Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory (48 page)

He thought again of Jonathan. Never had he felt so utterly alone.

Valley Forge
June 23, 1778

Peter Wellsley, no longer dressed in the castoffs given to him by the widow Hewes but in the proper uniform of blue and buff worn by the headquarters company of General Washington, stood at rigid attention at the approach of his commander.

Preparations for the march had been going on since the evening before. In the small stockyard nearly fifty head of cattle were being slaughtered, some of the meat passed out to the troops to roast on open fires. Meanwhile, with a fresh loaf of bread, a pound per man, coming out of the bakehouse, the poor souls laboring within for their General Baker were glad that this was the final night of such work for them. During the cold, dark days of January and February, the bakehouse job was one of the most sought-after in the entire army, for it was always warm, and at least there would be some fresh bread. But now, in late June, with temperatures soaring to ninety or more, and food again plentiful, it was hard for those men to stay at their tasks.

Yet still they labored, shifting from the baking of fresh bread to producing unleavened slabs of hard biscuits and hardtack for marching rations. The slaughtered beef not eaten in the feast of the night before would be salted down.

Extra cattle were already being driven ahead, preceded by foragers, armed with vouchers, who would sweep up additional supplies in advance of the army as it marched toward Trenton and from there into upper Jersey.

Haversacks were now stuffed with the freshly salted meat, a dozen palm-size slabs of hardtack, even a small ration of coffee beans, a luxury undreamed of throughout the long hard winter.

Ranks were dressed, marching columns formed, and a festive mood was in the air, for they were leaving this place at last. Few would look back nostalgically, except for those who had visited the cemetery yesterday and well into
the evening, looking among the thousands of unmarked graves to where a brother, a comrade, a father might now lie. The hospital huts were still filled with nearly a thousand men too sick to march, men down with the ever-present flux and a myriad of other illnesses and injuries. When deemed fit, those still under enlistment would be sent up to join the ranks. If unfit or discharged, they would eventually be sent home when transport could be arranged.

There were more than a few tearful farewells, promises to write, or soldiers now healed going back to thank the women who had tended to them. He had sought out the old widow who today would move back into her house, and at the sight of him she burst into tears.

“Lad, I declare you’ve grown three inches and gained half a stone.”

He offered to return her departed husband’s overcoat and she had finally taken it, holding it between forefinger and thumb, declaring she would burn it, even though he had made certain to boil it the day before to insure that no lice lingered within its seams. As for the trousers, they were beyond hope, and he had thrown them aside when he had been issued his new uniform. He offered to pay her for the boots she had given him, and which he still wore, even though the soles were now paper-thin, but she would have none of it. Then, after saying a brief prayer over him asking for the Lord’s protection, she had sent him on his way, wiping the tears from her eyes with her apron.

The general was now near him and he could see the look in the man’s eyes. They were no longer careworn as he had remembered them across the dark months. His features were alive, eyes glinting as he gazed out upon the ranks drawn up on the parade ground, brigade after brigade drawn up in column of fours, the parade ground stamped smooth from their months of drill.

The general was not given to speeches. There had been plenty enough over the last hour, from Lafayette and Greene, even a halting one from Inspector General von Steuben, which had been met with cheers. The German drillmaster was now one of the most popular officers with the rank and file, noted for his growing command of Anglo-Saxon profanities, his giant dog who in reality had the heart of a lamb, and most of all for what he had taught them they could be.

Von Steuben rode behind the general and alongside Lafayette, whose Guards Brigade would lead the march.

The day was hot. Sweat coursed down Peter’s face and the back of his neck. The uniform was heavy and far too warm, but he did not mind it, not with the
memory of so many months of almost freezing to death, a fate that had literally taken several of his fellow guards while on sentry duty.

The general reined in and then gazed out silently at the columns drawn up. He was silent, saying nothing, all eyes upon him.

It looked as if he was about to say something, but Peter could sense there would be no words, for those closest to him could see the emotion that he was trying to mask as he gazed upon this new army, now approaching fifteen thousand strong. Phoenix-like, it had risen from the misery and ashes of this place…Valley Forge would forever after conjure up anguish, cold, defeat…but also endurance, dedication, and rebirth.

Washington drew his sword and, standing in his stirrups, saluted the color guard holding aloft his flag of command, beside it the new colors of the army and the nation, the thirteen red and white stripes and a circle of thirteen stars in a cantonment of blue. Next, gazing out at the troops, he offered a salute to them as well.

With that, wild cheers erupted. Again there were the strange variants, from the measured, disciplined huzzahs of the New Englanders to the wolflike cries of the men from the frontier. He stood tall in the saddle, acknowledging their cries, and then, sheathing his sword, the general turned and started off.

