The British Are Coming by Rick Atkinson documents in excruciating detail how hard it was to have been a soldier fighting the American Revolution on either side.<em>The British Are Coming</em> looks at the first two years of the war, ending in early 1777 with the Battle of Trenton and Princeton. It reads like a novel. The big takeaway is how messy the revolution was and how overwhelmed we were logistically, although having to maintain 1800-mile supply lines over an ocean was a constant challenge for Britain. There were few clear victories for either side over the 3,059 days and 1,300 mostly small battles of the war. Leadership on both sides was uneven, to be charitable. George Washington was a brilliant leader of men but a terrible military tactician. The various British generals kept doing stupid stuff, which is why we finally won. Colonial troops were very good at being put in a position to lose and then somehow escaping, often due to British incompetence.During the Battle for Westchester County (I had no idea there was such a battle), British General Howe maneuvered his troops (who outnumbered and were better equipped that our guys) over a causeway that flooded at high tide, thus limiting his movement and equalizing the fight. As one observer said to General Washington about the Redcoats, “Had they pushed their imaginations to discover the worse place, they could not have succeeded better than they have done.”I knew all about Lafayette had no appreciation of how crucial the logistical support France was to our winning. Ben Franklin worked out all sorts of deals for critical materials like gunpowder, which was in short supply in the colonies but is pretty important when you’re fighting a war.All Bay Staters will be happy to know that Massachusetts troops were featured in the book. Often soldiers would give into the temptation of looting the land. In White Plains, “Massachusetts troops – said to be ‘heated with liquor’ – burned what they could not carry, including the county courthouse, the Presbyterian church, both taverns, barns full of hay, and most houses on the village green.”There is a fair among of humor interspersed with the carnage. One of the recurring themes is that a lot the equipment just didn’t work very well, especially the muskets, which were notoriously inaccurate. Atkinson says, “The shot heard round the world likely missed.”This is a great book, the first of three volumes. It runs 776 pages, no doubt a reference to our nation’s birth date of 1776. I have read a lot of history books and this one is in my top ten.
