by Ron Carter
“It won’t be easy.”
“I’m interested.”
“When you’re able, we’ll start.”
“I’m ready now.”
Dorman’s eyes narrowed. “You can hardly raise your arms.”
“Start now.”
For a time Dorman studied Caleb’s face, especially his eyes, then rose to his feet. “All right. Stand up.”
Caleb stood.
“We’ll start at the beginning.” Dorman raised one hand. “Watch. This is how you make a fist.” He clenched his hand, knuckles forming an even bridge, his thumb tucked tightly against his finger tips. “Keep your thumb tucked in. You can dislocate it if it is sticking out, in the way. Do it.”
Carefully Caleb raised his hand and formed a fist. Dorman reached to tuck the thumb tighter. “Good. Now. Understand, you don’t hit a man just with your fist. You hit him with your entire body. Every pound. Like this.” He cocked his right hand, and in the instant it flicked out, his entire body shifted, bringing all his weight with it. “A good blow doesn’t have to travel more than eighteen inches if it’s done right. Now you do what I did, but do it slow. Always slow at first.”
Caleb cocked his right fist, then slowly drove it forward while he shifted his weight into line with it.
Dorman nodded. “Good. Again.”
Caleb repeated the movement.
Dorman pointed at Caleb’s feet. “To hit like that, you’ve got to understand how to work with your feet. If you don’t learn to hit from the correct foot, you’ll never get your weight into the blow. Watch my feet while I do it again.” Slowly Dorman cocked his right fist, then thrust it forward while sliding his left foot forward six inches. His weight remained on his right foot, planted, solid.
“Did you see it?” he asked.
Caleb nodded, then cocked his right fist again, and as he drove it forward his left foot slid forward, his right shoulder dropped slightly, and he felt his weight balanced, set solidly on his right foot.
“Very good. You do that a few times each day when you have the chance. There’s a lot more to learn with your feet, but the first lesson is to learn how to hit from the correct foot.”
He shifted his attention again. “Hitting a man is one thing. Hitting him where it will bring him down is another. You don’t have to hit a man in the head to put him down. If you hit him hard over his heart, or on his wishbone, he’ll drop. If you do hit him in the head, go for the point of his chin because there are large nerves at the place the jaw joins the skull, and if you shock those nerves, the man will go down. You can also bring a man down if you hit his forehead, or either temple, where the jolt will stun the brain. In time, we’ll get to that.”
Once again he shifted his attention. “There are all kinds of blows, but only three basic ones. One is when you flick your fist out to keep your opponent off balance. It won’t hurt him much, but it will break his concentration. The second one is when you set your feet and hit him hard, as I just showed you. The third one is when you hook your fist in from either side. When you’ve learned those three basic blows, you can work on the variations.”
He reached to run his hand through his gray hair. “You’ve got to remember, while you’re doing all these things, the other man is trying to do them to you. The trick is to learn how to avoid it. Make the man miss you altogether, if you can. If you can’t, at least avoid letting him hit you hard. It’s called slipping a blow. Let him hit you, but not solid. Not so it can hurt you.”
Dorman stopped. “It’s getting dark. We’ve talked enough for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll spend a few minutes and make a bag. Fill it with sand and leaves and hang it from a tree so you can begin getting the feel of setting your feet and hitting hard, and work on the three basic blows. Then we’ll work on the rest of it when we can.”
Caleb looked at him. “How do I repay you?”
A wistful look stole into Dorman’s eyes. “Promise you’ll use your skills only to do right. Never be a bully. There are few things so detestable as a bully.”
Caleb nodded. “Tomorrow we’ll make the bag.”
Notes
Caleb Dunson, Charles Dorman, Conlin Murphy, and other characters herein referenced are all fictional.
However, the Irish were well known for their love of fighting, sometimes in fun, sometimes not. Hence, the fight between Caleb Dunson and Conlin Murphy described in this chapter was a scene repeated many times over in army camps where the Irish were found (see Martin, ed. by Scheer, Private Yankee Doodle, pp. 145–46).