With a roll of drums, the lead unit, Lafayette’s Guards, led by Washington’s headquarters company, turned in a column of fours and filed off the parade ground, massed. Drummers and half a dozen fifers were to the front of them.

But Peter would no longer march with his comrades of the headquarters company, and there was some regret there, for they had been his faithful comrades for nearly a year and a half since Trenton. He along with a dozen other men of the company trained by von Steuben had been offered promotions as drill sergeants to six-month units coming in from their home states. Harris had urged him to take it, and even Lafayette had told him he could thus serve his country better, and so now he stood with old neighbors from Jersey, men of the Second New Jersey Infantry, who had arrived in camp four weeks ago. It was barely enough time to train them to the basics of marching and keeping line, many of the men chaffing at taking orders from a mere stripling half their age. It had even come to blows, a burly corporal from Amboy knocking him flat. He had not run off to report it. Instead he had stood up and glared at the man while wiping the blood from his mouth. He had told him he might damn well be able to lick him, but he would still take orders. And, no, he was not running off to the officers.

The men began to obey, the corporal from Amboy making sure they did so.

His regiment was ordered to step out and fall in behind Lafayette’s Guards, and Peter stepped to one side, marching alongside the drummer. He called for him to keep the proper pace. Looking back, he grimaced as the line accordioned slightly, but the last files were now running to catch up.

They passed along the flank of the field fortifications. Knox’s artillery had been stripped from the bastions, limbered up, and mixed into the line of march. They moved down the long slope back toward the headquarters. Several hundred spectators stood there: women of the camp, civilians, some invalid soldiers, more than a few on crutches and minus a foot or leg, lost to frostbite and not yet fully recovered to journey home. By the gate was the general’s wife. As all shifted muskets to the salute, she waved her handkerchief and forced a smile despite the tears in her eyes. Behind her stood the old widow who had saved his life, crying as she caught a glimpse of him.

They passed the outer bastions, the road turning southeast, heading down to the ford over the Schuylkill. The route of the march by the end of the day would take them all the way to Trenton.

Home. Was it even home anymore? Perhaps he would be spared a few minutes to see his parents, and Jonathan’s family, though he doubted they would greet him warmly. It was strange that, after this last year, after the last six months, this place they were leaving, with all its nightmares and tragedies, felt far more part of his soul than any place of childhood.

Clear of the outer line of fortifications, the ceremony of the march relaxed. Most of the drummers and fifers fell out of the lead and stepped to the side of road to fall back in with their individual units. Only a lone drummer and fifer at the front kept the beat, playing the ubiquitous “Yankee Doodle,” “Chester,” or “Old One Hundred” to keep up what was now to be the standard pace in fair weather of three miles to the hour. The order was passed to carry arms, some men slinging their muskets over their shoulders, others shifting them to more comfortable positions. Chatter broke out in the ranks; the men exclaimed about the building heat of the day, the lucky fact that they were at the very front of the column and thus would avoid the dust, and the ever-increasing carpeting of “road apples” left by the hundreds of horses and mules.

Peter looked back over his shoulder and thrilled at the sight as they rounded a bend in the road sloping down to the ford over the river. The column, already a mile long, stretched clear back to the parade ground. The ranks were tightly packed, the men eager to be off, to demonstrate their marching discipline. Some were singing and joking. Such a difference, he thought, a lump in
his throat. He remembered how he had seen this place six months back, nearly to this day, when Sergeant Harris, now Lieutenant Harris, had all but carried him the last mile, through the snow and sleet. From the blessing of an old widow, he had been given a bath as if he was a child, and warm clothes and a bed.

They were leaving Valley Forge behind.

The road turned to the east and Valley Forge disappeared from view.

The road ahead, he sensed, was leading to a destiny that they must now fulfill, having been given, as a blessing, one more chance to prove themselves.

Near Allentown, New Jersey
June 25, 1778

Dawn was breaking as Inspector General von Steuben dismounted, handing the bridle of his mount off to Vogel. The first rays of the sun struck his face. It was more than warm, with clear promise of another scorching hot day to come. There had been little cooling during the night, and the Jersey air was heavy, humid. Most of those with him had shucked their heavy uniform jackets, tying them to their saddlebags. It was time to put them back on. Riding about in broad daylight without a proper uniform along the porous boundary of what was the British versus patriot line was a guaranteed way to be shot at by both sides.

He relieved himself inside the woodlot where they had stopped, came back out, and with a grin accepted Vogel’s offer of a skin filled with claret.

