Chapter one: The tragedy

On a small farm on the outskirts of Yorktown, Virginia there was a family. It was September 10, 1775 and the family had needed to discuss their current situation. There was a problem with the British and their cruelty to their own people. James(the father)had said, that the British and their tyranny had needed to stop or they wouldn't get any of there crops that they had grown. The mother had agreed but said, “ we should just leave because knowing the king and his hard head, we won't get anywhere.” The Family agreed to become patriots because of how cruel the king treated his people.
When the king heard that one of their only farmers in “the new world” was going to betray them he was furious with them. With this information he declared them to be executed by fire. With this declaration of the king he sent a group of men to kill them.
As word travels, the family soon heard the king's declaration to kill them        and had set off, to get ready to leave, since the British were at least 4 days away. They had packed and were about to leave but they needed water so they sent their son, Charles Went to pick up some water from the creek in the forest. As the family was ready to leave and was waiting on their son to come back, they heard a noise off in the distance. The British were here and preparing to fire on the family. The family decided to hide, but had no clue where their son was. It happens to be that he was just about to get back, but then saw the British at his house and just .started watching them.

Chapter two: On The Run

The family had barricaded themselves inside their house. But unlucky for them the British had brought cannons to destroy anything in their way. The British shot four cannonballs at the house before setting branches all around the house to cause a fire. They first had to find something to help keep the fire alive. So the family started to set up some leaves to help the fire burn the entire house on fire and burn the house to complete ash. As they were doing this, Charles the little fourteen year old boy had to witness his own family suffer a fiery death. He was so mad but knew that if he went down to save them he would get shot. So he decided to leave and start over. Finally after a couple of the longest minutes of their life they set the house on fire. But when they set the house on fire they heard Charles drop the water buckets and started to chase him.
Charles had known the forest considering he grew up playing in the forest. As he was running he would stop and build some traps to surprise the British and slow them down. It worked and the farther the British got, the more of them died. It was hard for him to survive because he had to find food and water. It was about to be nightfall and he hadn't had food for about 4 hours. So while the British were sleeping, he was trying to locate a river or berry bushes so he wouldn't be so hungry or thirsty. After about an hour of looking he was lost in mist. He had stumbled on a rock and fell down a small cliff. It was a bad fall that broke his leg and scratched his arm up but he also landed near a berry bush with a river right in front of him. He tried to get up but couldn't because of his Broken leg. Then he saw someone in the mist and called for help. The man in the mist was like 15. Years old and was kind enough to nurse Charles back to health. When Charles woke up he asked the boy what his name was? The boy responded with “my name is Dickson grey what is your name?” Charles said “Charles smith”. Once they were done introducing themselves Dickson had given Charles supply's to help him on his journey to Yorktown. So then Charles set off to get to yorktown with a bag of supplies to last three nights. Charles was back running from the British. He was almost there but there was still a problem of getting past the guards protecting the gate. After two days of running from British soldiers he finally made it to the gate.

Chapter three: The Battle
Charles had made camp one mile from the gate and had to watch out for the patrol. He fell asleep after not being able to sleep for twelve hours. Once he fell asleep one of the patrols came by and say a pair of shoes by a bush and went to check out what was over there. The guards had found Charles and had arrested him. When Charles woke up he had argued that he was trying to get to his aunt's house but the guards didn't believe him. Then the British soldiers found them and started to shoot. The guards found cover by a rock. They started shooting back but were outnumbered so they gave Charles a gun. Charles had never shot a gun so he didn't know what he was doing. He asked one of the guards what his name was and how to uses the gun. One of the guards responded that there name was Chris Rogers's and he explained that you pull the trigger to shoot and then put gunpowder in the gun to set it up to shoot again. But they knew they couldn't win so they had to come up with a plain to escape the British soldiers. So Charles had decided to go with Chris to the right and had the other guard run the other way as a decoy. When he started running it would give them an opportunity to start and then they would run to the gate. When he started running Charles and Chris started but the British troops shot him down fast and then went after Charles. After one mile of running they made it to the gate and entered Yorktown.

Chapter four: Freedom
When they made it to Yorktown Chris and Charles had parted ways. Charles had went to find his aunt and start a new life. Charles had found his aunt and started a new life but didn't know that that wasn't the end of the fighting because Charles had joined the patriots in the revolutionary war. It was the last battle, it was the battle of Yorktown. After three weeks of fighting non-stop general lord Cornwallis surrendered to general Washington on October 17,1781. That battle was the battle that formally recognized the United States as a free and independent nation. As Charles found his purpose and ended up living as blacksmith with his aunt.