Fort Ticonderoga
July 5, 1777
CHAPTER XXI
* * *
Major Isaac Dunn swung the door open, and the hot, blustery north wind blew parade ground dust and grit into the small office of General Arthur St. Clair. Generals Mathias Alexis de Fermoy, Pierce Long, John Paterson, and Enoch Poor entered, followed by Major Dunn, who closed and bolted the door behind them. The five men stood silently in the dim light while their eyes adjusted from the bright midday July sunlight, waiting for some indication from St. Clair as to why they had been ordered to stop whatever they were doing and instantly report to him behind closed doors. The detail inside the room clarified, and St. Clair rose from the chair behind his desk.
“Be seated.”
For a moment the six men did not move. Never had any of them seen St. Clair’s eyes so vacant, his face so white, nor had they ever heard his voice so hollow, subdued. They stared for a split second, then averted their eyes, and took their places.
St. Clair’s next statement burst like a bomb. “The British have cannon on top of Mount Defiance.”
An audible gasp rose above the sound of the wind prying at the door, and all four generals facing St. Clair jerked upright. Dunn sat unmoving, eyes downcast. He had known the deadly secret since the moment the engineer Colonel Jeduthan Baldwin had barged into St. Clair’s office half an hour earlier to blurt out the fact that the cannon were up there. Dunn had been with St. Clair and Baldwin when they charged out into the parade ground to stare in disbelief at the mountaintop with a telescope. Dunn’s mind was still numb, fumbling, reaching to find the outer limits of the impact of their horrifying discovery. At that moment, he knew only that Fort Ticonderoga and their defenses on Mt. Independence, across the South Bay narrows of Lake Champlain, could be utterly destroyed within forty-eight hours, and that there was absolutely nothing they could do to prevent it. With no American guns capable of reaching the British cannon on top of Mt. Defiance, the enemy bombardment would be unopposed, and it could begin even as they now sat facing St. Clair. If Fort Ticonderoga and Mt. Independence should fall, the British would control the great Lake Champlain–Hudson River water corridor that gave access to the western borders of the thirteen states. And with access to the back side of the states, it would only be a matter of time until the British would be able to divide them and take them down one at a time.
The officers sat in shocked silence, stunned by the certain destruction facing them and the sickening conviction that the fall of Fort Ticonderoga could usher in the end of the Revolution and of their desperate quest for liberty. Had it all been in vain? The defiant stand at Lexington and Concord that now seemed so long ago, the terrible losses at New York, the miraculous victories at Trenton and Princeton brought off by men who were sick, freezing, starved—all for nothing? Had the Almighty turned his face from them? The men stared at St. Clair, dead, devastated inside.
St. Clair moved on. “We are here as a war council to decide what prudence requires us to do.” He pushed paper and quill toward Dunn. “Major, make a record of this.”
Dunn plucked up the quill, made quick entries of date and persons present, then raised his head, waiting. St. Clair continued.
“Weeks ago I discussed with General Schuyler what action I would take in the event that defending this fort became unfeasible. He agreed in principle. In my opinion, British cannon on that mountain, capable of hitting this fort and our defenses across South Bay, while we can
’t hit them, has brought us to that time. Do you agree?”
The four generals glanced at each other, then dropped their eyes for a moment before answering. “Yes.”
“I’ve decided to evacuate the fort and the Mount Independence defenses immediately. I know that Congress and most of the Continental army will consider that an act very close to treason, but I have the choice of sacrificing either my character, or my men. I can become a butcher, or a coward.” His face became contorted with a controlled rage at finding his entire command trapped like rabbits at the mercy of a pack of wolves.
The four generals facing him shuddered as they saw themselves on his side of the desk with the awful decision on their shoulders, and their hearts went out to him. In tormented frustration, St. Clair dropped his fist thumping. “I will not sacrifice over two thousand men for the sole purpose of satisfying public opinion. I intend saving these men to fight another day. Now I must put that decision to you. Do you support it, or not? Search your souls, for no matter what you decide, it will become fodder for debate as long as records exist.”
