Minuteman

The Battle

    "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!" Colonel William Prescott thunders behind me. My hands shake as I check the gunpowder in my musket for the umpteenth time. Like a debuting actor pacing back and forth before the curtains part, I prepare myself to be blinded by the lights.
​"This looks like the end, Thomas," says Jonathon Baker beside me as twenty two hundred British troops march toward Bunker Hill and the streets of Boston behind me, "It's been a good run and the best I can hope for is a good death. I just hope I can take off Howe's head first."
​We crouch behind the earthen walls we constructed over the past few days. I recount the few musket balls left, each holding the life of a redcoat. I glance around at the 1,000 militiamen in my company. Every man is clearly nervous, fidgeting, as a sea of red and black begins to appear on the horizon. We are outnumbered and badly. They know it. We know it. The world knows it. This is not a war we can win, but I'll be damned before I lay down my weapon willingly. Those people took our right to freedom so we fight to regain that which we deserve.
​Thump. Thump. Thump. They march together. The strongest army on Earth marches. Thump. Thump. Thump. My heart races, the ground shakes. Thump. Thump. Thump.
​"Hold!" shouts Prescott, "Hold!" We watch as the redcoats march over our land toward our loved ones, their crimson uniforms stained with innocent blood of Patriots. My eyes rise to meet my foes; a young man, a boy, no older than I, eyes wild with anticipation and fear.
​The word 'Fire!' is screamed behind me as I pull the trigger, absorbing the kickback, as a bullet screams out from the barrel of my gun and buries itself in the gut of my adversary. He falls. I reload. Another redcoat falls. Beside me a man is hit. Chaos. Gunshots. Praying. Finally, the blessed words, "Retreat! All troops pull back!" The British fall back, quickly escaping our short range, regrouping.
​I collapse, sweating, my musket in my lap, gunpowder on my hands, exhausted.
​"Twelve," pants Baker, "I got twelve." He smacks the ground beside him, "I can't believe I missed on the ninth shot, that redcoat deserved to die." Jonathon hates the Brits more than anyone I know; he once told me while drunk that his family was murdered, and his town burned to the ground by some British troops. He and his sister escaped and moved to Boston. He is a large part of why I fight. It's stories like his that has men sleeping with guns beside them, ready to sacrifice their lives to our cause.
I glance warily at the regrouping soldiers preparing for a third charge and look down at what has become the machinated extension of my arm. Three little metal spheres rest in my free hand. Three shots. Three Brits. I look around and see my brothers counting lives.  I see Prescott muttering. We can win this battle. We can win this war. We have the will. We have the drive. The only thing we lack is ammunition.
"Prepare for attack!," he bellows as the soldiers once again begin to march. I raise my gun and make sure my bayonet is secure, ready for an honorable death.
We fire as the British begin their attack and once again, their front line falls to our gunfire. We try to hold off the second wave but are quickly overwhelmed, guns empty. Ruby raindrops fall, plucked rose petals falling to mingle with the dust. Sticky droplets harden against the revealed skin above my socks.  My heart screams dreading to find out to whom the precious ichor belongs.  However, fate has other plans for me today as the answer comes before I'm ready; beside me Jon falls to one knee with a groan.
"Fall back!" yells the Colonel, "Retreat!" His calls are quickly echoed throughout the makeshift fort. The men quickly leave their posts, living to fight another day. I grasp Jonathon, as though my life depended on it, not his.
"Let's go, Jon," I scream, putting his arm around my neck to aid his retreat.
"No," he gasps, "This is it for me."
Blood drips from Jon's leg onto my britches. He props himself up, balancing on his good leg, musket and bayonet in hand. The bravest man in the world ready to take on an army alone, willing to die if he can protect the lives of those he loves by taking as many enemies as he can to the grave with him. A hero such as this is not the kind of man who ought to die alone.
I step back and twirl my bayonet.
"I bet I can take down more than you can," I challenge him with a grin.
"In your dreams," he grimaces, his weapon sinking to the ground, ever clutched in his weakening hands.
                                            ***
Thomas and Jonathon turn toward the oncoming redcoats resigned to their fates, more than happy to fulfill them.
If this battle is to teach this young nation anything, it's that our war is one that we can win. Many more Brits fell today than Patriots and more will assuredly fall. Falling and falling, an ever further falling, a bottomless pit. But as they fall, we rise: For freedom. For justice. And for each other. We fight together, one nation under God, willing to die in order to live.