The Proud and the Free (34 page)

I
F THIS TALE I have told here were something spun out of my own imagination, then this would be as good a place to leave it as any; but it would seem to me to be incomplete without a few words concerning the fate of the handful of us who remained from the old Pennsylvania Line. For me at least, in the course of this long narration, they have come to live again a little as they lived in those old, old times, and it is hard to part with them sooner than the point of firm parting, when the Line was dissolved forever.

From York village in Pennsylvania, we marched south to join in a general movement of troops toward Yorktown in Virginia, and toward the battle which to all effects and purposes ended the Revolution. Yet for us there was some special destination.

We found it on the 6th of July, on the James River, where, fronted by a morass, the core of Cornwallis's army lay waiting, better than four thousand men, well armed and well placed. It is said that Wayne's information was bad that day, that he had reliable word that less than a thousand British troops confronted us; it could also be said that he was looking for death, as he had searched for it before. In any case, he led the less than eight hundred men who composed the Line into a frontal bayonet attack upon the British – and the attack was led by the two regiments left of the old foreign brigades.

So there we perished and there was the end of the Pennsylvania Line. Only one hundred and twenty of us survived that attack, which was the wildest, maddest and most terrible bayonet charge of the entire war – and which incidently gave the British the blow which sent them reeling back to Yorktown. Of that fight on the James River, however, I have no heart to tell in detail. We cut our way into a British army more than five times our size, and then we cut our way out again, but of all the men in the 11th Regiment only I was left, and of the Line, only a handful of torn and bleeding men. Somewhere in that swamp Billy Bowzar lay, and MacPherson, and the Gary brothers, Arnold and Simpkins; there too died the German schoolteacher, Chester Rosenbank, and the drummer lads Searles and O'Conner – and how many more I have no heart to detail. Why I survived, I do not know, but it may be that I wanted to particularly and would not die even when all law and rule and precedent said that I should. For with two musket balls in my belly, I lay for five feverish weeks in a makeshift and horrible hospital outside of Yorktown. Yet somehow I lived and survived, and eventually I was able to walk.

In November, I received my discharge in Philadelphia, two hundred dollars in Confederation money, and a certificate attesting to six years of service in the Pennsylvania Line of the Continental Army.…

All this was a long time ago. I have had many things out of life and much that I never looked forward to, and I would be telling less than the truth if I did not admit that life was sweet to me, and rich and rewarding. I married Molly Bracken and we saw our children grown and married to others, and we saw their grandchildren. As it is said, there have been generations in this land, and the old times are best forgotten; and who am I, who gained so much from so little, to speak of injustice?

Yet it is not for the cause of justice or injustice that I have set down this narration. When I mastered the law and took my place at the bar, I gained some understanding of justice; and I do not come with any suit in the cause of the men of the foreign brigades. However it may seem in the course of my tale, I for one do not believe that they perished in vain or that they suffered in vain. They were never causes first, but results first and causes secondarily; and it is the peculiar nature of mankind that with his life so short – and often so miserable – he will nevertheless always find among his numbers those who are willing to spend themselves a little sooner than need be, a little harder, in the cause of human dignity and freedom.

Nor is it strange that, with all the monuments that have been erected, there have been none to the men whose tale I told. A monument, it seems to me, signifies a finish, a point of rest; and if these men rest, they rest too uneasily to have tributes raised to them. Their story is only half told. Another chapter is being written by those angry souls who call themselves Abolitionists, and I think there will be chapters after that as well. There would be no hope in such a tale as this if it were not unfinished.

A BIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD FAST

Howard Fast (1914-2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast's commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.

Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast's mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London's
The Iron Heel
, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.

Fast began his writing career early, leaving high school to finish his first novel,
Two Valleys
(1933). His next novels, including
Conceived in Liberty
(1939) and
Citizen Tom Paine
(1943), explored the American Revolution and the progressive values that Fast saw as essential to the American experiment. In 1943 Fast joined the American Communist Party, an alliance that came to define—and often encumber—much of his career. His novels during this period advocated freedom against tyranny, bigotry, and oppression by exploring essential moments in American history, as in
The American
(1946). During this time Fast also started a family of his own. He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and the couple had two children.

Congressional action against the Communist Party began in 1948, and in 1950, Fast, an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to provide the names of other members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Fast was issued a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress. While in prison, he was inspired to write
Spartacus
(1951), his iconic retelling of a slave revolt during the Roman Empire, and did much of his research for the book during his incarceration. Fast's appearance before Congress also earned him a blacklisting by all major publishers, so he started his own press, Blue Heron, in order to release Spartacus. Other novels published by Blue Heron, including
Silas Timberman
(1954), directly addressed the persecution of Communists and others during the ongoing Red Scare. Fast continued to associate with the Communist Party until the horrors of Stalin's purges of dissidents and political enemies came to light in the mid-1950s. He left the Party in 1956.

Fast's career changed course in 1960, when he began publishing suspense-mysteries under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham. He published nineteen books as Cunningham, including the seven-book Masao Masuto mystery series. Also, Spartacus was made into a major film in 1960, breaking the Hollywood blacklist once and for all. The success of
Spartacus
inspired large publishers to pay renewed attention to Fast's books, and in 1961 he published
April Morning
, a novel about the battle of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. The book became a national bestseller and remains a staple of many literature classes. From 1960 onward Fast produced books at an astonishing pace—almost one book per year—while also contributing to screen adaptations of many of his books. His later works included the autobiography
Being Red
(1990) and the
New York Times
bestseller
The Immigrants
(1977).

Fast died in 2003 at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Fast on a farm in upstate New York during the summer of 1917. Growing up, Fast often spent the summers in the Catskill Mountains with his aunt and uncle from Hunter, New York. These vacations provided a much-needed escape from the poverty and squalor of the Lower East Side's Jewish ghetto, as well as the bigotry his family encountered after they eventually relocated to an Irish and Italian neighborhood in upper Manhattan. However, the beauty and tranquility Fast encountered upstate were often marred by the hostility shown toward him by his aunt and uncle. "They treated us the way Oliver Twist was treated in the orphanage," Fast later recalled. Nevertheless, he "fell in love with the area" and continued to go there until he was in his twenties.

Fast (left) with his older brother, Jerome, in 1935. In his memoir
Being Red
, Fast wrote that he and his brother "had no childhood." As a result of their mother's death in 1923 and their father's absenteeism, both boys had to fend for themselves early on. At age eleven, alongside his thirteen-year-old brother, Fast began selling copies of a local newspaper called the
Bronx Home News
. Other odd jobs would follow to make ends meet in violent, Depression-era New York City. Although he resented the hardscrabble nature of his upbringing, Fast acknowledged that the experience helped form a lifelong attachment to his brother. "My brother was like a rock," he wrote, "and without him I surely would have perished."

A copy of Fast's military identification from World War II. During the war Fast worked as a war correspondent in the China-Burma-India theater, writing articles for publications such as PM,
Esquire
, and
Coronet
. He also contributed scripts to
Voice of America
, a radio program developed by Elmer Davis that the United States broadcast throughout occupied Europe.

Here Fast poses for a picture with a fellow inmate at Mill Point prison, where he was sent in 1950 for his refusal to disclose information about other members of the Communist Party. Mill Point was a progressive federal institution made up of a series of army bunkhouses. "Everyone worked at the prison," said Fast during a 1998 interview, "and while I hate prison, I hate the whole concept of prison, I must say this was the most intelligent and humane prison, probably that existed in America." Indeed, Fast felt that his three-month stint there served him well as a writer: "I think a writer should see a little bit of prison and a little bit of war. Neither of these things can be properly invented. So that was my prison."