DOM and Menotomy, Cont'd - The Bloodiest Half-Mile

[Kaylee]

Continued from  Dangerous Old Men and Mother Batherick - Menotomy, A Vistor's Guide
   Part I
   Part II
   Part III




It is approaching 5PM. We near the town center, buildings are now close around the main column. This place will come to be known as the bloodiest half mile of the whole day. Ahead on the right is a classic New England farmhouse. Like any of hundreds in the region - except this one is being fortified [E].



Jason Russell is 59 years old. He is gamey in one leg, and is hard at work stacking wooden shingles along his stone wall, building a firing position. Soon he is joined by some of the Minutemen pouring in from the surrounding town. The young men from Danvers surround him, helping to raise his defenses.


The British are in sight now, rapidly coming into the range of the colonial's fowling pieces.


Ammi Cutter - one of the Dangerous Old Men who captured the wagon this afternoon - sees the activity, and rushes to his neighbor's side, easily in sight of the advancing army. Ammi pleads with Russell to abandon this position.

It is too close to the road - it will be quickly overrun! To stay here is suicide!

"A man's home is his castle" replies a defiant Russell. He will not be moved.

Ammi nods, leaving him to his decision, and runs back across the road in the very face of the army. In the process, he is hit. He manages to stumble out of the road, falling beside a stone wall.  Miraculously, he is taken for dead, and unmolested as the British pass by.


On the southerly side of the road, in the yard around Jason Russell's farmhouse, it is a different matter. One old man and a crowd of militia take their stand. The sound of thousands of marching feet, of shots and screams and fire fill their ears. They fix their positions, take steady aim on the main column, and await hell.



... and hell comes.


You will recall that I told you to pay attention, when at the Foot of the Rocks Percy split off his fresh troops to form flanking parties.

Those parties have been parallelling the main column - and now they have Jason Russell and the Danvers Minutemen pinned, trapped between the professional light infantry and main column.


In moments, the colonial resistance is rolled up. The young men flee for the only shelter their panicked minds can find - Jason Russell's farmhouse. Mr. Russel himself runs with them - but he is slowed by his crippled leg, and the pursuing troops are on him just as he reaches the door.

He is shot as he reaches the doorway, and dies transfixed by their bayonets on the threshhold of his own home. Soldier's boots leap over him, hounds after foxes.



Inside it is  a horror show. Pouring through the front door in a panic, the Danvers men were set with a choice. Which way to go? Some turn left, fleeing into the kitchen. Others tear straight ahead up the stairs.

The ones who take to the stairs soon find themselves trapped - cornered in the upper rooms of the home. Behind them come the enraged redcoats, bayonets already slick and hungry.



Down below in the kitchen, the roof shakes with the stamp of boots, the crash of furniture, and screams of dying men.

And then silence.




Those Danvers men who had instead turned left at that fatal staircase flee to ground, diving through a door into a small cellar. Behind them comes a redcoat - he is no sooner silhouetted in that doorway than fire meets him below. The remaining soldiers back away from the cellar door, leaving be the few men remaining in the dark.




Two colonials yet remain in the kitchen, alone with an army. Where to run? One leaps for a window, crashing through - but is fatally cut open on the glass. The last man left leaps after him through the shattered window, running fast as he can the south. He will somehow manage to survive this day, his clothes tattered with holes from the shots fired after him.

Outside, the column continues on - the surviving British soldiers edge back out of Mrs. Russell's kitchen, muskets trained on that cellar doorway. They don't stop to fire this home.

And then they continue on through town. The bloody half mile has only begun.

[Two Wolves]

CHILLING------

[Barbie]

Very well told and laid out with the photographs... definetely worth sharing.

[Johnnyappleseed]

Very good 
thanx for posting .

I will use it ,although i will be difficult for me to replace the photo's with imagery