Flashes of Panic

A and I ran this morning on Battle Road in Lexington. For a runner, Battle Road is exactly what Boston doesn’t have enough of: five miles of rolling trail, groomed pretty flat (translation: few roots and rocks) but with rolling hills, turns, and lots of good scenery. The Winchester Fells could be like this if anyone cared to take good care of the trails, but instead we wind up running on a lot of concrete sidewalks.

The “road” itself follows pretty closely the route taken by the British soldiers returning from Concord, via Lexington, to Boston on April 19, 1775, and the surrounding land has been kept in (or restored to) pretty much the same configuration it had in 1775. In addition to the usual park-service signs illustrating various events and helpfully explaining how long it took a British grenadier to load his musket, there are numerous smaller markers, saying things like, “Several British soldiers are buried near here,” or, at the far end of the trail at Meriam’s Corner, “Boston Harbor 16 miles.”

It’s one thing to run those miles in light clothing on a pleasant May morning, carrying nothing but your clothes and moving briskly. But these little reminders make it easy to think about what a different thing it would be to march sixteen miles in heavy wool clothes, carrying a sixty-pound pack, keeping step and keeping the column dressed, and with other people shooting at you. (This point is brought home particularly when rounding a stone-walled corner and seeing the sign labeling it “Bloody Angle.”)

(Kenneth Roberts made the point quite neatly over fifty years ago in Oliver Wiswell, that one of the reasons the British lost was that their military leadership was, on average, pretty dim; why did the regulars have to carry their full packs to Concord? Similarly, why did they march on Bunker Hill with full packs?)

It’s also sobering to consider the families living in the various houses along the route, and imagine what it may have been like for them to see the British column marching through their yards—assuming they were still there when the column came by.

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