Bunker Hill

peninsula to the Mystic River. All it took were a few modifications to make the fence at least look like a sturdy, if hardly bulletproof, defensive structure. The surrounding field had been divided by the residents of Charlestown into a series of thin east-to-west-running strips. Fences had been built along each property line, so that the southeastern-facing slope of the hill was ribbed with wooden rails, and Knowlton and his men used these rails to build a second fence just ahead of the one that ran alongside the ditch. Stuffing some recently mowed and still-green grass in between the two fences, along with whatever rocks and pieces of wood they could find, they made a stout and serviceable barricade—a kind of wood-and-grass sandwich—that became known as the rail fence.
    All of this took time, but thanks to Howe’s decision to wait for the reserve, Knowlton and his men had the opportunity they needed to build a structure that looked, at least to Howe’s eye, “cannon proof.” What they didn’t have, however, were enough soldiers to man this new expanse of fence. But help was on the way.
    —
    If ever there was a man who embodied the flinty frontier spirit of backwoods New Hampshire, it was Colonel John Stark. At forty-six, he was a lean, less voluble version of Israel Putnam. Two decades earlier, while trapping in the northern wilderness, he had been taken captive by the Abenakis, who had been so impressed by his bravery that they’d adopted him into the tribe. During the French and Indian War, he’d fought with Rogers’s Rangers alongside British regulars, so he knew their ways well. Now he was fighting against the New Hampshire legislature, whose members were outraged by his refusal to curry favor for a commission. But no matter what the politicians thought, his men adored him, and with thirteen companies, Stark had the largest regiment in the provincial army. His major, Andrew McClary, was six foot six and “of an athletic frame.” McClary was now marching proudly with Stark, whose bushy eyebrows seemed locked in a perpetual scowl, toward the Charlestown Neck.
    The fire of the gunboats and warships clustered around the causeway of the Mill Pond had turned the Neck into a terrifying war zone. Cannonballs kept flying across this narrow strip of land, some of them tearing the dirt into ragged furrows. The ships were also firing bar shot, evil-looking dumbbells of metal designed to take down the rigging of a sailing vessel but which also did devastating things to a human body. A soldier recounted how one of these murderous projectiles “cut off three men in two.” What with the smoke, dust, and bloody chunks of torn flesh—not to mention the deafening roar—it was hardly a surprise that a crowd of fearful provincial soldiers was now blocking the approach to the Neck. In his deep and booming voice, Major McClary requested that the officers and their men immediately step aside so that Colonel Stark and his regiment could march across to Bunker Hill.
    Captain Henry Dearborn was twenty-three and a doctor, and he was at the head of the column beside Colonel Stark. Despite the fact that cannonballs and bar shot were tearing up the ground all around them, they were marching, Dearborn remembered, “at a very deliberate pace.” He made the mistake of suggesting to his commander that they might march a little faster. “With a look peculiar to himself,” Dearborn wrote, “[Stark] fixed his eyes upon me, and observed with great composure, ‘Dearborn, one fresh man in action is worth ten fatigued ones.’ ” Needless to say, they did not pick up the pace.
    Stark was not impressed by what he found on Bunker Hill. Putnam sat atop his white horse in what was called his “summer dress”: a sleeveless waistcoat (as opposed to the long-sleeved coat an officer was expected to wear) that was more in keeping, one soldier claimed, with the leader of “a band of sicklemen or ditchers, than musketeers.” Putnam seems to have devoted most of his energies that afternoon to fulminating at the crowd of more than a thousand mostly idle soldiers that had assembled around the peak of Bunker Hill. Part of the problem was that no one seemed sure what Putnam wanted them to do. Were they to build the fortifications he had started, or were they to march to the rail fence and fight? Instead of prioritizing what needed to be done to support Prescott and the line of defense that was emerging to the left of the redoubt, Putnam