The town of Dracut, Massachusetts, was incorporated in 1701, covering 21.3 square miles along the Merrimack River and border of New Hampshire. From a population of 1173 people at the time, 439 men of colonial Dracut served in the War of Independence, some 37 percent of residents, according to Donat H. Paquet in The Photographic History of Dracut (1982). One of the war stories follows in traditional form that might be a song or a poem. It’s based on a true account with a few details imagined and added for color. I wrote this when I was twenty-two years old. —PM

Coburn’s Pitch: A Ballad

This is a story from Bunker Hill,
The story of a captain’s will.
Peter Coburn, a Dracut man,
Led his men in that famous stand.

With the battle going poorly
And Redcoats all about
Coburn directed his company
With his sword and shout.

Suddenly he took a shot,
Struck high on the arm.
Luckily it tore his coat
Doing not much harm.

Soon after he was hit again,
Musket ball ripping his shirt
And nicking his neck’s skin,
But he wasn’t badly hurt.

Later, a third ball found his leg,
Tearing a chunk from the left knee,
Yet the captain pressed ahead
And remained on his feet.

Men in his fighting row
Said his clothes were riddled and rent
Like an old home scarecrow
Wearing a moth-eaten tent.

Dracut militiamen fought hard,
Spending powder and shot
As the lobster-backs charged forward.
Neither side had an easy lot.

Britishers at last clambered to the top.
Dracut men were being overrun.
Coburn’s fighters still wouldn’t stop,
And refused to be outdone.

“Now, my boys, we have you!” was the vengeful cry
Of an officer, a white-wigged Redcoat.
But as he yelled a stone struck between his eyes.
By Coburn’s hand he was smote.

****

Paul Marion © 1976, 2025 (revised)

(The passage describing this incident is in Silas Coburn’s History of Dracut, p. 129, 1922)