My column

As you can see, I’ve rather neglected this blog over the past few months. The problem is I don’t seem to have time, I’m always writing a novel or sometimes two and my weekly column in the Putnam Herald newspaper takes time to research and write so there just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day.

It’s the newspaper column that has prompted this post. I receive frequent emails from readers and twice lately people have asked if I could put my articles on a blog so they could let friends and relatives who don’t get the Herald read them.

I’m always happy to give readers what they want if I can and so here is the first of these articles. My editor used the headline, First Three Soldiers Killed in American Revolution. I simply called it April Morning.

This week marks the 244^th anniversary of the deaths of Thomas Smith, Patrick Gray, and James Hall. These men were not rich and they were not famous. Almost certainly they were not well educated, they did nothing outstanding and the only reason that history remembers their names is because they died.

They probably came from the county of Lancashire, in north-west England, and met their ends on a bridge more than three thousand miles from their homes.

So, who were these men and why did they die? They were soldiers, red-coated privates in the light company of the British 4^th, King’s Own, Regiment of Foot. The year was 1775 and their regiment, along with three thousand other soldiers, was stationed in the port of Boston.

They were not welcome guests. The Province of Massachusetts Bay, as it was then known, was considered to be in a state of rebellion and tensions were running high between the army and the citizens.

Things came to a head when, on April 14, Thomas Gage, the royal governor, received orders from the parliament in London to disarm the people, to seize all military stores and to imprison the patriot leaders.

He was told that Massachusetts was sending messages to other colonies asking for support and so he decided to act swiftly. Orders were drawn up for an expedition to capture military equipment that was said to be hidden in the town of Concord. Lt. Colonel Francis Smith was to command and he ordered the grenadier and light infantry companies from 11 regiments to be mustered on Boston Common late in the evening of April 18^th.  Privates Smith, Gray and Hall were among those who were awakened and who marched across the Common to the water’s edge where the Royal Navy’s boats were to ferry them across to Cambridge.

The expedition was badly organized. Our three soldiers found there were not enough boats, they had to wait and when they finally boarded one it was so crowded they could not sit down. On top of that, when they reached the opposite shore they were off-loaded into waist-deep cold water at midnight.

That wasn’t the end of the problems. It took two hours to unload the expedition’s equipment and it was well after two a.m. before they began marching in wet boots toward Lexington where, because of the delays, the alarm had already been raised..

They reached the town at about five o’clock in the morning and our three soldiers’ company was there on the green when someone fired a shot, the British redcoats lost control, returned fire and several of the Lexington militia were killed.

Order was restored and, instead of following the wisest course and returning to Boston, Colonel Smith ordered his column on to Concord.

 By now the countryside was thoroughly alerted. Local militia had gathered in the town and their numbers were continually increasing as companies from more distant places joined them. Despite the skirmish at Lexington they didn’t seek to engage the redcoats but were ordered to hold their fire and they withdrew to a hill top north of the town to watch what was happening.

Smith now ordered part of his force to search Concord while dispatching several companies of light infantry to look for military stores on a farm to the north. This latter column had to cross the Concord River via what was called the “North Bridge”. It was here that the militia force, gathered on the hill, could overlook the crossing and so it was decided to leave three companies to guard the bridge in case they decided to threaten it. One of these was the light company of the 4^th Foot and among them were the three men from Lancashire.

The British troops in the town found some gun carriages and other stores that they were ordered to burn. Smoke rose from among the houses and the militia on the hill thought the redcoats were burning their homes. They began to move down the slope toward the bridge.

Seeing this, the British office in command of the three light companies guarding the crossing ordered his men to form a narrow column and withdraw across the bridge to the town side. The light company of the 4^th was in the front of this formation as the militia continued to advance until the two sides were only about fifty yards apart, with the bridge between them.

By now the British troops were exhausted, they’d not slept all night, they’d been wet through, had marched twenty miles carrying heavy equipment and were now facing around five times their number of heavily armed militia. Whether by accident or intent one of them, a man from the 43^rd regiment, fired a shot and immediately two more followed suit. Thinking the order to fire had been given, those at the head of the British column fired a volley and two of the militia were killed.

That was the moment when the famous “the shot heard around the world” was fired. The militia returned fire and Thomas Smith, Patrick Gray, and James Hall fell dead on the bridge.

The British were to suffer a further 297 casualties that day and many thousands more over the next eight years before the Revolutionary War ended but these three are remembered because they were the first British soldiers to die. One of them now lies beneath a monument in the centre of Concord, while the other two are together in a well-maintained grave beneath a tree on the west side of the North Bridge, casualties of the first small step that eventually founded this nation.