2 Jul 2022 11:55 am
Forlorn Hope is a band of soldiers or other combatants chosen to take the leading part in a military operation, such as an assault on a defended position, where the risk of casualties is high....A Suicide Mission!
Lieutenant John Mansfield (1748 – 1823) was one of the faceless thousands who valiantly served his country from the first to last shots of the American Revolution. It is difficult to encapsulate, in a couple of thousand words, eight years of hardships – the struggle, the bitterly cold winter camps, the hunger and the fear, and the sheer brutality of combat. In several major battles, from April, 1775 until October 1781, he displayed incredible perseverance and courage; from a twenty mile crossing of Long Island Sound in a small whale boat participating in one of the most successful raids and incursion into enemy territory in the war, to a midnight bayonet attack on an impregnable fort, having to suffer through winters with little food or clothing, surviving one of the worst bombardments of the war, and the terror of combat, staring down death at an age where life’s many paths are just beginning to open. At the Battle of Yorktown, Colonel Alexander Hamilton noted the youthful officer for leading the forlorn hope that chopped through the abattis at Redoubt number ten, storming the embankment and leading to victory and the final capitulation of Cornwallis’ army
more...
Lieutenant John Mansfield (1748 – 1823) was one of the faceless thousands who valiantly served his country from the first to last shots of the American Revolution. It is difficult to encapsulate, in a couple of thousand words, eight years of hardships – the struggle, the bitterly cold winter camps, the hunger and the fear, and the sheer brutality of combat. In several major battles, from April, 1775 until October 1781, he displayed incredible perseverance and courage; from a twenty mile crossing of Long Island Sound in a small whale boat participating in one of the most successful raids and incursion into enemy territory in the war, to a midnight bayonet attack on an impregnable fort, having to suffer through winters with little food or clothing, surviving one of the worst bombardments of the war, and the terror of combat, staring down death at an age where life’s many paths are just beginning to open. At the Battle of Yorktown, Colonel Alexander Hamilton noted the youthful officer for leading the forlorn hope that chopped through the abattis at Redoubt number ten, storming the embankment and leading to victory and the final capitulation of Cornwallis’ army
more...