LISTEN: Celebrating the Battle of Brooklyn’s 243rd anniversary
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As has been tradition for years, some of the battle’s fighting will be recreated in Green-Wood Cemetery. Brooklyn-born Mike Grillo has played Gen. George Washington there and elsewhere at various reenactments and events for almost two decades.
“There were at least 15-20,000 British and Hessian troops in Staten Island getting ready to cross over,” Grillo told Brooklyn This Week, recalling what Washington saw over two centuries ago. “They were going to attack the city itself, or cross over the narrows and attack Long Island and march up the King’s Highway, possibly take over the village of New Utrecht, and all the subsequent villages afterwards.”