Watch out for the booksellers

From Thomas Ayres' A Military Miscellany.

Following the Battle of Bunker Hill, Washington's Continental Army held the heights outside Boston, placing the British Army under siege. From out of the ranks, a young man came to Washington with a plan to fortify the position. The commander was so impressed he placed the soldier in charge of fortifications.

Next he told Washington that, without artillery, the British still might overrun the position. He reminded Washington that the abandoned fort at Ticonderoga in upstate New York had plenty of cannons just sitting there. He volunteered to lead an expedition to bring them to Boston.

Washington was doubtful that the guns could be moved in the dead of winter, much less all the way to Boston. His aides also were skeptical that an overweight city boy could brave the rugged wilderness and accomplish the task. With nothing to lose, Washington approved the expedition. What Washington did not realize was that this was no ordinary city boy.

Everyone called him "Fat Henry." He weighed almost 300 punds and was something of a klutz. He even had two fingers missing from his left hand, the result of a hunting accident. He was a bookworm and, in fact, owned a bookstore. Well read on many subjects, his favorite topic was military history. He had studied all of the great battles of Europe and knew the most minute details about them.

Henry and several volunteers reached the fort in early December 1775. They strapped forty-three cannons and sixteen mortars on hurriedly built barges to float them down Lake George. They had barely departed when a blizzard descended on them. They abandoned the lake, built sleds, and purchased horses and oxen to tug the cannons over the snow.

Through dense wilderness, across frozen streams, and over the rugged Berkshire Mountains they moved southward, sometimes covering no more than a few hundred yards a day. Two more blizzards came, dropping temperatures below zero. Still they trudged on, defying the elements. Finally, two months after they set out on their journey, the party limped into Framingham, Massachusetts.

In the dead of one of the worst New England winters ever, Henry and his men delivered fifty-five artillery pieces weighing 119,000 pounds. Once the cannons were placed in the hills overlooking Boston, the British abandoned the city and sailed for Canada.

Fat Henry's real name was Henry Knox. He was twenty-four at Bunker Hill. By the time he was twenty-five he would be a brigadier general and Washington's artillery officer. He became the nation's first secretary of war, and Fort Knox would be named in his honor. He retired from public life at forty-three. Of all his accomplishments, the least known might be his most important. During the war he started an artillery school that later became the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.