Free Bunker Hill by Howard Fast

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