Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory (21 page)

He pressed on and finally Wayne raised his head, a flicker of surprise in his eyes.

“What’s that I smell?”

Washington could not help but smile, feeling a bit foolish at the demonstration that was about to take place. Yet he felt that one of his most trusted generals, away for weeks on the most dangerous and frustrating of assignments, needed a boost in morale.

They crested a rise and there it was. A long, low log hut, thirty feet or more in length, and nearly as deep. It had four chimneys, smoke boiling out of each, a massive pile of firewood outside the entryway. A couple of men, stripped naked to their waists, emerged to pick up armfuls of wood, oblivious to their approaching commander. They dashed back inside under the rude doorway curtain of a tattered old blanket.

A large gathering of men waited outside. An officer yelled at them to wait their turn, and at the approach of Washington and Wayne he snapped to attention and saluted, the men gathered outside the doorway, nearly a hundred of them, coming to attention as well.

“May I ask your indulgence,” Washington announced, returning their salutes. “An inspection tour for the benefit of General Wayne.”

“Good ole Mad Anthony,” one of the men gathered shouted, “I was with ya at Paoli.”

Wayne sought out the man and offered a salute. “Next time it’ll be the turn of those bastards, I promise you,” he replied.

The others gathered around the man who had thus spoken, grinning and then laughing that he was a bootlicker as the two generals ducked under the blanket and went into the shed, though it was obvious they were delighted that one of theirs had been singled out.

The north wall of the shed was lined with brick ovens, the heat radiating from them as hot as a summer day. The scent in the shed was all but shattering in its power. It was a bakery.

The half-dozen ovens were made of nothing more than scavenged brick from the destroyed mill. There were no doors to the ovens or to the roaring fireplaces beneath them. Wooden hand-carved paddles were being scooped into the ovens, pulling out steaming loaves of bread. Even Washington felt his stomach constrict at the sight and smell of it. Along the far wall, dozens of men, crowded shoulder to shoulder, were mixing, pounding, rolling out dough. Before it had barely risen, into the oven it went, pulled out but minutes later at times not even half baked, so pressing was the demand from the men waiting outside.

“Second Maryland!”

A short, thick plug of a man stood with the curtain pulled back.

“Second Maryland, twenty loaves!”

“Damn your eyes, we need fifty,” came a reply.

“You got a problem, you son of a bitch, General Washington himself is inside here, take it up with him.”

There was a sullen, inaudible retort, but no further complaints as one of the bakers, like the others stripped to the waist, carried out a canvas sack filled with bread and handed it off to a captain and a guard detail who peeked into the bakery, saw Washington, hurriedly saluted, and ran off with their treasure.

The pluglike man turned back from the doorway, looking down at a sheet of foolscap.

“Third Maryland, ten minutes, twenty loaves!” he shouted, and let the blanket drop.

Cigar clenched between his yellow-stained teeth, the man smiled at Washington and saluted.

“General Anthony Wayne, may I present,” Washington paused, “General Baker of the Army, Christopher Ludwig.”

Ludwig, wiping his dough-encrusted hands on a tattered gray apron, extended his hand, which Wayne grasped eagerly.

“General, am I now? I was just joking, sir, when I said that should be my title.”

“You feed the men and, by God, sir, you will draw the pay and honor of a general this winter,” Washington cried.

“Care for a fresh loaf, General?” Ludwig asked.

Washington could not reply, thinking of the lines of men waiting outside.

One of his workers, with wooden paddle, fished a half-dozen steaming loaves out of an oven, shouting that there was room for more and, ignoring the presence of the general, cursed the wood suppliers, saying he needed more damn wood, and to be quick about it. The fire was dying down in his oven.

Ludwig, with a bit of a limp, stumped over to a rough-hewn table, where men were packing loaves into canvas and burlap bags, grabbed a steaming loaf, and broke it open. It was obviously still red-hot, but his gnarled hands, scorched and yet scorched again by a thousand flames, did not notice the discomfort.

He offered half the broken loaf to Washington, the other to Wayne.

