge.” Suddenly Putnam’s son Israel Jr. rode up “in a full gallop.” Chester asked, “What is the matter?” “Have you not heard?” Putnam cried. “Why the regulars are landing in Charlestown, and father says you must all meet and march immediately to Bunker Hill.”
    Amid the shouts and ringing bells and beating drums, Chester ran back to his quarters and retrieved his musket and ammunition. Then it was on to the Anglican church that served as a barracks for his men, who were “mainly ready to march.” But they had a problem. Unlike virtually all the other provincial soldiers, Chester’s company from Wethersfield had uniforms; in fact, they looked so good in their red-trimmed blue coats that a week before they’d been given the honor of accompanying Warren and Putnam on a prisoner exchange that had involved several convivial hours with a group of equally well-dressed British officers and their men. But now the uniforms were a liability. Wearing a bright blue coat amid an army of slovenly farmers was tantamount to having a target on your back. So before they headed for Bunker Hill, they put “our frocks and trousers on over our other clothes . . . for we were loath to expose ourselves.”
    Provincial officials now knew that the British were about to attack the redoubt, but what about Roxbury and Cambridge? The Committee of Safety sent a desperate message to General Thomas. “The troops are now landing at Charlestown from Boston,” it read. “You are to judge whether this is designed to deceive or not. In haste [we] leave you to judge of the necessity of your movements.” Handwringing and paralysis had gripped the command center in Cambridge. Making this hesitancy all the more frustrating was the ambiguity of many of the orders issued from Hastings House. A series of three entrenchments had been built beginning at the Cambridge shore of the Charles River. For some reason, Putnam’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Experience Storrs, was sent up the river to Fort No. 1, the farthest from the action at Charlestown. By the time Storrs realized where he was needed most, it was too late to be of any help. To the bafflement of the provincial soldiers already stationed there, Colonel James Scammon and his men from Maine ended up at Lechmere’s Point. Not till three that afternoon would Captain John Chester and his soldiers, already overheated in their double-layered clothes, be on their way to Charlestown.
    —
    Howe had ordered his troops to land at the tip of Morton’s Point, far to the east of Prescott’s position atop Breed’s Hill. There were only enough boats to transport half the regulars, and Howe and Brigadier Robert Pigot, who was to command the left wing, arrived with the second wave of troops, which brought the total to about sixteen hundred soldiers. Standing atop Morton’s Hill, Howe could see the earthen redoubt and breastwork to his left, but there was also something else. To the right, back a bit from the American fort, was a new line of provincial soldiers.
    It was as if they had read his mind. Anticipating a British flanking movement from their own left, they were now busily constructing an obstruction of some sort that would extend their lines across the width of the peninsula to the Mystic River. This was disturbing. Howe decided to call up his seven-hundred-man reserve. The regulars already assembled on the Charlestown peninsula broke ranks, sat down to eat some dinner, and waited for the reserves.
    —
    Soon after Howe’s troops set out by boat from Boston, Prescott decided to make an attempt, even if it was a