th part of the fighting on that
day, can leave no doubt but that the hill referred to here was one of
the two or three distinct elevations in the north-western section of
Greenwood Cemetery, and to one of which has since been given the
commemorative title of "Battle Hill." A spot fitly named, for around
it some brave work was done! As the detachment neared the hill, the
British flanking troops were also observed to be marching to seize it.
Atlee seeing this hurried his men to reach it first, but the enemy
were there before him and poured a volley into his battalion.
Fortunately, not being well aimed, this did trifling damage, but under
the shock a part of his men, with two companies from the Delaware
regiment, which had been ordered to join them, wavered. Rallying the
most of them, Atlee soon ordered an advance up the hill, telling the
men at the same time "to preserve their fire and aim aright;" and they
all pushed forward with so much resolution, and apparently with such
an effective discharge of their pieces, that the enemy fell back,
leaving behind them twelve killed and a lieutenant and four privates
wounded. In this encounter Atlee lost his "worthy friend" and
lieutenant-colonel, Caleb Parry, who fell dead upon the field without
a groan, while cheering on the battalion. Ordering four soldiers to
take the remains of "the hero" back into the Brooklyn lines, Atlee
halted his "brave fellows" on the hill, and all Parsons' command here
took post to await the further movements of the British on this flank.
The force they had met and repulsed consisted of the Twenty-third and
Forty-fourth and a part of the Seventeenth regiments, by whom they
were soon to be attacked again. In half an hour after the first affair
the enemy formed for another effort to seize the hill, but again
Atlee's and Huntington's men opened upon them, and for a second time
compelled their retreat, with the loss of Lieutenant-Colonel Grant, a
brave and valued field-officer of the Fortieth Regiment, whose fall
gave ground for the report, credited for some days after in the
American army, that Major-General Grant, the division commander, was
among the enemy's killed in the battle of Long Island. Parsons' men by
this time had fired away all their ammunition (Atlee says that his
battalion, at least, had entirely emptied their cartridge-boxes), and
had used what charges could be got from the enemy's dead and wounded,
when Huntington's ammunition cart "very lu