Bunker Hill

Sutherland immediately realized that since the road on the other side of the river curved as it approached the bridge, he and his men would have a clear shot of the right flank, or side, of the militia companies before they crossed the river. By this time Concord’s Major Buttrick was yelling at the regulars to stop pulling up the planks as Captain Laurie’s soldiers did their best to follow their own commander’s undoubtedly hurried orders.
    Sutherland or one of the men who were with him on the left may have fired the first shot—what seems to have been a warning shot that skipped across the surface of the river. Two more shots were fired, and then came the British volley.
    In an engraving based on the testimony of eyewitnesses collected within weeks of the fighting, gray-brown powder smoke billows from the muskets of the regulars bunched on the narrow road to the right. To the left, on the west side of the river, are the militiamen, who have just reached the other side of the bridge, a crude hundred-foot arch of posts and boards. Beneath the bridge, the river flows past, a tranquil strip of blue between the two opposing columns.
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    The regulars’ muskets had a muzzle velocity of approximately a thousand feet per second, meaning that the ball left the barrel at less than a third the speed of a bullet fired by a modern rifle. In an effort to offset the effects of gravity and increase the musket’s range, the regulars tended to fire high. At the North Bridge, many of them fired too high.
    Militiaman Amos Barrett of Concord remembered that “their balls whistled well.” Isaac Davis’s brother Ezekiel’s head was grazed when a bullet passed through his hat. Virtually the same thing happened to Joshua Brooks of Lincoln. The many high, slashing wounds prompted one militiaman to conclude that “the British were firing jack-knives.”
    But some of the regulars had better aim. A ball that passed under the arm of Lieutenant Colonel Robinson grazed the side of fifer Luther Blanchard before it hit the Concord minuteman Jonas Brown. Acton private Abner Hosmer was shot through the face and killed instantly. Captain Isaac Davis, marching in the front row beside Major Buttrick and Lieutenant Colonel Robinson, was hit in the chest, and the musket ball, which may have driven a shirt button through an artery and out his back, opened up a gush of blood that extended at least ten feet behind him, drenching David Forbush and Thomas Thorp and covering the stones in front of the North Bridge with a slick of gore.
    Captain David Brown had never uttered a profanity in his life, but when he realized that the regulars were firing with deadly intent, he could not help himself. “God damn them,” he cried, “they are firing balls!”
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    Reverend William Emerson’s house was on the east side of the river and overlooked the bridge. Just as Punkatasset Hill had become a gathering point for the women and children of Concord, so had his parsonage attracted a large number of the town’s inhabitants. He’d spent much of the morning attending to these people—until his wife had huffily tapped on the windowpane and motioned for him to come inside and pay attention to
her
.
    By the time the militiamen began to march toward the North Bridge, Emerson had walked from his house toward the river. When the first shots were fired, he was closer to the regulars than the nearest provincials, which meant that he had a clear view of the devastating volley that killed Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer.
    A month before, on March 13, Emerson had delivered a sermon in which he assured his parishioners that “a consciousness of having acted up to the principles of our religion . . . when we go forth to battle will be a most comfortable antidote against fear and cowardice, and serve to stimulate us to the most heroic actions.” He believed every word of that sermon but still could not help but wonder how these farmers and artisans would respond to the volley. Later, he admitted to his fellow clergyman William Gordon that he was “very uneasy until he found that the fire was returned.”
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    Major John Buttrick leaped into the air and cried, “Fire, fellow soldiers, for God’s sake fire!” According to Thaddeus Blood, “The cry of fire, fire was made from front to rear. The fire was almost simultaneous with the cry.”
    Lieutenant Sutherland and the men on the British left flank soon discovered that they were dreadfully exposed to the