Bunker Hill

transfixed the eye, particularly the church steeples, which had become, Burgoyne wrote, “great pyramids of fire” as entire blocks of houses collapsed in crashes of flame and smoke.
    The provincials were equally impressed, especially those stationed in the redoubt, who had, one officer wrote, “the conflagration [of Charlestown] blazing in their faces.” Few of them had ever confronted such a daunting display of military power and resolve. Joseph Warren had always insisted that there were limits to how far Britain was willing to go when it came to opposing her colonies, claiming “that they never would send large armies” into battle against the Americans. Now, with Charlestown burning and an army of more than two thousand soldiers marching in his direction, he must have realized that he’d been wrong. He also must have begun to wonder whether all the destruction and death that lay ahead would be justified by the ultimate result.
    Prescott, however, had more immediate concerns. He must convince his exhausted, awe-struck soldiers that they had a fighting chance. He told them that “the redcoats would never reach the redoubt if they would observe his directions: withhold their fire until he gave the order, take good aim, and be particularly careful not to shoot over their heads; aim at their
hips
.” Ebenezer Bancroft remembered that Prescott also told them to “take particular notice of the fine coats,” meaning that they should do their best to shoot at the scarlet, as opposed to red, coats of the British officers.
    To the east, at the rail fence, Colonel Stark told his men to hold their fire until they “could see the enemy’s half-gaiters,” the heavy linen splash guards that were secured to a regular’s foot by a strap below the instep and reached halfway up the calf. At the beach Stark provided the men clustered behind the stone wall with a visual aid, positioning either a rock or a piece of wood about fifty yards away to indicate the place that the enemy must cross before they could open fire. In every instance, the message was the same: to maximize the effectiveness of their very limited supplies of gunpowder, they must wait till the last possible moment before they unleashed a volley. Perhaps one provincial officer even used an expression that had been in common usage for decades and told his men to hold their fire until they could see the whites of the enemy’s eyes.
    —
    Howe marched bravely at the head of his line of grenadiers toward the rail fence, his staff, including a servant clutching a bottle of wine, clustered about him. As they approached the rebel line, the cannonading of the enemy suddenly ceased so as to prevent any injury to the British forces during the attack. In the unnatural, smoke-filled quiet, the regulars prepared for the assault.
    —
    Over on the right, on the beach between the bluff and the river, in their own narrow corridor of sand, the light infantry of the Welch Fusiliers approached the provincial stone wall, “as if,” a provincial wrote, “not apprised of what awaited them.” The soldiers’ uniforms were faced in royal blue. At the Battle of Minden in northern Germany in 1759, the Fusiliers had been part of an army that had proven its valor against a French force that was estimated to be 54,000 strong. Up ahead, there could not have been many more than one hundred provincials behind that stone wall. They would punch through with their bayonets fixed. It seemed strange that the enemy had not yet begun to fire; perhaps they had already turned and run.
    Suddenly the provincial muskets erupted in flame and smoke. Packed in three deep behind the wall, the New Englanders took turns firing. As one man reloaded his musket, which took a little less than thirty seconds, another was blasting away at the British. As long as their powder held out, the provincials could sustain what was described as “a continued sheet of fire.” Unfortunately, the Welch Fusiliers, with a steep nine-foot bank to their left and the river to their right, had nowhere to hide. Musket balls slammed into their torsos and legs with a sickening slap, cutting bloody gouges into their flesh and splintering bones. (A British surgeon later wondered whether the Yankees purposely aimed low so as to add to the regulars’ sufferings, since leg wounds almost always required amputation.) Every man in the front group dropped to the ground, either dead or wounded; others came up from behind and were