“Sorry I can’t offer you gentlemen a proper setting, with tea, fresh butter from the churn, maybe a spot of brandy to wash it down with,” and as he said that he held an extended forefinger to his nose and winked, “but this is Valley Forge, you know.”

The bakery fell silent as all eyes turned on Washington. He held the bread, suppressing the urge to just tear into it, instead properly breaking off but a piece. It hissed slightly from the steaming heat. He changed it from one hand to the other, the bakers grinning at his discomfort.

He took a bite, the men studying him as carefully as any battery of gourmet chefs standing by the side of a king.

It was, in fact, doughy, barely cooked through and only half-leavened, but the warmth, the near-burning heat, the taste of it, caused his head to nearly swim.

“Heavenly,” he whispered with a smile.

Ludwig stood before him, arms folded across a chest as hairy as any bear’s, and grinned with delight.

Six months ago he had been but a sergeant of militia, born in Germany, a pastry cook from Philadelphia by trade who supposedly boasted a shop renowned in the city and even patronized by the likes of Franklin and other members of Congress.

Two days after the army staggered into Valley Forge, he had barged his way past Tilghman and Hamilton, demanding an audience with “our general and, Gott, if you don’t let me in, this damn army will starve, I tell you.”

Without any niceties or preamble, he made his case clear. Give him a hundred men of his own choosing recruited from the various regiments—bakers, woodsmen properly armed with axes to make a bakehouse and able to bring in two cords or more of firewood a day, brick layers for the ovens and access to the ruins of the forge to salvage the bricks, and a ton or more of flour a day—and he’d feed this whole damn army or may a pox strike him blind.

Caught as much by the man’s blunt-spoken audacity as by anything else, Washington had ordered Hamilton to draft the authorizations.

He looked over at Anthony, who unabashedly was wolfing the bread down in great gulps.

“Now, if only we had a spot of rum, even some whiskey to wash it down,” Anthony sighed.

“I know a man who can turn corn into good drinking liquor,” Christopher offered, but a stern look from Washington stilled that line of reasoning. Behind the baker he could see a bright, cheery grin from a man he suspected was from the frontier. He was long-bearded, arms sinewy but powerful, and had what looked to be a Seneca tattoo around his neck. His features had fallen at the rejection of the still.

“Twenty more,” one of the bakers shouted, holding up a bag.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” Christopher announced. “Got to do it myself, otherwise they’ll be rioting out there.”

He took up the bag, went to the door, shouted for the men of the Third
Maryland, handed them the sack of bread, dismissed their grumbling that they needed eighty loaves, and checked their number off.

“First New York Artillery next, four loaves!”

He stepped back into the steaming hot bakehouse.

“Told you, sir, give me two weeks and a hundred men and I’d have a proper bakery.”

Washington could only nod with admiration.

Ludwig drew closer, dough-encrusted hands on his hips.

“Now, sir, what about flour for tomorrow?”

“I can’t promise.”

“Can’t promise?” Ludwig snapped. “By damn all, sir, and begging your pardon, no disrespect. I got twenty men building an extension to this building to put in two more ovens, a separate room to let the loaves at least rise and leaven for a few hours, and now you say I’m out of flour after just one full day of baking? You see how many men are lined up out there?”

“I saw.”

Ludwig just gazed at him.

My God, Washington could not help but think. Others would think this disrespect of the worst kind, but he could not. This man, whoever he was before the war, had decided it was his personal task to provide a pound of fresh bread a day to every man in the army, and damn anyone who got in his way.

“I promise you I shall see what I can do,” he paused, “General Baker of the Army.”

Ludwig puffed up with the announcement of that title, looking back over his shoulder at all those who had stopped in their labors to watch the confrontation.

“Back to work, all of you, damn your eyes,” Ludwig snapped. “Five hundred more loaves and then you get your break and a loaf then for each of you, but not before.”

Ludwig looked back at Washington, features reddening.

“Sorry, sir,” he whispered, “but to keep ’em at their tasks, I promised each man a loaf for himself, begging your pardon.”

“A fair enough trade for their labor and skills,” Washington replied.

