I’ve been reading Ray Raphael’s Founding Myths, a book that’s interesting, but alternmately revealing and infuriating. I like revisionist history, but sometimes Raphael’s point seems to be that everyone just isn’t thinking about things the right way, not that there’s any actual error involved.
He has a chapter on “Don’t Fire Until You See the Whites of their Eyes”. Even he admits that the order was, in fact, given at the battle of Bunker (Breed’s) Hill. I think he’d love if it wasn’t, because he seems to want to bash people over the head for telling this story over and over. It wasn’t reported by the earliest historians, so clearly there must have been a rreason for the story being part of our current mythos. He thinks it’s meant to give the idea that this was a chivalrous war, where people saw the faces of those they were killing, a Romantic war, and not a faceless mechanical killing machine struggle.
Besides, he notes, the order couldn’t have been meant literally. On the battlefield, you can’t see “the whites of their eyes” from a distance ghreater than 10 yards or so even under the best of conditions, and often only 5 or less. Historians seem to agree that they actuallyu fired at a distance of 6 yards or so. At another battle, a commander who fired at only twen yards found himself overwhelmed by bayonet-bearing enemy soldiers they didn’t have time to fire at again.
My questions:
1.) Is his figure of ten yards visibility realistic? There have to be military history buffs and recreators out there who know.
2.) I never got the sense that the order involved chivalry at all. I assumed they didn’t want the men firing too soon. It wastes shot and powder and that all-important carefully loaded first shot. did anyone else think “DFUYSTWOTE” order was Romantic or chivalrous?
Please note that I am not asking “Why did they say DFUYSTWOTE?” – obviously, one doesn’t want one’s men firing too soon, especially when they’re not professional soldiers. Look at the questions again.
Question (2), then, is not a GQ. No, I don’t think it’s romantic, it was a matter of practicality dealing with green volunteers who’d want to shoot early and run.
yeah, but #1 is, and I didn’t want to start two threads.
And just so you’re clear – Raphael doesn’t dispute the reasoning you give, but he says that nobody quoted this line in any history of the event for over 60 years (except the notoriosly inaccurate Parson Weems), so there had to be a reason the line reappeared and became part of The Legend. I don’t buy his reasoning, and I was wondering if anyone else felt that way.
#1, I have no idea. #2, I was never taught in school that it had anything to do with chivalry. I was taught that the Patriots were running low on provisions, including ammunition; the commander didn’t want any ammo to go to waste.
I agree that I was never taught it had anything to do with chivalry. In fact, even though I read a lot of history this thread is the first time I’ve ever heard it suggested.
This book is the first time I’ve come across it as well, which is why I’m leery about it.
(Again, to clarify – Raphael isn’t suggesting that the order was given in 1775 out of chivalrous notions, but that the reason historians and “mythmakers” came to love it and tell it over and over was that it gave a chivalrous gleam to it.)
And I just want top point out that one reason for my asking this is that Raphael says the order was never intended to be tasken literally – DFUYSTWOTE has you firing at (he claims) ten yards, which is too close. But then why give the order? Who the hell gives orders to raw recruits (who will take it literally) that you don’t intend for them to follow?
To be precise, it was to conserve ammunition. If you have plenty of ammo, you can engage from a greater range and accept that some of the shots are going to miss. From what I have read colonials had very little powder at Breed’s Hill and thus could not afford to miss.
If the order was given to soldiers who are likely to fire early, it would help to tell them to fire too late, in order that they fire sometime between too early and too late.
If someone is likely to fire too early then…
if you tell them to fire when the enemy is at 30 yards, they will fire when the enemy is at 50 yards. If you tell them to fire when the enemy is at 10 yards then they’ll shoot at 30 yards. Similar to tellnig someone not to shoot at the cavalry until they can feel the horses breath, it is not meant to be taken literally, but to emphasise that you fire when it seems to late to fire, not at the first time it seems you might score a hit.
Those who wanted to mythify the situation always did so to emphasize the courage and fortitude of the colonists. Which works for me. The sight of a real army advancing toward a group of amateurs is shit-staining frightening. The natural desire would be to fire as soon as one could, and then either have time to shoot again or run away as seems best, probably the latter. This really did happen over and over again with militia during the war. Everyone from Washington on down were absolutely scathing in their contempt of local militia troops.
This was one of the few times during the war when the militia behaved. The circumstances were special: they were defending their homes rather than being called to distant places, and they had no real experience even second-hand of the horrors of war. And they were terrible shots. Don’t forget that only about 72 of 2000 British troops were killed even at point-blank range. Getting them to be stalwart in the face of the enemy was unusually feasible and was exploited by leaders who knew that any other course would be disastrous. They did expect them to follow the order and, surprisingly, it worked.
Their bravery is unquestioned - was unquestioned even by the British - but chivalry? I don’t think so.
Yup, and that ties into the accuracy thing a bit, I would imagine. You had to be pretty dang close with a musket to ensure even a modicum of accuracy.
And Cal, sorry about my own snippiness, as well.
This site gives the total British casualties as 226 dead and 828 wounded. The 72 dead mentioned by Exapno Mapcase may be only those killed in the initial volley.
Yes, it does tie into the accuracy. Not only that, but the reload time as well. Even if they had an excess of ammo, there is the risk of amateurs firing too early, missing, and not being skilled enough to reload in time for the next shot. Although I do think ammo conservation was the driving factor here.
Still, there’s some courage involved here. They chose to conserve ammunition by letting the enemy close the distance, putting them in greater peril. They could have done like the rest of us and just quietly gone home and paid their taxes, but they didn’t.