The four generals leaned back, minds racing as the enormity of what they were doing flooded over them, swamping their minds. For two full minutes they sat in silent agony, weighing, weighing again, and a third time, deciding which purgatory they would choose: the blood of more than two thousand men on their hands, or the hatred and contempt of Congress, the Continental army, and most Americans.
They quietly answered, “Agreed.”
St. Clair’s shoulders slumped in relief for a moment before he continued. “You know that a retreat is probably the most difficult military maneuver to successfully make, and the odds against it are all the greater if the retreating army is inferior in number and firepower to the pursuing army. Today’s report shows we have two thousand and eighty-nine men fit for duty. The British have just over eight thousand—well-armed, ready to do battle.”
He paused. The only sound was the wind in the parade grounds.
“To succeed in this evacuation, there are a few things we must understand. First, time is against us. If those guns up there begin firing before nightfall, we will be in instant chaos. Second, absolutely no one is to know we’re evacuating until we’re ready to tell them. Some officers will guess what’s going on, and we’ll have to handle that when it happens. If the enlisted men find out too soon, it will spread like wildfire and start a panic. Understood?”
All nodded.
“We go about this quietly. If the British realize we’re evacuating they’ll be on us within minutes. We’ll start immediately doing what we can and finish in the dark tonight. There’s going to be only a sliver of moon tonight, which will help. After dark, there will be no fires. No lamps, no lanterns, not even a candle. Pickets are to challenge no one because men will be moving everywhere, and we can’t have pickets calling out hundreds of challenges in the dark that can be heard by British patrols.”
He paused for a moment. “I thought about sending runners south to get help from General Schuyler at Albany, but we don’t have the time, and Schuyler doesn’t have enough ammunition to do any good. Last week his men were melting their pewter utensils and ripping the lead out of the window sashes in the homes to make bullets.” He stopped to clear his throat.
“Let’s get down to the detail.” He unfolded a large map on his desktop, squared it with the compass, and dropped an index finger on the five-sided shape of the fort.
“We’re here, on the west side of the lake.” He shifted his finger as he spoke. “Mount Independence is here on the east side of the lake, south across the South Bay narrows. Our Great Bridge is here, and we still hold it, so we can march to the east side of the lake and on to our defenses on Mount Independence at will. The Germans are positioned here, above those defenses, and here, a little below, ready to attack from both sides when the British begin their big assault on this side of the lake.”
He straightened for a moment, then leaned back over the map, finger tracing. “Directly north of us is Three Mile, here. From Three Mile, British troops hold everything in an arc sweeping west, then south, clear down to Mount Defiance, where they’ve got those cannon in place.”
He raised his head to look each man in the eye. “In short, gentlemen, we are almost entirely surrounded.”
A sense of panic seized the four generals for a moment, then passed as they waited, and St. Clair went on. He tapped the map on the east side of the lake, very close to the foot of Mt. Independence, and an intensity stole into his face. “But with all they’ve done, there are two very narrow passages that remain open, at least for the next few hours.”
He paused for a moment, locating the place on the map. “One is here.” He placed his finger between the lake shore and East Creek on the east side of the lake, just north of Mt. Independence. “There is a strip of land that is open. The Germans haven’t yet occupied it, but they will in the next day or two, and when they do we are cut off from that escape route.” Again he raised his eyes, pausing again in the silence of the room.
“But if we move before they do, we can use the Great Bridge to march our men over to that strip of land, then on down to Skenesborough, here.” He tapped a small dot on the western shores of South Bay, near the southern slopes of Mt. Independence. “From Mount Independence, we can take the new road our forces cut through the forest last year, east through Hubbardton, here, on south to Castle Town, here, then west again to Skenesborough, here.” His finger rested on the small settlement at the southern tip of South Bay, the southern extreme of Lake Champlain.
