Battle of the Fist of the First Men

The Battle of the Fist of the First Men was a battle during the Conflict Beyond the Wall. It is the first open confrontation between men and White Walkers since the Long Night.

In the books
While waiting for the last of the search parties to return to decide on a plan of action regarding the wildlings, the Watch were attacked by hundreds of wights. Since their arrows had no effect against the undead attackers, Mormont ordered them to use fire arrows, slowing the wights but not stopping them. The Watch was quickly overrun. Mormont was able to form up about fifty survivors to break out of the Fist. All the Brothers who were unable to form up with Mormont's retreat were all slaughtered by the wights. Some of them were later turned into wights. Mormont organized the injured to be put on the horses and set the able men walking with torches to guard the flanks and rear. Luckily the wights did not give an effective pursuit, only nibbling at the stragglers.

In contrast to the TV series, during the battle Samwell Tarly managed to send many ravens, but just two of them (one to Castle Black and one to Shadow Tower) had carried messages about the impending attack. Terrified of the battle, Samwell forgot to send any other messages off before setting the rest of the ravens free when the battle was lost. The message to Castle Black reached its destination, but there was nothing those who remained there could do to help Mormont and his troops, except sending distress messages to the five kings, pleading for them to send reinforcements.

In the book, Ghost did not take part in the battle, because he accompanied Jon Snow. Rast was never present at the Fist of the First Man as he remained a recruit and stayed at Castle Black.

During the retreat Sam collapsed, and only Grenn stayed with him, urging him in vain to continue walking. A steward of the Watch named Paul joined them and carried Sam. Because of the delay, the three were soon left behind.

The casualties of the Watch were extremely heavy: most of the force of 300 men was destroyed. Only 61 men managed to cut their way free out of the Fist, part of those were killed by the pursuing wights during the retreat. Of the 44 survivors, 12 were critically injured.

The defeat cost the Watch of about third of its whole manpower, and strongly demoralized the survivors.