Getting to Know GW (2)

(This post is part of a series about our first president that I am writing as I work through Ron Chernow's epic one volume biography of the man. If you find yourself like me, knowing next to nothing about Washington and his life then I invite you to read on.)

I remember as a kid some legend of Washington as almost impervious to bullets. I remember some story of an Indian chief instructing his warriors to take aim at Washington and somehow missing. It is the kind of story that smacks of myth-making, a piece of just-too-goodedness. It is also true.

I wrote last time of Washington's disastrous defeat at Fort Necessity, in what was to come to be the first real skirmish of the French and Indian War. Washington was a part of another devastating defeat in that conflict in the summer of 1755. Washington was under the command of General Edward Braddock. Braddock would be a member of a growing list of British military that underestimated the difficulties of waging war in America.

French and Indian forces met the British at what became known as the Battle of the Monongahela. The British, who outnumbered the French by 2 to 1, were absolutely routed. By the evening of the ninth of July, the British forces were in full retreat back up the road they had just built. Braddock would die from wounds sustained in battle during the retreat.

Braddock had been injured early in the battle and Washington had taken over default command, riding the length and breadth of the British lines and trying to rally his men. Of the 300 British casualties, over 100 were officers. The opposing forces trained their guns on Washington. Upon retreat he noticed four bullet holes in his coat and had two horses he had been riding shot out from underneath him.

Fifteen years later he met one of the chiefs who had been fighting with the French at Monongahela. He told Washington that he had specifically ordered his warriors to fire directly at Washington, to no effect. The chief had concluded that some great spirit had protected Washington and would guide him to momentous things in the future.

At the very least, this story ought to train the skeptic in each of us to quiet it down a bit. Sometimes things happen that are too good to be true.