AAR: Lexington Green Patriot's Day Reenactment 4/18/2011

[mike93lx]

I've lived 30 minutes from Lexington and Concord my entire life and this was my first year at the reenactment.    After seeing the practice a couple weeks ago during the Fred AIBC, I decided that if I could make it, that I had to go.

I don't know how, but I managed to drag my fiance out of bed at 4:15am and we hit the road at 4:45.  The number of people on Lexington Green was inspiring.  It was interesting listening to people talk about the events of April 19th...especially all of the comments about "The British are coming!"  Just shows that we need to keep reaching out and educating Americans, but at least many are making an effort.

We weren't able to get very close (maybe 15 feet from the Green's edge), but we were close to Jonathan Harrington's home.  We were too far for any good pictures, but we did get to see a lot of the action.

I really enjoyed building up the action for my fiance and everyone around me that was interested.  I think that it really added a lot to the experience for the people that didn't really know what was going on.

There are parts of the history that certainly hit me hard (especially the story and sacrifices of Samuel Prescott and Lydia Mulliken), but there was something about seeing the First Strike unfurl in front of me that nearly brought me to tears.  Seeing Johnathan Harrington crawl back to his home while his wife looked out the window was powerful.  The "Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!" and the victory volley both angered me and made me glad that they wasted a valuable shot.

The reenactors but so much energy and spirit into what they do.  If you have the opportunity to see this (and many of the other events over the couple weeks leading up to Patriot's Day), please take advantage of it.  Just make sure that you get there early 

http://www.battleroad.org/
http://www.bostoncentral.com/events/patriots_day_battle_reenactment_lexington/p1158.php

[Sprocket]

Nice write up Mike

Anyone that sees even the practice session will drop the word "huzza" in a heartbeat.