First of all, his officers, really one vote? Old, weak and disabled soldiers? Ward is old, and so is Joseph Spencer, as the soldiers jokingly call him? Grandma? , this is? Old? Part of.
The young Brigadier General Green of Rhode Island has never been on the battlefield. His knowledge of the art of war was all acquired by reading and self-study? Theoretically? Forget it. He's lame in one leg. He'll have an asthma attack.
Colonel Knox was later given a very important task by Washington. He was the calm young man who warned the British not to shoot during the Boston Massacre. At that time, he was still a bookstore clerk, and later he opened his own bookstore. He is a big independent, but almost all the customers in the bookstore are royalists, and even Knox's wife comes from a royalist family. Now, he is a colonel in the army, but he has become a big fat man. It doesn't matter.
According to the standard of normal posture, this green one? Crappy? Knox, eight fingers? Fat brother? None of them are qualified and should be retired. The employment of mainland soldiers, not only become officers, but also become brigadier generals and colonels at a young age, and they can directly put forward battle plans to Washington, which is unimaginable in the British army.
But the lame Hao and the fat brother later became one of the most capable generals in Washington. What really bothers Washington is the big ticket in New England? Beggar soldier? .
In other words, before Washington came to power, the Massachusetts state legislature had told Washington not to expect these people to have discipline, because among these militia, the younger generation did not experience military life and even had the most basic hygiene habits.
Washington comes from Virginia, where rich social leaders keep slaves at home, and slaves do all the dirty work, while slave owners like Washington can live a decent gentleman's life. But in New England, on the contrary, most New Englanders are self-employed, hardworking, rude and uneducated, which is completely different from Washington's aristocratic habits.
Most of the militiamen gathered near Boston are like this. They were still brave when they got together temporarily to fight. Once they camp for a long time, there will be many problems.
Just say the camp is good. The whole camp is like a large refugee camp. The militiamen built small houses with grass, boards and stones nearby. Some are made of branches, and some have windows, which are really dazzling. Only Green's Rhode Island troops can keep the camp clean and tidy.
Even if the camp is chaotic, these militia really don't even have the most basic hygiene habits, as the parliament said. They didn't even bother to dig a field toilet. They just found a piece of land near the camp and peed everywhere. After a while, the camp stinks and the surrounding area becomes a large septic tank.
New England militia don't even wash clothes, because they think washing clothes is a woman's business and it doesn't matter if they fight for a short time. Like this long-term siege, everyone's clothes are incredibly dirty, but they would rather rot on their backs than take them off and wash them.
Such horrible hygiene habits certainly lead to rampant diseases, water pollution caused by defecation and dysentery infection, while dirty clothes and unwashed clothes become hotbeds of lice and fleas, and the camps are scattered and dense, which makes the disease spread rapidly. As a result, the mainland army lost only a few hundred people on the bunker hill, but more than 1500 people lost their combat capability simply because of infectious diseases. The super dirty power of the continental army not only killed the militia itself, but also spread the disaster everywhere. Soon all the nearby areas fell into epidemic areas, and then the disease ravaged the whole of New England, causing hundreds of deaths in a parish in some places.
Speaking of clothes, these militiamen have no so-called uniforms. They all wear their own clothes at home and go to war. Officers and soldiers wear the same clothes. At first, Washington could only let senior officers wear ribbons of different colors to show their differences. These dirty, smelly and broken officers and men are the continental army that Washington will take over. Washington has never seen militia, but are they everywhere? Beggar soldier? I am afraid this scene is far beyond his imagination.
Not only the soldiers are beggars, but the whole army is short of almost everything, except food-the nearby colonial villagers supply a lot of food very enthusiastically-and nothing else. The militia didn't even have uniforms or blankets, and the camp was in chaos, partly because of the lack of tents. Later, it took Washington a year to get soldiers blankets, and it took another three years to finally get soldiers uniforms.
Forget it, even the most critical gunpowder in the war is seriously insufficient. Because the colonies rarely produced their own gunpowder, they mostly relied on imports. After the war with Britain, they had to rely on smuggling. The inventory of gunpowder in the liquidation force in Washington is only enough for everyone to play nine rounds. Seeing the report, he turned blue with fear and could not speak for a long time.
And these beggar soldiers, because they are used to hunting at ordinary times, saw geese flying over when there was a serious shortage of gunpowder, and even the whole camp couldn't help shooting geese.
As soon as Washington arrived, he immediately set out to rectify military discipline, but the effect was extremely limited. He thinks every day that if the British army is suddenly killed, the mob will be wiped out. Insomnia sometimes makes me angry at the thought of this. Why did he pick this up? Lack of shit? If I had known this virtue in the army, he would rather be a soldier with a gun and fight for his hometown at the front line like Dr. Joseph Warren, which is much easier than being commander in chief.
But Washington's nightmare never came true, and the British army showed no signs of attacking at all.
Why is this happening? It turned out that the British high-level officials were completely trapped by Bunker Hill. After Bunker Hill's fiasco, no one dared to act rashly. They all waited passively in Boston, unaware that the militia outside were in such a mess. This gave Washington precious time to gradually rectify the militia forces and gradually began to establish some military order among these overly free villagers.
(To be continued)
original text
One of The Birth of America: Why is America called America?
The second birth of America: the British came to North America.
The Third Birth of America: Isn't the Cherry Tree in Washington?
The Fourth Birth of America: George to George
The fifth birth of the United States: Washington was originally a "unification faction"?
The sixth birth of America: American life is really valuable ── Boston? A massacre?
The Seventh Birth of America: Making a profit is a mistake ── The incident of losing tea in Boston.
The eighth birth of America: the moment when "One Minute Man" went to war
The Ninth Birth of America: The Dark Knight-levi fun run.
The 10th Birth of America: The Rise of Villagers —— Concord Lexington Movement
The 11th Birth of America: Battle of Bunker Hill
The twelfth birth of America: put on military uniform and be the father of our country.