He straightened and waited while every man in the room rose from his seat to study the route. The horrendous risks leaped out at them, overwhelmed them, and they settled back onto their chairs with a rising feeling of dark desperation.
St. Clair shifted his finger back up to Fort Ticonderoga. “South Bay is the other route that we still hold. We have our docks, and if we move right now, we can get our sick and wounded into our bateaux and move them down South Bay to Skenesborough before the British cut us off. It will have to be done at night, and I need not tell you, until the bateaux are well past Mount Defiance, they will be under the muzzles of those cannon. If this north wind holds, we’ll have no trouble moving the bateaux south.”
He saw the question come into their eyes and addressed it. “We would load our entire force onto bateaux right here, and take them down South Bay, if we had enough bateaux, but we don’t. We have only enough for our sick and wounded. We have more bateaux tied up at Skenesborough, south of here, but with this wind coming down from the north we would never get them up here in time to be of help. So we’ll carry what we can of our stores across the Great Bridge, down to Skenesborough, meet our boats there, and load them there for the trip down to Fort George. Some of our cannon will go, too. There isn’t enough time to get it all down there, so we’ll have to be satisfied with the best we can do. We’ll spike what cannon we have to leave behind.”
There was an audible murmur among the generals at the thought of spiking and abandoning their cannon, so critically needed by every command in the entire Continental army. They looked at the floor for a moment as they envisioned their own men with long, thin brass spikes, driving them into the touch holes with two-pound sledges until the spikes hit the far side of the inner cannon barrel, bent, and curled back. Once the spikes were bent back and seated inside the cannon barrel, the cannon would be useless until the spikes were dug out. Digging them out was an arduous, time-consuming task.
He stopped for half a minute while he silently went over the map again to be certain he had covered the essentials. “So, our withdrawal resolves itself to two basic routes. We sail our wounded and supplies down South Bay to Skenesborough, and march our troops over the Great Bridge, over through Castle Town, then south to Skenesborough to meet the boats.”
He straightened. “Do you agree? Any questions?”
Each man in the room knew they did not have the luxury of time to debate, consider, pond
er. Under the best of conditions, evacuating the entire American force with their wounded and artillery from the fort with British and German patrols swarming on three sides would be a masterstroke. Doing it at night, under impossible time constraints, would be a miracle.
Each man in turn spoke in a quiet, subdued voice. “It is agreed.”
St. Clair nodded. “Then let’s get down to the detail of your individual assignments. We have no time to do it twice, so I ask your undivided attention. And remember, on pain of courts-martial, not a word of this is to go beyond this room until I order it.”
Fifty minutes later Dunn opened the door, and the four generals ducked their heads against the blowing grit and walked out into the parade grounds at a controlled, casual pace. As Dunn closed the door after them, St. Clair spoke to him.
“Bring Colonel Udney Hay here at once. Don’t tell him why.”
Dunn walked out the door to return in twenty minutes, followed by a very much puzzled Lieutenant Colonel Udney Hay, serving at that time as assistant deputy quartermaster general for St. Clair’s command. Hay came to attention facing St. Clair’s desk, and St. Clair gestured for him to be seated.
St. Clair raised his voice above the sound of the wind outside. “Colonel, what I am about to tell you cannot go beyond this room until I say. Do you understand?”
Wide-eyed, Hay answered, “Yes, sir.”
“Twenty minutes ago the war council agreed we must evacuate this fort. They have already begun preparations. We leave tonight. The men who are fit will march across the Great Bridge, down to Skenesborough, then east to Hubbardton, and from there south, then west to Fort George. The sick will board bateaux and sail south down South Bay. All possible supplies and artillery will go with them.”
St. Clair stopped. Hay gaped. “Sir, with all respect, have you received orders from General Schuyler to make this move?”
“No. Not directly.”
“Then may I ask, sir, why?”
“You may. The British have cannon on top of Mount Defiance. We found out about it three hours ago. If they begin firing now, this fort and our defenses across South Bay on Mount Independence will be rubble by tomorrow morning. And once they start, there will be no way out except surrender.”