The sign is rusted and scarred. Its aqua-blue surface bears the fading words "MARYLAND HEROES." Suspended from a piece of corroded iron, it marks a mass grave:
Here lie buried 256 Maryland soldiers
Who fell in the Battle of Brooklyn
August 27, 1776
I encountered that neglected piece of history in September 2010 during a walking tour of the neighborhood where the Battle of Brooklyn, also known as the Battle of Long Island, took place. Today it is a depressed area filled with auto repair shops and warehouses. The bright spot is a well-worn, decades-old American Legion post. Several blocks northeast are the elegant brownstones of Park Slope. Somewhere beneath the surface, perhaps under a garage or below a paved street, are the Marylanders' undiscovered bodies. Their remains lie intermingled in what should be hallowed ground.
In the revolutionary summer of 1776 these courageous patriots, known as "gentlemen of honour, family, and fortune," gave their lives in a desperate series of bayonet charges against British troops, who were bunkered in a stone house that was still standing just a few blocks away from where I stood. Their assault on that house arguably remains one of the most important elite small-unit engagements in American history. It bought precious time for the Patriot cause, allowing hundreds of colonial troops to retreat through a gap in British lines.
The lonely weathered placard nestled among the auto-body shops of present-day Brooklyn bears silent witness to the drama that once unfolded in this place and the extraordinary men who changed history.
"Close up! Close up!"
Over the crackle of musket fire and boom of cannon, the indomitable Major Mordecai Gist and many of the founding officers of the Baltimore Independent Cadets ordered their men forward.
Shots tore through the ranks of more than two hundred Marylanders. Undaunted, the men continued to surge toward an old stone house occupied by British General Lord Cornwallis (Charles, Earl Cornwallis) and his Redcoats.
A century earlier, the home's massive walls had been built to fend off potential Indian attacks. Now, these same barriers that had shielded Americans were called upon to repel them. Cornwallis's men trained a light cannon and musket fire on the advancing Marylanders, who launched a preemptive strike aimed at protecting their brothers-in-arms.
The British "[continued] pouring the canister and grape upon the Americans like a shower of hail." In the melee "the flower of some of the finest families of the South [were] cut to atoms."
Defying the carnage unfolding around them, Gist's men "closed their ranks over the bodies of their dead comrades, and still turned their faces to the foe."
The boldness of the Marylanders' charge initially unhinged Cornwallis's defenses as his gunners nearly abandoned their artillery, but intense fire from the house and fresh reinforcements compelled the Marylanders to retreat and then mount yet another charge.
From a distant hill, General George Washington watched the gallant display through his spyglass. As the Marylanders began to fall, he cried out, "Good God! What brave fellows I must this day lose!"[1]
[1]. Their bravery and sacrifice gave rise to the Maryland nickname, the Old Line State.
Yet not all was lost. Scores of Marylanders, led by Major Gist, held off the British long enough to help save a corps of Washington's troops and arguably the bulk of the nascent American army from destruction. The Marylanders' forlorn assaults delayed a British attack on American fortifications at Brooklyn Heights and allowed hundreds of Americans to escape to the temporary safety of their entrenchments. The soldiers who participated in that unorthodox assault would become known as the Immortals or the Maryland 400. With their blood, these men bought, in the words of one American, "an hour, more precious to American liberty than any other in its history." Gist and several men in his group escaped to fight future battles that changed the fate of a nation.
Reading the solemn words etched on that metal sign made me curious. I wanted to know what really happened to these men, who they were, and why citizen-soldiers-amateurs-fought and sacrificed their lives and fortunes to fight the most formidable army in the world. Over the years, I unearthed a hidden war buried in letters and diaries. Forgotten pension files bore testament to heroism and sacrifice, and even to betrayal by fellow Americans. It wasn't the Revolution of famous men trapped in the amber of fading oil portraits, but an alive, boots-on-the-ground, brutally long conflict that pitted brother against brother in a war that America wasn't preordained to win. These sacrifices by a small group of men-in the right place, at the right time-who were willing to march thousands of miles and endure years of unimaginable hardship, made the difference between victory and defeat.
Their nine-year saga has remained untold for over 239 years and nearly forgotten, much like the mass grave in which their comrades now lie. Gist and hundreds of Marylanders from all walks of life became an elite corps that formed the nucleus of the greatest fighting regiments of the war. They helped to keep the Continental Army intact through the darkest days of the Revolution. It is also a story about close friends whose fellowship in battle kept them together in the most impossible circumstances, enabled their survival, and helped them emerge as some of the most decorated and successful battle captains of the war. This book is the first Band of Brothers–style history of the Revolution; rather than providing a regimental history, it focuses on the actions of these men. Facing tremendous adversity, these Americans were often called upon by Washington to play a pivotal role in the war's decisive battles just as they did that day in Brooklyn.
A pockmarked sign memorializes the beginning of an epic journey that started on a winter day in 1774.
But a metal sign isn't enough to commemorate a mystery, the unknown resting place of so many Americans who willingly gave their lives for a nation yet to be born.
