Between Concord and Breed's Hill ...

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Sergeant Andrews sat up, gasping. A bad dream lingered, musket smoke in the trees, blood on the road, his friends dying all around him, a young beautiful woman her, arms soaked in blood to the elbows, offering him bread ...

"Jaysus!"

Corporal Holloway stirred beside him. Andrews looked over at his friend, saying a silent prayer of thanks that Tom had made it through. Holloway, his thick hair tousled and filthy with dirt and powder smoke, opened his eyes.

"Dreaming again, Sarge?"

"Aye."

Andrews stood up, stretching, he wasn't as young as he used to be, getting close to 50 as near as he could reckon.

He'd made it through Braddock's campaign in '55, had been nearby when General Braddock's corpse had been buried in secret, no one wanting the savages of the forest to dig him up and desecrate the body. He'd been a young man standing on the Plains of Abraham in '59, he'd seen the corpse of General Wolfe carried from the field. In all, he'd seen too much.

The horror of the march back from Concord was nothing like that on the Monongahela, but somehow worse. There it had been natives and Frenchmen killing them, now it was their fellow Englishmen. For Andrews considered them so, he'd been in America for a long time now, they dressed like Englishmen, for the most part, and they talked like Englishmen. It was akin to being attacked by a member of the family.

"Sarge?"

Rolling his head from side to side, getting the kinks out of his neck and back, he looked at Holloway, "You're awfully chatty this morning."

"Did yesterday really happen, Allen?"

"Yeah, Tommy, it did, it happened. I wonder what's next?"

Seamus McTeague sat at the kitchen table, his grandmother had prepared a meal for him. He had spent the night of the 19th in the fields close to Boston, he had seen the mighty British Army stagger back to the protection of the guns of the Royal Navy, his company had pursued no further.

Early on the morning of the 20th he and his mates had been roused and sent back towards Lexington. The locals were recovering their dead for burial in their churchyards, the fallen redcoats were buried in pits beside the road, one to four men in each hole.

It was as if the British column, in its flight from Concord had shed men like a dog sheds fur in the spring. A dead man here, two there, a lot of wounded as well. The locals treated the wounded soldiers no differently than they treated their own wounded. Though the militiamen tended to get treated first.

His grandfather wasn't speaking to him, he'd told the old man about witnessing his father's death, Angus had stormed off, he needed to see that for himself. Upon his return he had looked once at his grandson, then turned away, his face pale.

"I didn't kill him, Gran, why's he so angry at me?"

"It's not you he's mad at, Seamus. But your Da' was the last of your Gran'da's sons, your uncles died when they were but wee lads, and you're an only child. With your Da' gone, and this war starting, your Gran'da thinks it's the end of his line. He's not angry so much as sad. And not a bit terrified as well."

Seamus nodded, then said, "I'm to report back to my company tomorrow, Friday I guess."

"You guess?"

"Yeah, my day's are all jumbled up now, happens when you don't sleep."

"Aye, now finish up your food, go wash your face and hands then it's off to bed wi' ye."

"Aye, Gran. I will."

More than a month had passed, it was now late May. Reinforcements had arrived to bring British strength in and around Boston up to around 6,000 men. But the militia had massed outside Boston, rumor had it that there were near 20,000 militiamen out there. The town was effectively under siege, but more due to inaction on the British side than anything else.

Three new generals had arrived with the reinforcements, Clinton, Howe, and Burgoyne. They were itching to break out of Boston and teach the colonials a lesson. As General Burgoyne had allegedly said, "We need room to stretch out, we need to push these rabble away from the city."

Andrews shook his head as his new captain related that to him, "Sir, those lads out there may not dress as nice as us, may not fight in neat lines like us, but they do know how to fight. We'd have a chance if they stayed out in the open, but behind a wall, or a tree, they're tough to kill."

Captain Roderick Mims laughed, "Ah Sergeant, I fear you've been too long here in the colonies. Once we get organized and get everyone healthy after that dreadful sea voyage, then we shall scatter the colonials to the four winds."

Andrews sighed, then nodded, "Whatever you say, Sir. I'm just a simple sergeant."

Mims smirked, "Quite."

Back at the bivouac he'd related his conversation with their new commander to Holloway.

"Howe? William Howe? Brother of Admiral Howe?" Holloway had asked.

"The very same, brother to George Howe as well."

"Don't know the man."

"Died in the last war, killed near Ticonderoga. The best of the three brothers I always heard, now we'll never know."

The British Army in Boston awakened on the morning of the 17th of June to discover that the colonists surrounding the town had been busy. They had raised an earthwork on Breed's Hill across the Charles River next to Charlestown.

Though General Clinton had noticed the works being prepared in the night, he couldn't convince either General Gage or General Howe to prepare an immediate attack for when the sun rose.

One British ship, the Lively had opened fire on the works around 4:00 AM, but an angry Admiral Graves, commanding the naval forces around Boston, had told them to cease fire. He hadn't ordered such a thing, desist immediately he had signaled.

General Gage, after assessing the situation, countermanded Admiral Graves and had every gun he could bring to bear, some 128 cannon, open fire on the colonial earthwork. Orders went out to muster the troops, they would go in shortly.

As they marched to the waterfront, Corporal Holloway expressed the opinion that the last time they'd taken a boat out of Boston, the colonials had torn them to red ribbons. Now they were dug in on a hill above them.

"I don't like this, Sarge."

"Neither do I, Tommy, but we took the King's shilling and it's time to pay the piper, so to speak."

"At least we're bombarding the bastards first." Holloway remarked.

Andrews didn't have the heart to point out that much of the gunfire was having no effect on the works, the range was either too long, or the elevation of the hill wouldn't let the guns elevate high enough to hit the works up there.

But like his friend, Sergeant Allen Andrews of His Britannic Majesty's grenadiers also had a bad feeling about this. A scant two months from the battles around Concord and Lexington and they were about to have another go at the colonials.

He remembered telling his captain how tough the colonials were with cover to their front. He shuddered at the thought of it.

Time to say a little prayer he thought, as the sailors began pulling on their oars to take them over to Charlestown neck. He noticed as well that the heat was building.

It's going to be a hot day, Sergeant Andrews thought, in more ways than one.