Free Fusiliers by Mark Urban Page A

Hill.
    Many more British soldiers ascending the slope went down with that distinctive slap of bullet hitting body, some in silence, others with a scream of anguish. Prescott’s men in the fort saw the marines and others under Pigot heading towards them. Once again the redcoats did not plough on regardless but began to open fire with musketry as they neared the top. ‘Finding our ammunition was almost spent,’ wrote Colonel Prescott, ‘I commanded a cessation till the enemy advanced within 30 yards when we gave them such a hot fire, that they wereobliged to retire nearly 150 yards before they could rally and come again to the attack.’
    Lieutenant Waller was one of the Marines on the receiving end of this unequal firefight. Seeing his men throwing away their shots at an entrenched enemy, he tried at first, bellowing above the cacophony, to improve their aim but soon gave up: Waller realised that ‘at length half mad with standing in this situation’ they must push on, the 47th forming ‘upon our left in order that we might advance to the enemy with our bayonets without firing’.
    On the other side of the hill, British troops had reached the corner where the flèches met the breastwork. Some men who had mounted these works were shot down and repulsed, leaving the majority pressed flat on the ground just a few feet from the Americans on the other side of the earthworks. One officer of the 52nd explained: ‘As soon as we got up to the works we were not nearly so much exposed to their fire as we were then in some degree covered.’
    Having got to the very lip of the American works, the redcoats stayed in cover, unwilling to try their chances with the metal flying overhead. Only the officers would stand and scramble up to the top of the embankment. Captain Harris of the 5th, twice encouraging the men to follow him, felt the sickening sensation of finding himself alone. ‘[I] was ascending a third time, when a ball grazed the top of my head, and I fell deprived of sense and motion.’ Harris was caught with his head wound by Lord Francis Rawdon, a lieutenant in his regiment. Rawdon got four men to carry Harris away from the fight: leaving cover to go downhill proved as dangerous as going forward, three of the casualty-bearers being wounded.
    Rawdon summoned up his courage and, exhorting his men to follow, stood up and pushed on. He got a bullet through his cap, but fortunately not his skull. Some men, at least, followed him. The American defences were crumbling as the first brave attackers scrambled over their ramparts.
    On the other side of the hill, the Marines had finally pushed forward too. But whereas those on Rawdon’s side conquered the breastwork, Waller’s men entered the main work. ‘I cannot pretend to describe the horror of the scene within the redoubt when we entered it,’ Waller wrote home, ‘ ’twas streaming with blood and strewed with dead and dying men the soldiers stabbing some and dashing out the brains of others.’
    The few dozen Americans who had remained inside until the lastminute fled out of the back, redcoats trying to bayonet them or taking potshots as they went. It was here, just behind the redoubt, that Major General Warren was killed. Taking his place alongside Prescott earlier that morning, the preacher turned soldier had said he was there ‘to let those damned rascals see that the Yankees will fight’. He had made his point.
    With militiamen streaming back across the neck, the British mopped up, chasing their enemies from one fence or wall to another as they withdrew. It was dusk as the redcoats began digging in, the Charlestown peninsula behind them strewn with casualties. The British had lost 226 dead and about 900 wounded – there was particular shock at the loss among officers, nineteen killed and seventy wounded. American casualties amounted to about half those of the redcoats.
     
    In their official dispatches, messages for public consumption, the British tried to make the