The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [176]
Private Joseph Martin was one of them. Stumbling through, he wrote that as the soldiers reached it, “the enemy discovered us and . . . opened a sharp fire upon us. We were now at a place where many of our large shells had burst in the ground, making holes sufficient to bury an ox in. The men were . . . falling into these holes. I thought the British were killing us off at a great rate . . . I could not pass at the entrance we had made, it was so crowded. I therefore forged a passage at a place where I saw our shot had cut away some of the abatis. Several others entered at the same place. While passing, a man at my side received a ball in his head and fell under my feet, crying out bitterly. While crossing the trench, the enemy threw hand grenades [small bombs] . . . into it. They were so thick that I at first thought them cartridge papers on fire, but was soon undeceived by their cracking.”12 Martin and others told friends later that there was so much musket fire from both sides that the entire trench and the British fort walls were illuminated by it.
The Redcoats fled. Total French and American losses in the attack were twenty-four killed and one hundred two wounded; the British had eighteen killed and seventy-three wounded.
Captain Olney’s detachment secured the redoubt within a half hour and he was soon carried away with the rest of the wounded to Williamsburg, twelve miles away, and placed alongside other badly injured and bleeding men in a home that had been turned into a hospital. By the next day the upper half of his arm had turned completely black, but it was the bayoneting in his stomach, and the extreme loss of blood, that concerned surgeons. One looked down at the captain with great sadness and told him that he would not live and would die there in the hospital.13
At the same time that Olney was bayoneted, Ebenezer Wild was in the middle of a charge against the second redoubt, Number 10. The lieutenant’s company had been joined by light infantry and ordered to advance through the darkness. Wild’s regiment moved much faster than Olney’s toward their goal because their commanders told them to ignore the abatis branches and simply race between or over them as quickly as possible. Wild did so, writing, “We advanced from the battery on our right in one column to the redoubt on the enemy’s left, which we attacked and carried by storm. A detachment of French Grenadiers carrying the one on our left about the same time (& in the same manner). We had nothing but the enemy’s fire from their main works to hinder our completing our second parallel, which we proceeded to do with all possible expedition.”
The quick victory was satisfying to Wild, who noted in his diary the following morning that the parallels they now held extended all the way to the York River and put their newly arrived cannon just two hundred yards from Yorktown—easy shelling range. Defending the captured redoubt was a dangerous affair, though. The British would still not give it up. Wrote Wild, “We are much troubled with their small shells, which they now throw into our trenches exceeding fast. The fire, both of shot and shells, on both sides, has been exceeding hot all day.”
The next day Cornwallis sent a force of just over three hundred men to recapture the two redoubts. They convinced some officers that they were French soldiers and were able to capture several cannon, spiking them with bayonets. The ruse did not last long. “The enemy were made to retire to their works with precipitation and considerable loss, both of killed and wounded,” Wild noted.
That night, on land just two hundred yards from the British lines, the American cannon opened up with hundreds of shells in a heavy barrage. “The cannon and bombardment from ours and the French batteries were kept up with little intermission,” wrote St. George Tucker, a Virginia militia leader. “Red hot balls being fired at the shipping from French battery over the creek; the Charon, a forty-four-gun ship, and another ship were set fire to and burnt