Famous battle cries

Historians have had some problems with battle cries. Some were appropriate. Some were interesting and some were ludicrous, but these cries were not weeping but shouting.

John Paul Jones is probably best known for his boasting: "I have not yet begun to fight." The British on the Serapis demanded that the American ships, the Bonnehomme Richard, surrender. The American ship had been badly battered and had seven feet of water in its hold and was sinking. Captain Jones later said it was "a tremendous scene of carnage, wreck and ruin."

The two ships were touching each other, so Jones lashed the sinking ship to the British Serapis. Then he told the British "I have not yet begun to fight." The Yankee sailors clambored aboard. After three hours of bloody hand-to-hand fighting, the British surrendered.

Captain James Parker was standing on the village green in Lexington, Mass., with seventy-five men and boys. He wasn't sure what was going on when seven hundred British troops approached. Parker spoke the well-known order: "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."

British major Pitcairn ordered the Americans to disperse, "ye damned rebels." About that time, a shot rang out from an unknown source. More gunfire followed and the Revolutionary War began on Lexington Green.

James Lawrence was captain of the American ship Chesapeake in the War of 1812, when he got a taunting note from the captain of a British ship blocking the Boston harbor, saying "Come out and fight!"

He ran up a flag saying "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights." Captain Lawrence headed for the British ship. The first firing from the British ship mortally wounded Lawrence. While dying, Lawrence gave his last command, "Don't give up the ship."

That didn't succeed, and the U.S. ship Chesapeake was taken by the British, who towed it to Halifax, Canada, where Captain Lawrence was buried with full military honors.

The British won a land battle on Bunker Hill where the Yankees made a valiant stand with their muzzle-loading muskets, which were not very accurate at long range. Col. William Prescott ordered his men to make every shot count, which they did. The colonists were out of powder and had to surrender. The British won, but, their casualties were in the thousands. American casualties numbered four hundred, dead or wounded.

During the Civil War, the Confederates mined the mouth of the Mississippi River. Admiral David Farragut, Union commander, saw a Yankee ship, the Tecumseh, explode a mine and sink within two minutes. He was up in the rigging and when he saw the Tecumseh sink, he is reported to say: "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead." One wonders if he could be heard, up that high. The quote wasn't attributed to him for fourteen years. Anyway, Farragut captured New Orleans, which was held by Union troops for the rest of the war.

A weird quote in attributed to Confederate General Joe Wheeler, thirty years after the Civil War. He had been asked by President McKinley to fight in the Spanish-American War. When he saw the Cubans were retreating, he forgot which war he was in, and yelled a battle cry, "We've got the damn Yankees on the run!"

At the Battle of the Bulge in December, 1944, the 101st Airbourne Division was surrounded by the Nazis, who demanded that the U.S. commander, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe surrender. His reply was "Nuts! From the American commander." The German was baffled because he didn't know what it meant.

Dr. A.O. Goldsmith of Kennett is a retired director of the School of Journalism, Louisiana State University.