Amazing, only three days before, he had been in Philadelphia! Riding with a detached guard that had swept into the town after the last of the British, he had entered a city in utter confusion. The Loyalists, some said up to two thousand, had fled. The patriots, not sure if this was some sort of ruse on the part of the British, greeted the advance guard with absolute joy. Once into the city he could see that vengeance was already being dealt out to some. Several women had had their hair brutally hacked off. A merchant, tarred and feathered—mercifully, he was told, the tar had not been boiling hot—was being ridden around on a rail by some town toughs. He had disdainfully scattered those scum. Damn them, they could torment an old man easily enough, but when it came to real fighting, those types were never to be found.

The merchant, in gratitude for his rescue, had pressed upon von Steuben
his last three bottles of claret, which had survived the British occupation. He left the city to ride back to Washington to report—and then had passed the orders to the detachments of militia that were wandering in to occupy the city—that any acts of reprisal were to be dealt with harshly.

The wine was tepid but refreshing, and he offered it to his traveling companions, Du Ponceau and Captain Ben Walker, a taciturn New Englander who recently had been assigned as an aide to his staff, with an escort of a dozen dragoons of Virginia cavalry to make sure he got back in one piece to report.

“I think that’s Dan Morgan,” Walker announced, pointing across a field of knee-high corn, lightly shrouded in morning mist.

“Let’s go see,” von Steuben replied, mounting and setting off at a fast canter, the cavalry struggling to keep up. Several of them cursed over this assignment of keeping the impetuous German out of enemy hands at all costs.

Von Steuben, with his growing understanding of crude Anglo-Saxonisms, grinned.

By God, it was good be in the field again. I feel twenty years younger, he thought joyfully, for it was like the old days: being sent out to gather intelligence, scout the enemy lines, probe, try and snatch a prisoner or two, bring in any deserters for questioning; playing the cat-and-mouse game of who is chasing whom as defensive pickets and offensive scouts probed and pushed back, probed and pushed back.

Morgan was mounted on a rather fine gelding, saddle and trappings indicating it was a recent capture from some either dead, or now dismounted, British dragoon. He smiled at von Steuben’s approach, the two exchanging salutes. Walker, slipping alongside them, was a man who could translate directly from English to German, a surprisingly common skill in a country where Germans were the second most common group of immigrants.

“Bastards are strung out along that road for miles,” Morgan announced with a cheery grin, leaning over slightly, spitting out a stream of tobacco juice. “I almost pity the sons of bitches,” he continued. “They barely moved six miles yesterday; that thunderstorm in the afternoon turned the road into a swamp. They clearly have gotten out of condition during those months in Philadelphia. The city may have captured the British Army as much as they captured it.

“And you’ll love this, sir. The Hessians are starting to break up under the strain of it all. Poor damned souls, they can’t take the heat. We saw at least a couple of dozen dead by the side of the road. They just collapsed with all
they’re trying to carry. Picked up a couple of dozen deserters as well last night. Slipped out of their camp and ran smack into my men. Lucky sots, my boys didn’t gun them down in the dark.”

“Where are they?”

“Back over there,” Morgan replied, nodding to the eastern end of the woodlot he had just come down through. “Heard you were scouting about, thought you might like to talk to them, so kept ’em here rather than send them back to the rear.”

“Excellent.”

Von Steuben paused for a moment to look south toward the village of Allentown. The air was obscured with the smoke from hundreds of smoldering fires. In the still morning air were the familiar sounds of an army encamped—the echo of wood being chopped, the neighing of horses, and a distant hum of voices. He could sense a lot from just the sounds; there were some things only a veteran of many campaigns could pick up on. There was no singing, no martial music, no laughter or shouting. Several drums rattled, the call for ranks to fall in.

“Ah, a little sport,” Morgan announced, and he looked to where a man was pointing off to the southeast.

A light skirmish line was emerging out of the mist, several hundred yards off. The sharp crack of a rifle echoed, followed by three more shots. Von Steuben could not see where the shots came from, but they stopped the skirmish line cold. The men, crouching, retired back into the mists.

Morgan grinned.

“They’re getting real cautious-like. I got six hundred of my best in an arc entirely around the front end of their army. Lot of Jersey militia under Dickinson are joining in. Bit of a fight two days back at Crosswicks, where we were getting set to burn a bridge. They pushed us back, but what a time it was. Those Jersey boys are like hornets, not at all like I heard they were a year ago.

“We’ve been burning bridges or knocking them down. The local farmers sure are furious with us, but every well is either knocked in, or we find a nice, dead varmint or two like a skunk or groundhog, put it in the bucket, and lower it down. First man that draws up the bucket for water gets an eyeful of a waterlogged rotting skunk in his drink…”

Morgan laughed and shook his head.

“Poor bastards in this heat. Only water from muddy creeks, it is a sight.”

And then he sighed.

