Military

Journey back to the Spring of 1775, when Bennington County, Vermont, was no more than the wild frontier of the northern territory. It was from here that the first victory of the American Revolution was won, when Patriot Ethan Allen led the famed Green Mountain Boys to raid and capture towering Fort Ticonderoga from the British. Two years later, the British were again defeated at the Battle of Bennington, suffering two hundred casualties and the staggering capture of more than seven hundred soldiers by another Patriot, John Stark. Dick Smith takes readers through the famed covered bridges, historic taverns and quaint villages of Bennington County that in another life played a vital role in leading our country toward independence.

On August 16, 1777, a motley militia won a resounding victory near Bennington, Vermont, against combined German, British and Loyalist forces.

This laid the foundation for the American victory at Saratoga two months later. Historian Michael P. Gabriel has collected over fifty firsthand accounts from the people who experienced this engagement, including veterans from both sides and civilians--women and children who witnessed the horrors of the battle. Gabriel also details a virtually unknown skirmish between Americans and Loyalists. These accounts, along with Gabriel's overviews of the battle, bring to life the terror, fear and uncertainty that caused thousands to see the British army as loved ones departed to fight for the fledgling United States.

The attack on Pearl Harbor changed the lives of the people in Bennington in dramatic ways. Almost overnight, men and women--many of them still too young to vote--went from playing basketball, hunting deer, nursing patients at Putnam Hospital and fishing in the Battenkill to parachuting from burning planes, digging foxholes in Italy, tending to the combat wounded and racing across France with Patton's tanks. They landed at Normandy on D-Day, were in the first planes to bomb Berlin, saw the flag raised on Iwo Jima and were captured at the Battle of the Bulge. At home, they bought war bonds, collected scrap and worried about friends and relatives far away. Join local author Anthony Marro as he recounts the service and sacrifice of Bennington's citizens.