Northern Lights

"Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here" 

Those words were spoken by Captain John Parker, the militia captain of what is commonly thought of to be Minutemen, but actually were a small detachment from the main body of the Massachusetts Militia. They numbered only seventy seven men and met with an advance guard ahead of the British army who marched towards Lexington on route to Concord.

Outnumbering the militia ten to one, Major John Pitcairn in charge of the seven hundred British light infantry was surprised to meet the small opposition from the colonists. He is recalled at ordering them to throw down their arms and disperse back to their homes. While some did just that, most of the seventy seven held true while each side repeated the command to their men to hold fire. 

It isn't clear who fired first, but a shot rang out and the British responded by firing several volleys into the militia. When the smoke cleared, ten colonists lay dead. Another eight wounded and only one British soldier was slightly wounded in the exchange. Already outnumbered and already losing a tenth of his fighting force in just the first volley, Captain Parker called the order to retreat and his men dispersed into the fields, woods and the town of Lexington.

While time and technology changes, the minds of human beings relatively stay the same. To know what was going through the minds of each and everyone of those seventy seven who now stood before such great odds....and on top of that, the best fighting force in the world at that time. These weren't trained soldiers who resisted, they were militia. Men who for a lot of them, had a wife and children back home. Some who had everything to lose should they not return from that field. And should history of gone differently, they would of become fugitives, thrown in prison or tried and hung for treason against the Royal Crown.

Mind you now, it is estimated that it was only three percent of the colonists who took up arms against the British during the American Revolutionary War. Three percent had the strength, courage and the tenacity to stand and fight against overwhelming odds for freedom from the British Crown.