American forces were running low on ammunition when British troops advanced at the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1776. The fighting actually took place on Breed's Hill, not Bunker Hill, though history remembered it differently. That shortage is what gave the order 'Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes' its real meaning: every shot had to count.
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Transcripts
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It's American rewind.
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t them near Boston in June of:
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We call it the Battle of Bunker Hill.
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But much of the fighting happened on nearby Breed's Hill.
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Muskets cracked and smoke filled the fields as the first British attack failed.
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Then the second failed.
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By the third try, Americans barely had enough gunpowder to defend the hill.
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That's when someone, or maybe no one, gave an order that has stood the test of time.
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Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes.
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The British finally took the hill, but they paid dearly for it.
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A British officer described the shocking carnage of the moment as a sight that he wrote, will never be erased out of my mind to the day of my death.
