The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [168]
The British troops fired volley after volley into the Rhode Islanders at the same time that their five cannon shelled the regiment, explosions erupting throughout the area near the bridge, cutting the Americans down in a near-slaughter. Greenman, in the thick of the fight and surrounded by the smoke, wrote of the British artillery pieces that “they leveled them at our regiment and by this time their infantry was not more than a musket shot from us and advancing very fast for the bridge. Their troops [were] Jaegers [Hessians] and advanced for the brook and each flank which they soon gained. The musketry at the same time playing very smartly on the bridge. They being also far superior in number, they crossed it.”
The Rhode Islanders’ bold but costly stand at the Rahway—they lost one quarter of their men—had held up what had been the fast-moving British army for a precious forty minutes and gave Generals Maxwell and Greene time to bolster their defenses as thousands of New Jersey militia arrived, some having marched four hours to the battle. The newly arrived and well-organized militia from around the state, totaling five thousand and eager for a fight, joined the Continentals in lines in the woods behind the Rahway and waited for the British.
The Second Rhode Island was ordered to fall back from the bridge. The span’s wooden planks were now splintered and shot up with cannon firing and musket balls and drenched in the blood of men from both sides. As the Americans retreated, the British had splashed through the waist deep water and swarmed around the American right flank. They were soon right on top of the Rhode Islanders. “Our left wing fought them on a retreat at every fence knoll,” wrote Greenman of the heated battle that morning.
As the Rhode Islanders backed up, firing away at the English as they did so, Greenman was shot in the shoulder. Wounded and bleeding, he continued to fire his musket as the unit moved out and back to a better position with the militia in the nearby woods. No one was safe in the retreat and the Rhode Islanders looked out for each other, determined to get the wounded off the battlefield.
All of the men seemed to have been withdrawn when Dr. James Thacher was spotted riding to the battlefield, not away from it like everyone else. He had seen an American fall and wanted to treat him. He dismounted, tied his horse to a wood rail fence, grabbed his medical pouch, and ran to the wounded soldier’s side, kneeling next to him. Suddenly, a cannonball exploded within a few yards of the horse, ripping up the rail fence and huge chunks of grass and dirt. Several soldiers raced to Thacher and screamed at him to get off the battlefield—fast. They pulled the wounded man back to the woods with them and the brave but frightened doctor ran to his horse, mounted it, and, his spurs digging into the side of steed, raced into the woods and safety.
The enormous outpouring of militia now gave Greene seventy-five hundred men, more troops than the British, and he was no longer at a disadvantage. The Americans were arrayed throughout the woods at the foot of the Watchung Mountains, where they could look down at the British with their muskets and cannon. They were thus able to stop the British advances. George Washington had been marching toward West Point, where he was convinced the enemy would attack. General Knyphausen learned Washington had been alerted and had turned his army southward. The Americans were moving quickly and would be at Springfield within an hour or two. The British general, thwarted already by Greene and the militia, would not risk a major defeat in a battle with Washington. He retreated, ordering the burning of most of the village of Springfield as he went. The Americans’ view of the British army fleeing to New York was soon blocked by columns of black smoke rising into the sky from the torching of Springfield.
The Americans only lost fifteen killed and sixty-one wounded in both battles