...rm bells, sent back to General Gage for reinforcements. At five o'clock the troops had covered the eleven miles to Lexington. There on the common, just before sunrise, the light infantry, under Major Pitcairn , exchanged the first volleys with Captain Parker's Minute Men who stood in the path of the invading army. Here, as the Minute Men fell at sunrise, war began. To the British that encounter was l...