On September 6, 1781 Benedict Arnold burned New London to the ground, and then turned his attention to Groton, where he stormed Fort Griswold, on Groton Bank, and the troops under his command massacred the Fort’s defenders. Today we attended a memorial wreath laying for the men and women who fought that day. (The women may not have borne arms, but at least some were at the battle site, tending to the wounded).
Today, as it does every year, Groton commemorated the sacrifice of those men and women. We attended the ceremony, at which various luminaries spoke. This was a landmark year, inasmuch as most of the speakers were Democrats, including newly elected State Senator Andy Maynard, and newly elected Congressman Joe Courtney.
One must wonder if the empire that exists today would meet with the approval of the hardy Yankees that defended Fort Griswold. They were, after all, insurgents fighting to detach themselves from an Empire that was just beginning the slow unraveling that overreaching always brings about.
But enough preaching. It’s a holiday, and I’m staying away from politics (sort of). Here’s some pictures, which will mostly be in the form of small thumbnails, which you can enlarge by clicking.
First, the monument from a different angle than I’ve shown before. Our monument, by the way, was constructed 20 years before the copycat ripoff at Bunker Hill.
By the way, to paraphrase Freud, sometimes an obelisk is just an obelisk.
No Revolutionary War commemoration would be complete without some re-enactors, who I unfortunately can’t identify, having forgotten the name of their group:
Next, Andy Maynard and City Deputy Mayor Paul Duarte:
Joe Courtney gave a good and appropriately short speech:
I took some video, but am having a hard time figuring out how to post it-the one place WordPress falls behind my old blogging software.
After the ceremony a lone bagpiper stood on the fort ramparts and played. Unfortunately, he had not been included on the written program and a lot of people, I think, were unaware he was there. A real shame because he played well. 99% of the time a bagpipe is a wretched thing to hear, but somehow they work well certain contexts, and this was one.
A number of the people present were descendants of men who fought in the battle, some of whom still live in the shadow of the monument. But the locals were not the only descendants there. Some folks from Alabama make the trek every year. Their last name is Ledyard, so I assume (this wasn’t made clear) they are descendants of Colonel William Ledyard, who led the defenders, and according to the local version of events, was killed with his own sword after surrendering it to a British officer.
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