Flawed Hero

Flawed Hero

CHRISTOPHER S. WREN ’57

WREN FRAMES HIS FAST-PACED HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY War in Vermont and New Hampshire around Ethan Allen and other colonial leaders, but the book’s heroes are ordinary Americans. “I wanted to tell how hard it was to fight in that war,” Wren tells DAM. “We have this vision of parades and drums and waving flags. No—this was gutter warfare.”

To write about war and suffering, it helps to have experienced both. Wren won renown as a New York Times foreign correspondent. Before that, he served as an Army infantry platoon leader in South Korea. “Eve been miserable and hungry enough to put myself in the boots of colonial soldiers—even though they were often barefoot,” says Wren. He writes of starving militia men stewing “a phantom broth” from leather cartridge boxes and devouring a pet Newfoundland dog, “paws and all.” He tells of teenage soldier Ebenezer Fletcher, who, wounded m battle and abused by his British captors, fled to the woods wearing a dead man’s boots. And he recounts the grisly fate of Vermonter JaneMcCrea. On the way

to visit her Redcoat fiance, she was accidentally shot by a Continental soldier as she was being abducted by Indians, who then scalped her “lustrous hair.”

Wren wrestles with Allen’s confounding behavior. A 1760s vigilante, he fought New York’s illegal land grab in New Hampshire. Along with Benedict Arnold, he seized strategic Fort Ticonderoga. Afterward, while the diligent Arnold inventoried captured war materiel, Allen binged on rum. Soon thereafter, the British took him prisoner and held him for 32 grueling months. On his release, Allen toured POW camps and denounced their despicable conditions. “He was like John McCain—he stood up to his captors,” Wren says. Later Allen secretly sought a separate peace with England, infuriating Washington. “We like to think of Allen as a great hero, but he was a flawed man who helped save the American revolution,” says Wren. “And he didn’t like New Yorkers.”

George M. Spencer

For an excerpt from Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom, go to our website.