Fusiliers by Mark Urban Page A

whom Howe remembered, doing their duty manfully amidst the smoke, cacophony and confusion at Bunker Hill, would have a head start over any newcomer. Captain Lieutenant Mecan was one. In the days after the battle, proving himself in the fortification of Charlestown heights, Mecan was given several assignments by the general as well as an assistant engineer’s acting title and pay.
    Captain Nisbet Balfour had also came to Howe’s notice on 17 June. He was leading the 4th Regiment’s light company in the bloody maelstrom in front of the rail fence. In the race for promotion Balfour was better placed than Mecan but well behind Rawdon. While the young peer was just twenty-one years old, Balfour was thirty. He had family connections with the landed gentry of his native Galloway in south-west Scotland but Balfour would rise through bravery, diligence and ruthlessness. The Scottish captain had carried on fighting despite being wounded at Bunker Hill and was already being entrusted with independent errands by his commanders. Nobody could have known it at the time, but Balfour’s fate would become tied to that of General Howe and indeed the Fusiliers.
    For a few weeks following the battle, the British held on to thetrenches, ditches and bastions that they had placed on Charlestown peninsula at such terrible cost. General Gage, never the most aggressive of commanders, had lost his will entirely to attack the Americans. Any idea of proceeding with the plan to drive towards Cambridge had ‘been entirely set aside’. The shock of 17 June had been too great. Instead Mecan eyed the American lines from his little fortress. The British were besieged.

 
    FIVE
     

Boston Besieged
     
    Why Lieutenant John Lenthall Bid Adieu to the 23rd
    Service on the lines offered few prospects for distinction. Instead there were hours of tedium and a small but distinct chance of ruin.
    Just after midnight, in the early hours of 27 July, Lieutenant John Lenthall of the 23rd was nearing the end of his duty and looking forward to being relieved. He and a couple of dozen Fusiliers were manning the outposts just ahead of British lines on Charlestown Neck. The guard’s job was to provide early warning of any attack and prevent rebels approaching the newly dug trenches to their rear. This particular evening was a warm summer’s one, but particularly dark. Taking advantage of the poor visibility, a party of Virginia riflemen crept towards the British posts.
    The first Lenthall knew of the danger was when the night calm was shattered by an explosion of musketry. One of his sentries had opened fire on the infiltrators. Shouting above the noise, he rallied his men into formation and ordered a volley towards a group of riflemen. It quickly became apparent that enemy parties were moving about him in large numbers, the lieutenant writing, ‘the rascals called out to us several times to surrender’.
    Fortunately for the Fusiliers, their relief appeared at this moment out of the darkness. Hastening towards the sound of shooting, the second subaltern’s party began to fire in support of Lenthall’s men. Both British and American troops took their chance to break off the night action, falling back to their respective lines. ‘Their intention was to have taken all of us prisoners,’ the Fusilier lieutenant wrote, adding it was ‘a narrow escape’, since the American party had far outnumbered them.

    The Boston siege lines
     
    Lenthall was the acting commander of the 23rd’s grenadier company. By late July he had already been in action at Lexington and Bunker Hill, where he was wounded. The twenty-five-year-old subaltern had quickly returned to his duty, unlike his captain who was still indisposed. Having been an eyewitness to the confusion of those two actions, Lenthall knew all about the defects in British discipline.
    When the army launched a raid in retaliation for the night attack of 27 July, it turned into a fiasco. Lenthall was sent ahead of British