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Hole in the Wall

Started by Kaylee, March 31, 2012, 11:57:43 PM

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Kaylee

I would like you to imagine something with me.

I would like you to imagine that you are standing in your kitchen, preparing a simple dinner.
And while you're standing there cutting vegetables, your eyes drift up again to the spot.

That spot. Every house has them - those scars of documented memory in wood and plaster that show a life was lived in these walls.

Maybe it's a scratched up door where an overeager dog always begs to go out, or maybe it's the pencil marks on the doorframe marking the growth of your children.
But every day, you see them. And every day, those spots call back a memory.

This house has them too.
And this spot?

This spot is a hole.
Right up there, by the entryway.

It's about the size of a man's thumb, and if you lived in this house, you would see that hole every day of your life.

And every day, you would remember - that's from the day Jason Russell was murdered.


April 19, 1775.


If you were Elizabeth Russel, his widow -  you would spend the last ten years of your long life in that same house.

Every time you walked through the front door, you would step over the spot where he was shot, then bayoneted.

Every time you took fresh linens to the bedrooms, you'd see the bullet holes in the stair steps.

And every time you stood in the kitchen, you'd look up and see - that spot.

And you would know the very floor you're standing on was once covered with corpses, Colonial and British war dead alike.
Your husband was one of them.

You'd have written that when you walked in your kitchen that night, the blood came to your ankles.




I think most every man has at one time or another asked himself what would I do, if Tyranny knocked on my  door.
Many have thought about it... some harder than others.


But Jason Russel is one of the very few men in this nation who has had to answer that question.

An Englishman's home is his castle, he said that day.

He was warned to leave.

He refused.

And on that day, he died.






The kitchen is still there.
You can still stand at that kitchen table.
And look up.
And see the spot.




Jason Russell's house still stands in Arlington Massachusetts, right off Battle Road.
It's been moved around since 1775, and been added onto in the intervening years.
But in that picture, you're standing in the kitchen. Out that door you see an entryway - in the middle of that foyer you see just beyond is where the front door used to be.
That spot - right there - where Jason Russel died, with shot and eleven bayonet wounds in his body.

In the foreground you see a closed door. That's the cellar, where a half dozen militiamen took shelter from the British flankers.


The floorboards were replaced in the 1860's. The story is that when that was done, the original flooring still bore the bloodstains from the dead piled in this room after the battle.









(crossposted, Mods may wish to move/close the duplicate. My apologies)

grunt soldier

very well written and it really makes you think. 
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"When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home." - Chief Aupumut (1725), Mohican.

Chainsaw

Yes...  Yes, I do think I'll be stealing that...
Tom Scheller

Domari Nolo

Josey Wales


..This is the kind of stuff we need more of.........Nice Job.............

.......Strength & Honor............Josey Wales................
..to hell with them fellows, buzzards gotta eat same as worms..

TBE

This gives me chills.  I will use it, thank you. 
Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.  General Washington, July 2, 1776

Sly223

More impact to the story! I have heard it many times, I like this rendition!
"Smoakin'2" IBC11/12
"Plattka 3-12"(IBC)FL
What have you done for this program lately?
IBC-Tampa 8,'10
RBC-"Myakka12'10"RCR
C-1, Do-1, Teach many!
"Run all you want, you'll just die tired"!
There is U.S. & there is Dems!

hawkhavn

Kaylee,

Once again, thank you.
Last Sunday I stood in that kitchen and looked at those walls, floor and ceiling. Down those cellar stairs.
You captured it perfectly.

Hawkhavn
Criticism is the only known antidote to error.  David Brin

What a nation has done, a nation can aspire to.
Dr. Jerry Pournelle

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."
---Robert Anson Heinlein

"Great things have been effected by a few men well conducted." - George Rogers Clark

"Appleseed is a safe place to learn because they care. They have the confidence and serenity of spring gardeners." 1IV on AR15.com

Sly223

I used it in Clermont last weekend and it choked me up!
I've told it dozens of times but not from that perspective!
"Smoakin'2" IBC11/12
"Plattka 3-12"(IBC)FL
What have you done for this program lately?
IBC-Tampa 8,'10
RBC-"Myakka12'10"RCR
C-1, Do-1, Teach many!
"Run all you want, you'll just die tired"!
There is U.S. & there is Dems!

Stuart

Nicely done,  thank you for posting that perspective.

AimeePatton

Bring a real since of sacrafice from the ones left behind.  Wonderful and chilling.

Wy Knott

"I have no respect for a man hoo can only spell a word one way"
-Andrew Jackson
I love you goose- you brought cookies and sharpies...what more could a person want?