The Tale of an American Revolutionary Soldier - an Editorial Review of "In the Hot Fight"

Book Blurb:

Let tyrants shake their iron rod,

And Slav'ry clank her galling chains,

We fear them not, we trust in God,

New England's God forever reigns.

William Billings -- Chester

From completely unknown and unrenowned author, Robert Masters, comes the 'memoir' of Jonas Newton Belknap, common, ordinary soldier of the American revolution. If you like war stories, Jonas has plenty to tell, including how he lost his innocence to a 'bad' woman in the military camp at Cambridge, and how she was subsequently subjected to the ducking stool in the Charles River.

Following that regrettable incident, Jonas and his father fought side by side at Bunker Hill. Sadly, his father, a 'fleshy' man, was overcome by heat exhaustion during the American retreat and died the next morning. His final words to Jonas were "always do your duty." Jonas took this to heart and soldiered on to the end of the war, first in the Massachusetts militia and then in the Continental Army. He provides us with firsthand recollections of, and commentary on, the Siege of Boston, Ticonderoga, the miraculous victory at Saratoga, two New York massacres (Cobleskill and Cherry Valley), Sullivan's Expedition to destroy the Iroquois, the glorious victory at Yorktown, and life at West Point.

On January 17, 1783, Jonas married his hometown sweetheart, Esther Parker at the Belchertown Congregational Church. At the time, Jonas thought he and Esther would live happily ever after in Belchertown. But book one of his memoir closes with his observation that three short years later, they left Belchertown forever.

Book Buy Link: https://geni.us/fb6THg

Author Bio:

Robert G. Masters grew up in Kansas City and Billings, Montana. He is a retired software engineer currently living with his wife, Fern, in Brookeville, Maryland. His father turned him on to the life of Jonas Newton Belknap, who was Robert's fifth great-grandfather. In The Hot Fight, A Soldier's Story is Robert's first novel. It recounts Jonas Belknap's experiences as an ordinary common soldier during the eight years of the American Revolution. Shortly before Jonas' sixteenth birthday his father convinces Jonas' mother that he and Jonas should both sign up to fight the 'inhuman butchers'. Jonas loses his innocence at the military camp at Cambridge. He loses his father at Bunker Hill. He sees action at Ticonderoga and Saratoga before being wounded when his company is ambushed by Joseph Brant's Tory and Indian army in Cobleskill, New York. He escapes the grisly fate suffered by some of his comrades by hiding in a hollow log. He is forced to stand by helplessly with his comrades-in-arms while the citizens of Cherry Valley are slaughtered in a terrible massacre. When his regiment joins the Sullivan Expedition, Jonas witnesses the destruction of the Iroquois. Finally, Jonas joins the Light Infantry and marches to Virginia with Lafayette in order to capture the traitor, Arnold. There, his captain is killed by a bomb during the siege of Yorktown. Jonas did not keep a diary, nor did he write a memoir. Mr. Masters has written his memoir for him.

Editorial Review:

Title: In the Hot Fight

Author: Robert G. Masters

Rating: 4.3

Robert G. Masters’ “In the Hot Fight: A Soldier’s Story” opens with what appears to be an ordinary summer afternoon in rural Massachusetts, where a boy, Jonas Newton Belknap, and his friend, Jedediah Pike, sit beside a quiet stream trying to catch a legendary fish they call “Old Beelzebub.” This is long before Jonas will spend eight years fighting in the American Revolution. The calm of the moment is suddenly shattered by a band of whooping “Indians” rushing from the woods, waving tomahawks and surrounding the boys, in a threat that quickly proves to be a prank, carried out by local boys in paint and feathers. What begins as childish horseplay unexpectedly captures the charged political tensions of colonial Massachusetts, where even youthful pranks are shaped by the growing divide between Patriots and Loyalists. The quiet childhood moment beside the stream is only the beginning of a much larger journey. Jonas will march with his father to Bunker Hill, endure the hardships of the Continental Army, and witness some of the defining moments of the American Revolution, from Saratoga to Yorktown. Masters presents these experiences through the voice of an ordinary soldier rather than a famous general, allowing readers to see the war through the eyes of someone who simply tried to follow his father’s final advice: always do your duty.

“Your father,” Thomas said, “is a rank Tory. And that makes you one, too. The Sons of Liberty have proclaimed that the feet of all Tories must be held to the fire until they see the error of their ways. So that is what we are going to do to you. Roast his little piggies, boys!”

From this moment of childhood bewilderment, the narrative begins to follow Jonas Newton Belknap through eight years of war that will carry him from Bunker Hill to the final victory at Yorktown. What at first appears to be rustic mischief, gradually reveals itself as something more significant. The opening scene of counterfeit Indians and very real intolerance feels less like a passing childhood memory and more like the novel’s very thematic foundation. The accusation unfolding almost resembles a miniature political tribunal, revealing how deeply the language of the Revolution had already seeped into village life. From there the story expands outward, becoming the account of how ordinary people are swept into extraordinary events, and how a farm boy from western Massachusetts slowly comes to understand that the fight for freedom has many faces, some of them painted and some of them painfully familiar.

