George Johnston at Bunker Hill

At the North Battery Wharf the embarkation of the 63^rd Foot and 2^nd Battalion Marines had began. The same slow clamber down the wharf ladder, weighted with arms and equipment, the same cautious stepping into the bobbing boats that had so slowed the 52^nd Light Infantry and those first marine reinforcements plagued an impatient General Clinton. 'The moment was critical; ... if that army ... [was] ... beaten there would have been an end to his Majesty's dominion in America.' Among those rowed impatiently across the Charles River were the superintendent, adjutant and deputy pay-master, to the second battalion, David Johnston and his son, George. Grown to manhood the boy would served for a time at Norfolk Island as Captain-Lieutenant and eventually become aide-de-camp to both New South Wales Governors, Arthur Phillip.and John Hunter, play a leading role in the suppression of the convict rebellion at Vinegar Hill just outside Sydney in 1804 and in January 1808 was the figurehead for the rebellion against Governor William Bligh. By then, as acting Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales he had married his stunningly beautiful convict mistress, Esther Abrahams. For his part in the Rum Rebellion on 26 January, 1808 he was eventually court-martialled in London and cashiered. Returning to his family in Sydney he became one of the town's wealthiest property owners, in a palatial mansion decked with the local red cedar. Now, as he stepped onto the shores of the Charlestown Peninsula he was but a boy destined for a military career..¹

They had passed boats going back to Boston full of wounded but little prepared them for the scene before Breed's Hill as they stumbled out onto the beach. The smoke and blistering heat rolled across from Charlestown, from where a few snipers still fired at soldiers, though more infrequently than before. All around them blue musket smoke lingered on the battlefield. The grass was soaked with blood which smeared the bright white gaiters of the officers. George Johnston stood beside his father as he barked orders to non-commissioned officers to form the marine rank and file into columns. A short distance away the boy saw in front of him the bodies piled up against the fences, some trodden down into the field and that cloud of flies that surround the dead.. Above this long, wide carpet of corpses the Americans waited behind the redoubt walls or along the rail fence sure of defeat in the face of Howe's four refreshed infantry regiments and the new marine battalion. The air was punctuated only by the screams and moans of the wounded left out of reach but within range of American muskets. In the blazing heat men sat in their shirt-sleeves, dripping perspiration, waiting for the order to move, calmed by surviving sergeants and corporals, their senior officers slain. They all knew they must 'Fight, conquer or die!'²

For eleven year old George Johnston once this final attack was launched, left among the walking wounded and the near-dead on the beach, many of whom he probably knew, the spectacle of death on Breed's Hill undoubtedly engendered intense fears about whether David Johnston would be alive or dead at the end of it. He watched General Clinton cajoling and berating stragglers and walking wounded, drummers and fife-players, into the semblance of a column, then march them as noisily as he could up the hill. When Clinton arrived at the redoubt the butchery was over, but not the chase. . 

Prescott had barely escaped. Doctor General John Warren, the prominent Boston revolutionary, was dead. Clinton, oblivious to the carnage around him, tried to bring order out of the milling confusion around him, but this took time. With Howe's permission he organised some of the light infantry, and eventually marched them to a now abandoned Bunker Hill. 'The blockheads had done nothing to it – on the contrary had left it in the only state which could annoy them. By now the majority of the rebels were retreating in an orderly fashion across Charleston Neck. Some, though, ran toward Bunker Hill from the Neck in a final attack on Clinton's contingent despite the heavy continuing cannonade from the sea. A twelve bound cannon-ball fell among them. Orders came from Howe to cease the chase. '[t]he business was finished.' The battle of Bunker Hill was over.

At the end of a great battle the first priority was always to tend to the wounded and count the dead. After the battle of Bunker Hill nineteen officers and 207 men lay dead on the battlefield, seventy officers and 738 rank-and-file lay wounded, a total of 1034 casualties. Another twenty would die of their wounds. Of the marines, one major, two captains and three lieutenants were killed, four captains and three lieutenants wounded, two sergeants and seventy nine privates wounded. Over one and a half hours the flower of the British Army in North America had been wiped out. Total British and American dead was 1,500, nearly half the British who took the field. 
The first task was to bury the hundreds dead. Privates were buried 'in holes' where they fell. The bodies of the officers were taken back to Boston for church burials.The wounded were taken down to the beach, where George Johnston waited for his father. Because he was an officer David Johnston was one of the first brought down from Breed's Hill. Boats from the men-of-war and transports were dragged up on the sand to carry the wounded back to Boston. Young George watched as they went out onto the battle-field to search amongst the trampled grass and in fence corners for officers. Some sailors stopped to rifle the dead for valuables. Men from the Somerset rolled eighty gallon casks of water ashore for the wounded and the thirsty. On the choppy ride back to the Boston-side ferry wharf the boy had time to examine his father's serious wound, most likely a jagged rip from a musket fired at close range. Others had wounds crammed with rusty nails and bits of broken glass, the rebels' last resort when they ran out of powder and ball. (From this the rumour spread around Boston's hospitals and camps that the Americans had used poisoned bullets, so absolute was the death toll from these projectiles.) Once lifted onto the ferry wharf, Johnston probably found a chaise and attendants to carry him and his son to his lodgings, a privilege reserved for officers.There he was tended by his wife and a surgeon. Beyond the windows the rumble of 'coaches, chariots, ... even hand-barrows' entered from the street outside where 'the piercing Groans of the dying & those whose painful Wounds extorted the Sigh from the firmest Mind.' But at least for George's mother her husband and son were alive. Not for her the keening, sobbing and praying of the wives of the common soldiers, some of whom would not see their husbands until the following day, if they saw them at all.