… was April 19, 1775, and that was plenty! That’s when the Regulars (both sides thought of themselves as British) retreated down Concord Road (now Massachusetts Avenue) from the Battle of Lexington and Concord. They had gone out there to seize arms stores from the restless colonials, but the locals were tipped off by fast-moving riders and mustered to meet them. The Regulars weren’t able to capture much and so retreated back towards Boston. The fiercest fighting along the way happened at the Jason Russell House in what was then called Menotomy and is now the pleasant suburb of Arlington Mass. It’s about four blocks from my house, and has been a town memorial since 1923. It’s full of bullet holes right to the present day!

This year is the 250th anniversary of this beginning of the American Revolution, so there were big re-enactments. These happen every year, and there are standard groups who replay the scene. Everyone picks a named soldier on one or the other side and dresses as accurately as possible. Townspeople in colonial garb are also present. They’ve worked out just where everyone fired and where people fell. A record number of people came in costume, and were met by record crowds. Arlington Community Media Inc captured the whole thing:

My daughter did a lot of the filming! ACMI draws on a lot of high school students for camera people.

This battle has been analyzed to death, of course, but I got an unusual impression when actually watching it. The standard story is about the rigid habits of the British infantry, marching along in close formation in their bright uniforms while the adaptable colonials used guerilla tactics against them, firing from any available cover. No wonder they lost, goes the standard line – the colonials out-smarted them.

Yet that’s not what you see here. The colonials were a ragtag bunch who knew little about fighting. The regulars flanked them by having separate platoons going through the woods on either side of the Road. The colonials thought the house provided cover, but the regulars came up behind them, shot them to bits, and then bayoneted everyone who moved. Jason Russell himself (then age 59) was killed on his doorstep. The close order marching let them fire in unison, and training let them do it quickly. Their training also let them march forever – they had already walked some 30 miles that day. The distinctive uniforms meant they could tell who was on their side, and could kill anyone else.

In a word, they were terrifying. When you saw the regulars coming, you got the hell out of the way. The colonials outnumbered them three to one, but couldn’t stop them from getting to Concord or from beating a fairly orderly retreat. About the most they could do was tell the King that they really, really didn’t want his rule any more. It was only because of the punitive regime of General Thomas Gage that it had come to this. He returned to Britain afterwards in disgrace.

After this battle the colonials laid siege to the city of Boston, which were the worst 11 months in its 400-year history. People starved and froze. The city then had only narrow land routes to it, (which was the reason it was there in the first place) and those were easily cut off. The Royal Navy attempted to supply it by sea, but privateers harassed them constantly. There was only one other serious battle, that of Bunker Hill, which was a Pyrrhic victory for the British. When Henry Knox brought stolen cannons to Dorchester Heights overlooking the city, it became impossible to stay, and the British cleared out in days.

The bitterness over this war lasted for a long time! In Arlington itself the dead among the regulars were buried in an unmarked mass grave. It wasn’t until last year, 2024, that the town put up a marker for them:

In the two and a half centuries since, nothing else of this import has happened, for which all of Arlington’s citizens are grateful!