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Gage again used his ten senior companies of grenadiers and light infantry as a
corps d’elite.
They suffered grievously. The grenadier company of the Royal Welch Fusiliers went into that action with three officers, five noncoms, and thirty other ranks. It came out with one corporal and eleven privates. The light infantry company of the same regiment also lost most of its men—so many that it was said, “the Fusiliers had hardly men enough left to saddle their goat.” 1
    Other regiments suffered even more severely. The grenadier company of the King’s Own counted forty-three officers and men present before the battle of Lexington and Concord. Only twelve of that number were still listed as “effective” after Bunker Hill. Most of the flank companies in General Gage’s army also experienced heavy losses. 2
    Altogether, seventy-four British officers had marched to Lexingtonand Concord. Of that number, at least thirty-three were killed or severely wounded between April and June in the lighting around Boston. Others suffered minor wounds that were not thought to be disabling.
    Major John Pitcairn, the commander at Lexington, died of wounds received at Bunker Hill. As he rallied his Marines for a third assault on the American redoubt, he was shot in the head by another veteran of April 19, an African-American militiaman named Salem Prince. Major Pitcairn was carried off the field by his own son, an officer in the same battalion, and died in Boston. His death was mourned even by his enemies, who called him “a good man in a bad cause.” After the war his family asked that his remains should be returned for burial in London. According to an old Boston tradition, the wrong body was sent by mistake, and Major Pitcairn may still lie in the blue clay of Boston, or perhaps in a vault beneath the Old North Church. 3
    Also at Bunker Hill was Lieutenant Jesse Adair, the hard-charging young Irish Marine who had volunteered to lead the British vanguard to Lexington, and sent it headlong into Parker’s militia. At Bunker Hill he volunteered again to lead the assault, though he was not supposed to be there at all, and miraculously survived. On the day the British army left Boston he volunteered once more to command its rear guard. His orders were to slow the American advance by scattering in its path a thick carpet of caltrops, or crow’s feet, small iron devices shaped like a child’s jack, with needle-sharp spines that could cripple a man or horse. Lieutenant Adair behaved in his usual style, brave and brainless as ever. An English officer remembered that “being an Irishman, he began scattering the crow-feet about from the gate towards the enemy, and of course had to walk over them on his return, which detained him so long that he was nearly taken prisoner.” Adair was later promoted to captain, and rose to command Number 45 Company of the Royal Marines, in the Plymouth Division. He served throughout the American war, but was not the sort of officer who flourished in peace. In 1785 Captain Adair was “reduced,” and disappeared from the Marine List. 4
    Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Smith, who several junior British officers held personally responsible for their troubles at Lexington and Concord, was highly praised in dispatches by General Gage. Afterward he was promoted to brigadier. At the siege of Boston, Francis Smith’s men brought him early notice of the American occupation of Dorchester Heights. He is reported to have donenothing, not even bothering to notify his commander of an event that made Boston untenable for the British garrison and forced them to evacuate the town. In the next campaign, at New York City, Smith commanded a brigade. At a critical moment Lieutenant Mackenzie, the able adjutant of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, showed him a way to cut off Washington’s retreat. Mackenzie later wrote that the brigadier was not only “slow,” but also seemed “more intent on looking out for quarters for himself than