This morning, Capt. Barnard arrived at our encampment with three horses in tow. He then escorted Capt. Morgan, Lt. Humphrey, and me to General Washington’s Headquarters on Cambridge Heights. General Washington was not there at the moment, but we were graciously welcomed by Brigadier General Horatio Gates, the Army’s new Adjutant General. He instructed one of his aides to take Capt. Morgan, Lt. Humphrey, Capt. Barnard, and me to “see the sights” and choose a place to billet our company not far from the British lines at Roxbury.

We found a perfect spot. We were just a few hundred yards from an excellent “sniper hide.”

Monday, August 7th, 1775: Captain Morgan was lying on his stomach in the wet grass, still as a stone, peering through his new spyglass into the haze rising from Boston Harbor. There were three of us—the Captain, Corporal Brendan Sullivan, the best Rifleman in our company, and me.

Without moving his head, a twig or a blade of grass, the Captain put his trigger finger in his mouth then slowly held it in the air to test the wind. Without seeming to move his lips he whispered, “Sulley, the breeze is directly behind us. Do you see the officer on the gray horse, about 350 yards down the hill, beneath the maple tree?”

“Yes sir, I have him in my sights.”

“Good. Kill him.”

Without taking my eyes off the target, I heard the muted click as Corporal Sullivan cocked the hammer on his rifle. He took a deep breath and started to exhale. The snap of the flint striking the powder pan on his rifle was followed an instant later by the crack of a bullet leaving the barrel with a flash and a puff of white smoke.

The projectile struck the British officer in the throat. He suddenly dropped his reins and pitched backward out of the saddle. As he fell, the horse bolted, dragging the Redcoat by his right leg, caught in the stirrup.

As four or five of the officer’s troops jumped up in an attempt to catch the terrified horse, Corporal Sullivan readied his second rifle for another shot. Captain Morgan shook his head and said, “Hold your fire. Good shooting. One is enough for this morning.”

It was the first time I saw a person killed by another human. It would not be my last. It was my 17th birthday.

Endnotes

1. Royal Governor Dunmore’s hunting lodge, Porto Bello, is located on the banks of the York River and on the grounds of Camp Peary, a 9,000-acre U.S. Army facility that serves as a CIA training facility. Though listed on the National Register of Historic Places, access to Porto Bello is limited to those with “a need to know.”

2. On 26 July 1775, Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin Continental Postmaster General with an annual salary of $1,000 and appropriated an additional $340 for a comptroller—with responsibility for hiring and firing postmasters to deliver mail and dispatches from Maine to Georgia.