Some of our visitors here at Saratoga NHP are Revolutionary War re-enactors. Many consider the visit here as something of a pilgrimage to the Turning Point of the Revolutionary War, and who could disagree?
The problem with a re-enactment being "realistic" falls apart on many levels, the most important being that no one is to get hurt. Re-enactors in a sham battle have a good notion that life and limb will be preserved. In short, unlike the combatants of the past, re-enactors are not subjected to real fear.
Fear is perhaps one of the most basic of human emotions, and doubtlessly played a role in the survival of the human species. War also engendered organization for killing in the form of armies. Organizations have rules and a big one for armies was that its members are not to run away. For soldiers, the innate "fight or flight" is no longer their choice, which can make for enormous psychological strain.
Weapons employed during the Revolutionary War may not have had the broad spectrum killing abilities as today, but struck by a simple cannon shot or musket ball, a combatant is just as dead as if a high-tech Patriot missile came a callin'. Soldiers were certainly afraid and reacted in a variety of ways.
A man sufficiently frightened might act subconsciously to make it impossible to fight, as Joseph Plumb Martin related just before the Battle of Long Island in 1776: "We were soon called upon to fall in and proceed. We had not gone far…when I heard one in the rear ask another where his musket was…"
Others might blatantly avoid combat as Captain Georg Päusch of the Princely Regiment of Hessen-Hanau Artillery reported after the Battle of Freeman's Farm: "… [Surgeon's mate] Unger…sought a safe place for himself and remained behind with his small bundle of bandages and wrappings…"
Admitting or exhibiting fear earned censure from other soldiers. Group ethos, the youthful belief of immortality, or a greater fear of ridicule would keep them from expressing it. Men certainly were afraid but the only ways to express it was either to most trusted loved ones, or in a diary.
Adjutant Nathaniel Bacheller of Colonel Drake's Regiment of New Hampshire Militia confessed his moment of fear in a letter to his wife just after the Battle of Bemis Heights: "…soon a Very heavy fire Began Both with Cannon & Small Armes, such a seen my ears never were greeted with Before…"
Perhaps the starkest admission of fear from a soldier of the Revolutionary War comes from the pension claim of Garrett Watts, whose moment of truth was at the American disaster at the Battle of Camden, SC in 1780: "I can state on oath that I believe my gun was the first gun fired [at the battle of Camden, 1780]…"