An early passage finds Jonas as a boy of fifteen, hearing for the first time about the death of Christopher Seider, an eleven-year-old German boy shot by a British customs officer in Boston. The news reaches Belchertown through the Sunday meeting, where the Reverend Forward reads the newspaper account aloud. Jonas finds the story most disturbing and dreams that night that he is in Boston with other boys, chasing a Britisher down the street.

“I found the story of Christopher Seider most disturbing. I had never been to Boston, but I dreamed one night that I was there, with a bunch of other boys from Belchertown, and we were chasing a huge Britisher down the street and cornered him. We were closing in with dirt clods in our hands when he turned toward us and fired his musket directly into my chest, whereupon I awoke with a cry that roused my entire house.”

The moment reveals that the conflict is already pressing into the imagination of these rural communities, and for boys like Jonas, you realize that the violence of the Revolution arrives first not on the battlefield but in their thoughts and dreams. It is a moment that quietly prepares the reader for a world in which boys will soon become soldiers, where the musket fire that echoes through Jonas’s sleep will soon become real. In doing so, the passage introduces the deeper stakes of the coming war, suggesting that the struggle is not merely a matter of distant politics but one that reaches into the lives of ordinary people and into the fears of boys who begin to imagine violence in the streets of their own towns.

“The first brother took a small section of board with a scrap of white paper, about the size of a dollar, nailed to the center of it for a target and held it between his knees. The other, at a distance upwards of sixty yards, picked up eight different guns in quick succession, and without resting the guns on anything but his extended hand to steady them, shot eight bullets through the board, in the space of about 10 seconds.”

For Jonas, this moment is his first real glimpse of the kind of men who will fight the war. The incredible shooting skill of the frontier riflemen amazes both him and the crowd watching. Until now the war has mostly lived in rumors, newspaper stories, and restless dreams but here, it suddenly becomes real, embodied in the confidence and deadly accuracy of the soldiers gathered around Boston.

“General Howe ordered that three of the ringleaders should be selected to be tried before a court martial for mutiny. They were tried on the spot and were sentenced to be shot. Twelve of the most guilty mutineers were next selected to be their executioners. These men were greatly distressed with the duty imposed on them, and when ordered to load, some of them shed tears. Those to be shot had neither time nor power to implore the mercy and forgiveness of their God. I felt great sympathy for them, for I knew the misery they had endured which no doubt led them to believe they had no other choice but to revolt.”

For the reader, this moment strips away any romantic image of the Revolutionary War. The scene reveals the brutal reality of an army struggling to survive hunger, exhaustion, and uncertainty. The mutineers are not portrayed as villains but as desperate men pushed to the limits of endurance. By forcing soldiers to execute their own comrades, the army asserts the harsh discipline required to keep it from collapsing altogether and in doing so, the passage reminds the reader that the Continental Army held together not only through ideals of liberty, but through painful sacrifice and strict order. Moments like this deepen the reader’s understanding of what victory truly cost, making the eventual triumph feel not inevitable but painfully earned by men who had every reason to abandon the fight.

Masters’ prose is direct and unadorned, sounding almost like the voice of an old man looking back on his youth and telling it plainly. There is no attempt to impress with elaborate language, only the steady accumulation of detail that gradually builds a world that feels both distant and familiar. The pacing mirrors the war itself, shifting from long stretches of dull fatigue duty and camp boredom, to sudden bursts of violence that shatter the quiet of army life. Jonas himself is a remarkable creation, not because he is heroic in any conventional sense, but because he is so completely ordinary. He fears battle, mourns the loss of friends, drinks too much at times, makes mistakes, falls in love, and suffers heartbreak and through him, the reader sees the war not as a sequence of famous battles but as a lived experience shaped by fear, friendship, hardship, and endurance. The supporting characters are drawn with the same honesty, from the boastful Choshesh who deserts before ever seeing battle to the steadfast and doomed Captain Patrick, who leads his men into the ambush at Cobleskill. The novel’s themes of duty, survival, and the slow gathering of wisdom emerge not through heavy commentary but through the quiet accumulation of remembered moments. Masters writes as though he were telling stories beside a fire, sentences unfolding with the natural rhythm of speech rather than the careful polish of literary display.

This book will appeal most to readers who enjoy historical fiction that immerses them in the daily reality of the past. At its heart lies a simple but powerful insight, that freedom is not won by heroes alone, but by the stubborn courage of ordinary people who refuse to give up. Through Robert G. Masters’ humane and plainspoken storytelling, the soldiers of the Continental Army step out of the pages of history and become men we might have known, men we might even recognize in ourselves. And fittingly, it all begins beside a quiet Massachusetts stream, where two boys once believed they were only playing at war, long before one of them would spend eight years learning what that war truly meant.

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