He looked over at Anthony, who was finishing his own half-loaf without comment. As for his own half, he wasn’t sure what to do. Hand it back? He thought of his loyal adjutants back at the house and, a bit embarrassed, stuffed the loaf under his cape and into his haversack. No one said anything, but more than a few grinned.

“Next time you visit, sir, if you could only bring up a few dozen dairy cows and not slaughter ’em first, I’ll promise you fresh butter and cream with your bread.”

He could not reply. Such a balancing act. A score of such cows would be meat for another day for the army. Fodder to feed them, four to five hundred pounds per day? In return maybe eighty gallons of milk, a few gallons of cream, and a few dozen pounds of butter. He sighed. The trade was not yet worth it, no matter how tempting.

He would and must choose the meat rather than the butter, no matter how agonizing it was at this moment as the memory of such luxuries filled him.

“General Ludwig, I leave you to your labors,” Washington said with a smile, “and my heartfelt compliments to you and your entire command.”

There was a bit of a cheer as he left the bakery, the joy it created stilled by the sight of a hundred or more men, shivering with cold, delegates from the various regiments of his army, queued up in the hope of fetching back a quarter-pound of fresh bread per man.

He started back to his headquarters.

“Sir, I thank you for the repast,” Anthony Wayne finally said. “Though a bit doughy, that bread was the most I’ve had in days.”

They walked on in silence for a couple of hundred yards. Washington struggled with the thought of the warm half-loaf in his haversack but had firmly resolved it would go to Tilghman, Laurens, and Hamilton—and then he looked over his shoulder. His loyal guards kept pace, never really visible but always there.

“Sergeant Harris,” he called, and the old man sprinted the few feet forward.

“Sir!”

“Were your men able to draw bread rations?”

“Sir, we have a detail up there but I fear they are at the end of the line.”

Washington fished under his cape, drew out the bread, and handed it over.

“I’m sorry it is not more, Sergeant. For you and these men with you,” he announced.

Without waiting for a response, he pressed on, looking back at Wayne, who was silent, as if consumed with guilt that he had so eagerly consumed what was offered to him.

“About what I wish for you to do next, General Wayne,” Washington announced, now pressing to the core of the issue.

Wayne looked over at him anxiously.

“Sir?”

“I will speak bluntly, sir,” Washington announced.

“But of course, sir.”

“I am relieving you of the command of your brigade.”

“Sir?”

Wayne stopped as if stricken.

Washington extended his hand as if to guide him along.

“Surely sir, my service…” Wayne’s voice trailed off. “Sir, the court-martial regarding Paoli cleared me of blame…”

“Hear me out, General Wayne.” He looked back over his shoulder to make sure his escorts were out of earshot. The men had slowed, carefully breaking up the bread, Harris as always insuring the doling out would be in equal shares.

“Perhaps I started wrong, sir. I am not relieving you of command, I am promoting you.”

“Sir?”

“Your own report but an hour ago confirmed what I suspected. The English and their hirelings will not stir from Philadelphia. Even if we made a feint across New Jersey to threaten the garrison they left behind in New York, that would be futile as well.”

He had not forgotten the sting of the letters of remonstration, demanding a sortie into New Jersey while at the same time splitting his forces to try to hold Pennsylvania west of the Schuylkill. To try to bring this army forth to seek engagement, even on ground of his choosing, was impossible. The men were no longer capable of fighting except in a defensive battle with, frankly, their backs to the wall, in this case the river behind them. To venture into Jersey would bring forth a riposte from the Philadelphia garrison, attacking him from the rear even as he struggled to close in on New York. Even if he could regain the Palisade Heights, how could he ever hope to cross the Hudson in the face of the Royal Navy? At the same time, Congress would be screaming that he had abandoned Pennsylvania…and them.

With Wayne’s written report of last night, the report of spies still coming out of the city, the evidence that was before his eyes every day these last two weeks, he knew Providence had decreed that, this winter, the army must remain at Valley Forge. He hoped that the British, in their arrogance, would not sortie out to finish him.

What he needed now was not a general of fighting ability. Wayne was more than fitted for that title, in spite of his humiliating defeat. What was needed
was a general of grit and determination for a task of critical importance. He sensed Wayne would fit that bill well.