Band of Giants: The Amateur Soldiers Who Won America's Independence by Jack Kelly

enjoyed close ties to the royal family. Like Washington he was tall and had bad teeth. Unlike the American commander, he was a hedonist who flaunted his taste for soft living and a pliant mistress. The forty-five-year-old Henry Clinton was a suspicious, closed-mouthed man with bushy black eyebrows who played the violin and described himself as a “shy bitch.” The son of a former royal governor of New York, Clinton knew America from his childhood and took a more severe view of the rebellion than Howe did. John Burgoyne, the oldest of the group at fifty-three, brought with him a reputation as a gay blade, a gambler, a successful playwright, and an experienced commander.
    The generals were astounded to find the army bottled up in a cul de sac. They had been sent from London to evaluate the tense situation in the colonies before word of the uprising had arrived there. As they surveyed the scene, they saw that the heights to the north and south had to be fortified if the troops were to break out and rout the rebels. In mid-June General Gage, still in overall command, prepared to occupy the Charlestown peninsula. He would use it as a base to move against the rebel camp at Cambridge. Later he would turn his attention to Dorchester, mop up resistance at Roxbury, and finish putting down the rebellion.
    Before the attack could get underway, the rebels, led by General Putnam, rushed from Cambridge to occupy Bunker and Breed’s Hill themselves. A large, cool-headed northern Massachusetts farmer, Colonel William Prescott, helped Putnam solidify the gains. Through the night, their men dug trenches and erected a redoubt on Breed’s Hill. In the morning, they stared defiantly from behind their breastworks.
    General Gage could not allow this affront to stand. The next day, a hot Saturday, June 17, guns in Boston and on the warships in the harbor began to heave cannonballs and exploding bombs at the rebel’s hastily constructed fortifications. That afternoon, General Howe and three thousand redcoats crossed from Boston to the peninsula, where they prepared to brush aside their opponents and occupy the heights.
    Confusion reigned among the Americans. The chain of command was unclear; units marched in the wrong direction; desperately needed supplies and reinforcements went astray. Dressed in his shirtsleeves, the energetic Putnam, known as “Old Put,” rode frantically here and there, trying to organize the men who milled idly on Bunker Hill, well behind the American line.
    John Stark arrived with five hundred of his men at the narrow neck that separated the Charlestown peninsula from the mainland. He found the air alive with fire from British floating batteries. Stark strolled calmlyforward into the killing zone, ordering his men to follow. Captain Henry Dearborn, marching into his first battle, urged him to hurry. Stark, “with a look peculiar to himself,” observed that “one fresh man in action is worth ten fatigued ones.” 6 They proceeded across at a deliberate pace. When he reached the battlefield, Stark suspected that Howe would try to force his way past the rail fence on the American left. Although manned by rebel musketmen, the fence did not quite reach to the edge of the Mystic River. He ordered his men to reinforce the end of the fence line and to build a protective stone wall on the beach. He set a stake in the mud forty yards in front of their position to mark the spot where his men would first fire on the advancing British.
    There was a brief hesitation before the fight began in earnest, a moment of “supremely agonizing suspense.” Unaccustomed to combat, the Americans felt their bowels churn and icy sweat flash across their skin. The scene “seemed unreal.” 7
    At three-thirty on a sweltering afternoon, the first pitched battle of the Revolutionary War began. Grenadiers and scarlet-clad British infantrymen marched forward in lines, moving step by step toward the tense patriots. “They looked too handsome to be