My obsession with historic monuments and their cultural significance sidetracked my last post, which turned into a defense of the “Minuteman” statue. But what I set out to do on the anniversary of the opening clashes of the American Revolution was to recall the story of yet another old man in the mold of Nana.
Sam Whittemore fought for the crown in King George’s War (1744-48) and the later French and Indian War (1754-63). He retired a captain of dragoons and settled on a farm in Massachusetts to enjoy his golden years.
He was 80 years old when the King’s men showed up in his dooryard. Humiliated by their repulse at Concord and infuriated by the sniping that was thinning their ranks as they retreated to Boston, the redcoats revenged themselves on the countryside as they went, burning and plundering farms along the line of march and shooting suspected rebels on the spot.
Although far too old to have any obligation to militia service, Captain Whittemore picked up his musket, added a brace of dueling pistols and a cutlass (a souvenir of his service against the French) and went out to contest these outrages. He took his stand behind a stone wall and opened fire on the King’s 47th Regiment of Foot.
He killed one soldier with his musket and then killed another and mortally wounded a third with his pistols as the grenadiers charged the ambush, then fended off their bayonets with his cutlass until shot in the face. As he struggled to regain his feet, the redcoats clubbed him down with their gun butts and bayoneted him on the ground. They left him for dead by the roadside, but when his neighbors came to collect the body they found the old man up on one knee, reloading his musket.
A local doctor could do no more than bandage the captain’s 13 stab wounds and the bullet wound to his head before sadly ordering him carried home so that he might die surrounded by his family. Instead, the tough old soldier recovered and lived another 18 years before dying at age 98. I’d love to see Clint Eastwood play him in the biopic.
Tracking Nana 