The First American Army Read Online Free PDF

into taking their post with half a pint of aniseed water, a popular liquid.
    The British shot cannonballs at the Americans, too, but most of these did little damage. The cannon fire intrigued the young teenaged soldiers. Greenwood recalled, “The British were constantly sending bombs at us, and sometimes from two to six at a time could be seen in the air overhead, looking like moving stars in the heavens. These shells were mostly thirteen inches in diameter and it was astonishing how high they could send such heavy things. I have often seen them strike the ground when it was frozen, and bounce up and down like a foot-ball and again, falling on marshy land, they would bury themselves from ten to twelve feet in it.”
    Greenwood knew men who dug the shells, now with burned-out fuses, from the ground, ripped the fuses off, and poured the powder that was inside into kegs for musket use. Once a British cannonball arced through the night sky and landed right in front of a building housing Greenwood and about two hundred other men. One of Greenwood’s teenaged friends in his company, Private Shubael Rament, seventeen, saw it coming through the air. He raced from the door of the building into the yard, stopping it as it rolled along the ground, and managed to pull the fuse out before it went off, saving the lives of the men inside.

Chapter Four

MOTHER AND SON REUNION
    T he problems of the commander in chief and the Continental Congress were far from the mind of John Greenwood, who reenlisted. His major problem was finding a way to sneak into Boston to locate his parents, especially his mother, whom he had seen just briefly on the morning of the Bunker Hill battle when she had shrieked at him to run away.
    Greenwood’s efforts to see her again, and to reunite with his father, were thwarted because of the travel prohibitions. What the teenaged soldier did not realize, however, was that his mother was right there in Cambridge. On the day before Bunker Hill, when he last saw her, Mrs. Greenwood had obtained a pass from the British to visit the American camp to search for her son, whom she heard had recently arrived. She took hidden money with her to pay anyone she could find to serve in Greenwood’s place as a substitute. Terrified that her son would be killed or wounded, she intended to talk her youngster into going back to Falmouth, where he could stay with his uncle and where he would be safe.
    Mrs. Greenwood had not returned to Boston after the battle of Bunker Hill because of the chaos and new travel restrictions, this time imposed by the Americans. She had actually been living in Cambridge for six weeks, at a friend’s home, and spent her days there in sheer misery because men in the army had told her that they knew for a fact that her son had been killed at Bunker Hill in one of the ferocious British assaults. The few inquiries she had made turned up no sign of her son and, relying on information from soldiers she considered to be well informed, she drifted into prolonged mourning.
    In mid-July, however, Mrs. Greenwood met Sergeant John Mills of Connecticut, who told her that her son was very much alive and living on the other side of Charlestown. An hour later, John Greenwood wrote, he was standing in front of his tent, staring out at the camp, when he heard joyful screams nearby. He wrote, “Who should I see but my mother, coming toward me in the company of Sergeant Mills.”
    An emotional reunion of mother and son followed, but Mrs. Greenwood could not stay. She had managed to obtain a pass from General Washington himself to return home to Boston earlier that day and had to leave right away. Mrs. Greenwood walked to Bunker Hill, where she was admitted to the fort after showing her pass, and was then introduced to a British officer, Major John Small, whom she told friends was quite friendly. She was transported to her home and then she asked Small to take her to see General Gage.
    It is unknown why she wanted to see Gage.