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198 | 10 Battle Experience Facing the Enemy It has almost become a cliché to say that battle is the ultimate objective of soldiers.1 Soldiers exist in order to fight: combat defines their function . Despite the fact that battle is infrequent, so infrequent that many soldiers never experience enemy fire, its impact looms large. During battle, the adrenaline flow produces a wide range of behavior from apparent calm to wild exhilaration. As John Keegan and Richard Holmes wrote, “Many soldiers experience battle as a half-remembered blur, a mosaic some­ how fragmented and haphazardly reassembled.”2 The prevail­ ing feeling before battle is fear—fear of death and fear of cowardice, but beyond the fear, according to Keegan and Holmes, “A single question looms large, dwarfing every fear of death and wounds. ‘What will battle really be like?’ ”3 Thecombatexperiencedbyprovincialsoldiersdifferedgreatlyfromthewar experiences that their contemporary European counterparts had. European battles were distinguished by the roar of artillery and musketry, and a choking , blinding blanket of powder smoke as armies numbering tens of thousands battered and clawed at each other. All maneuvering was deliberate and slow on the battlefield for fear that confusion or untimely enthusiasm might destroy tactical designs. Combat lasted most of the day, ending with the retreat of one army or darkness. European siege warfare created a similar environment—the constant roar of cannon and a deliberate, almost leisurely pace.4 Provincial soldiers rarely participated in this form of combat. At Quebec in 1690 they listened to the firing of Sir William Phips’s naval guns bombarding the town. The sieges of Port Royal in 1710, Cartagena in 1741, and Louis­ bourg in 1745 also exposed provincials to European-style battle conditions. Louisbourg in particular impressed pro­ vincial soldiers because the roar of cannon fire was so unusual. One anonymous diarist recorded on May 13 that “Eighty Cannons have been Discharged in a Quarter of an hour,” and four days later he wrote, “now while I am writing none but those Battle Experience | 199 that hear (or that have been in Some such an Engagement) Can Think how much firing there is here, Cannons Constantly A going, and Bombs, etc. and Altho I’m Two Miles from them they Don’t Seem to be above Sixty rods they are so powerful.”5 But Louisbourg and Cartagena were the exceptions, not the rule. Governed by the tactics of la petite guerre, a battle on the northern frontier, if we can use that grand term for such an action, tended to be short and sharp, often not lasting more than thirty minutes. The roar of artillery did not disturb the combatants, and the numbers involved rarely exceeded more than a few hundred, frequently much fewer. More commonly, frontier combat pitted a handful of desperate men in a swift, savage test of wills in the forested wilderness that delineated the colonies of New France and New England. Examples of such combat are numerous. In January 1707 Colonel Winthrop Hilton surprised eighteen Indians at dawn and killed all but one while they were asleep. Once the firing began, the action probably lasted no longer than five minutes.6 Similarly, Johnson Harmon and a company of thir­ tyfour soldiers investigated some campfires they detected as they rowed up the Kennebec River one night in July 1722. They found eleven canoes pulled up on shore and then stumbled over some sleeping Indians in the dark. The provincials opened fire and killed fifteen Indians without sustaining any casualties . The whole affair lasted ten minutes.7 In September 1725, as a scout of six men were resting on their return to Fort Dummer, they heard a noise like running, looked up, and saw fourteen Indians charging their camp. The white men opened fire but the surprise was complete and two of the soldiers were killed, three captured, and one managed to slip away. The actual fight lasted only two or three minutes.8 The attack on Norridgewock in 1725, New England’s most successful engagement with the Eastern Indians, probably lasted only twenty minutes. While Johnson Harmon took half of the force to sweep through the cornfields , Jeremiah Moulton attacked the village. Dividing his men into three sections, he posted one-third on the north side of the village, another third to the south, and advanced toward the east gate with the remainder. As Johnson Harmon later related the events, There was not an Indian to be seen, being all in their wigwams. Our men were ordered...

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