Usual Suspect Brownielocks.com was kind enough to leave Eat Your Vegetables Day off her list for Monday, but one of her choices, World Day to Combat Desertification, a U.N. observance, is hardly cheery.
Monday will also be Bunker Hill Day, commemorating the Battle of Bunker Hill -- a battle that was, in fact, fought on and around Breed's Hill. As often happened during the Revolution, the Colonials lost the hill, whatever it was named, and the battle besides (and one of our early revolutionary heroes, Dr. Joseph Warren, was killed).
But it all worked out well in the end: Even though no one may have actually said, "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes," the Colonials did hold their fire until the advancing British regulars were close enough be mowed down in droves. Many senior British officers were picked out and killed by sharp-eyed Rebels (the Brits thought that just wasn't cricket). The British though the Rebels would throw down their arms once the Greatest Army in the World took the field. The Rebels thought the British were just throwing their lives away, marching uphill into an entrenched line of withering fire. If the Americans' ammunition had held out, who knows whether the British would have finally broken or simply slaughtered en masse. But the Americans did run out of ammo and the angry British survivors took the hill and took it out on the Americans who did not abandon their defensive positions quickly enough. On the other hand, because of their enormous casualties, the British reconsidered their siege of Boston. They marched away -- and took New York instead.
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