“Gotta pity the Tories, though, damn them. They should have left their
little ones behind at least. No one would have harmed them, not like the massacres going on along the Mohawk right now. You see their little ones, trudging along, tongues hanging out, crying, you wanna at least show the white flag for a few minutes, ride up and give ’em a drink. When are we gonna keep children out of war?”

Von Steuben said nothing, remembering coming into a Russian village that had been overrun and looted by Turkish raiders. The children, the young girls…he blotted the memory out. At least this war had not yet degenerated to that level, though what he had heard about the fighting against the Indians out on the frontiers was almost as bad.

“Their disposition,” he asked, forcefully changing the topic. As he asked the question, Walker drew out a note pad, ready to jot down the information.

“Looks like Clinton has split the army into two divisions. Cornwallis’s division is right down there, not three hundred yards away, bulk of the men there, say six, maybe seven thousand.

“Head of the column is led by your German friend, von Knyphausen. Reckon he’s about four miles or so to the east at a little crossroads, Imlay s-town. Parked in between are most of their wagons. You might not believe this, but Dickinson claims he has some good men who just lie in a creek bed all day, watching a bridge they had captured and needed. They said they counted up to three thousand wagons crossing, said over a hundred wagons an hour were being pushed across.”

“Three thousand?”

“Yup. Food, tentage, and loot. My God, Philadelphia must be stripped damn near bare, and the army wagons are mixed in with them Tories hauling everything they own.”

Three thousand wagons. Absurd. Frederick with forty thousand to supply, perhaps, but for less than a third that number of men?

The night before, back in camp in Hopewell, near Princeton, where Washington had halted his army to await developments as to the British line of march, he had passed orders that the army was to strip down. Only essential supplies of additional rations and ammunition were to move forward with the army. Everything else, including tents, was to be left behind.

With the scorching heat, the men had been stripping down as well. Though it was against orders, more than a few had managed to somehow “lose” their new heavy wool uniform jackets, the usual excuse being they were stolen after the men had taken them off before jumping into a creek to cool off. Most of the men were carrying not more than twenty-five pounds total, and that
included a musket and twenty-four rounds of ammunition. He knew that, by regulation, Hessian troops routinely carried eighty pounds or more…which might be fine for autumn campaigning in the Rhineland, but here? In this heat?

“The question His Excellency wants answered is, what is their line of march? Are they going to turn more northward, to Brunswick and Amboy, perhaps even turn up toward Newark, or will they hold to a more southerly course, perhaps to the Monmouth Highlands and Sandy Hook, and there wait for transport back into New York harbor?”

Morgan looked over at him and shrugged, the uniquely American, and at times French, gesture a bit insulting. But he had learned to not take offense.

“Got me, that’s why I’m sitting here,” Morgan offered, and he leaned over and spat again.

Von Steuben reached into his breast pocket, drew out a roughly sketched map of the region, and pointed out the possible lines of march.

“The general needs to know today.”

He did not add that at a most frustrating council of war last night, the discussion had been exactly on this point, and opinion had been sharply divided. General Lee was calling for utmost caution, arguing that the army was still not yet ready for any kind of stand-up fight. He had suggested that, as of this morning, Washington break off shadowing the enemy, turn northward—using the Watchung hills as a defensive barrier to his right—and march up to lower New York, and, with the protection of the Hudson Highlands, await developments.

Wayne and Lafayette were on the other extreme, begging that it was time to go into the kind of all-out fight for which the army had, under von Steuben’s tutelage, been training these last three months.

“Three months versus three years of training?” Lee sniffed. “Trust me, gentlemen, we are still babes compared to giants when it comes to training. Remember, I was a prisoner in their camp. I was on parole and allowed to walk about their camp and watch their daily drills. I know those same drills, for, remember, I served with them for more than a decade. Even chatted with some of my old comrades from my days with the Forty-fourth, and they are eager, more than eager for a chance to meet us on the open field. Believe me, gentlemen, we are no match. Not yet. Maybe three years more with your German and then I’d think about it. But, damn me, we can’t do it this year or the next. This German’s drill is far too informal for my blood.”

Von Steuben had remained silent in spite of the direct insult, for Lee was,
again, second-in-command by right of seniority, and his own position as inspector general and master of drill ranked far lower. But he could sense that Wayne and Lafayette were stunned by Lee’s criticism.

Washington, much to von Steuben’s chagrin, had after that advice from Lee shown hesitation and said he would wait another day to see developments. Lafayette whispered later to von Steuben that Lee was a strutting poltroon. He wished the man had stayed a prisoner. By the rules of war, Lee’s commenting on anything he had seen while under the terms of parole was a violation of the ethics of a gentleman. It showed, yet again, the nature of his character.

“You say the Germans are in Imlaystown?”

“That they are.”

Von Steuben, after handing over the map to Morgan, leaned over to study it yet again.