Blood Upon The Snow

by Martin Ganzglass

  Holmes spotted a shallow gravel bottomed location where the two banks were low and closer together. This was the place to ford. He would have preferred to dig entrenchments on the southern bank and wait for the Hessians to attempt to cross. However, his orders were to cross the creek and confront the Hessians as they emerged from the town. They waded three or four abreast into the thigh deep frigid water holding their muskets above their heads. The men splashed quickly through the icy stream and up the opposite bank. The bitter wind froze their wet canvas breeches to their legs. For the first time since the battle had begun, they were facing into the strong winds that blew sleet and snow straight at them.

  Adam was in the first column. He peered through the storm and made out a mass of men in blue uniforms marching toward them, their flags blowing toward the Americans. At first he thought they might be some of their troops coming to join them. Their gait, discipline and the length of their bayonets, gave them away.

  “Lieutenant. There are Hessians ahead,” Adam shouted, pointing with his musket. Holmes ordered the two columns to spread out to block the enemy’s intended route to the creek. The Americans’ battery on the slope above the bridge opened fire. Two balls plowed into the mass of Hessians who hesitated and then regrouped.

  “Give them a volley,” Holmes ordered. “Let them know we are here. On my command.” Adam had protected his flintlock with his jacket cuff and was reasonably certain his musket would fire. He knelt in the snow, oblivious to the wet slush under his knee and the stiffness of his frozen legs.

  “Fire,” Holmes shouted. The men got off a ragged volley and several of the Hessians in the front line fell. Adam saw an officer on horseback, knocked out of the saddle but whether it was from their fusillade or the American troops on the Hessians’ flanks, he could not tell. He reloaded, although this time he had little confidence his musket would fire.

  “Ready bayonets,” Holmes ordered. Adam steadied himself. They were barely fifty paces apart. It would be a short run uphill, into the storm and then hand-to-hand fighting. Next to him, Solomon, his long arms bare at the wrists protruding from his uniform jacket and his thatchy eyebrows covered with snowflakes, stared grimly ahead. He shifted his musket from one hand to the other, as if weighing it for the first time.

  “I would rather have a pike or even a Durham pole for this business,” he said to Adam. A pike would be nice, Adam thought.

  “Hold. They are striking their colors,” Holmes said. It was true. Adam watched as the Hessians let their regimental flag staffs fall on the snow in front of them. Those in the forward ranks turned their muskets downward and stuck them in the ground by the bayonets. Others simply threw their guns down.

  The Mariners advanced in a rush and motioned for the Hessians to back away from their colors and the pile of muskets. The Hessians took three or four paces back in unison.

  “Lieutenant,” Adam said. “I speak some Dutch. They will understand.” He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, Handen om hog. Hoger. Hoger.”

  The Hessians raised their hands over their heads.

  “Watch out,” someone shouted. “They still carry their swords.”

  “Tell them to unbuckle their swords,” Nat said. Adam shouted at them and a few began undoing the straps across their chests and throwing the short swords on to the snow. One tall Hessian took a step forward, slowly and insolently undid the strap and said something to Adam. Quick as a cat, Adam stepped forward and with two hands viciously jabbed his musket barrel into the man’s stomach. As the Hessian doubled over, Adam clipped him with the butt on the jaw.

  “He called me a black dog, Sir,” Adam said by way of explanation.

  Nat grinned at Adam. “Well, by making an example of one it will improve the attitude of the rest and teach them they are our prisoners.”

  Holmes bent down and picked up the Knyphausen Regiment’s flags and colors. “And now time for another lesson.” He looked around, motioned for Solomon, Jeremiah and Titus to step forward.

  “March smartly and present these captured colors to General Sullivan. With the compliments of the Marblehead Mariners,” he shouted. The men cheered as their three comrades headed through the snowy field toward King Street. 3

  Georg waited his turn to step forward. The stocky black man in uniform, the one who had felled Sergeant Dorner, had ordered them to take off their brass hats and knapsacks. Georg’s hair was drawn back tight from his head and tied with a pigtail ribbon. Bare headed he felt exposed. He had a few personal possessions in his knapsack, a pipe and a bit of tobacco, his razor, and a small knife he had taken from Andreas’ kit to remember him by. He would have liked to have kept that at least.

  At the thought of his dead friend, Georg began to cry. Sobs wracked his body as he stood in ranks waiting for whatever the Rebellers had in store for them. Andreas had urged them to desert or hoped they would be captured. Then the war would be over for them. They would become laborers on some farm. When the war officially ended, they could stay and by hard work earn title to good farmland. That had been Andreas’ dream. If he had lived one more week, he would have seen what he wished for come to pass. Georg’s shoulders shook as he was overcome with grief. How strange God’s plans are for we poor human beings, he thought. Why could not Andreas have lived to be a farmer. Was it too much to ask?

  He felt an arm on his shoulder. It was Lieutenant Reuter. “You are a good and brave soldier, Corporal Engelhard. I share your sense of shame in being captured by such a rabble and ordered about by a black man. And another black slave carries off our sacred battle flags.” He squeezed Georg’s arm. “Bear up, Corporal. Remember you are a soldier of the von Knyphausen Regiment.”

  Georg gritted his teeth. His Lieutenant took that as an expression of resolve. Instead, Georg was thinking what a pompous ass you are Lieutenant Reuter. As a prisoner of war, you will live a comfortable life in good quarters as a gentleman and officer, until you are paroled to New York where you will sit before a warm fire drinking brandy, still thinking these Rebellers are rabble who could not beat us. But they did. Because you and our other officers did not do your duty to prepare us for this attack. And I will live a miserable existence in some cold Rebeller prison, sick, starving, freezing and maybe dying before this cursed war is over.

  Bare headed, in long plodding columns, flanked by the troops who had captured them, the Hessians marched up Queen Street, down a lane and into the Presbyterian Church. Georg hardly noticed when different soldiers assumed guard duty. He pushed aside a pile of discolored straw, releasing the pungent ammonia smell of horse urine, and collapsed on the cold stone floor. He was thankful to be out of the storm. He was thirsty. He reached for his canteen, before realizing he had surrendered that too.

  “See what these heathens have done to this Church,” Merriam said gesturing vaguely. Will looked around. The pews had been stripped long ago and burned for firewood. The altar was gone. Piles of dried horse manure and straw littered the floor. It was obvious the Hessians had converted it to a stable.

  “These are not God fearing men but savages without restraint of religious teachings of morality,” Merriam said angrily. “They pillage, rape and desecrate at will.” Wisps of his grey hair stuck up from the sides of his battered tri-corn. He looked up at the Church spire, as if appealing to Heaven. “If I had it within my power, I would leave only the Hessians in the Church they have destroyed, bar the doors and call upon God Almighty, to smite them down for their heinous crimes.”

  A wounded Hessian cried out in pain. Will turned to see the man, bleeding profusely from a shoulder wound, as one of his comrades leaned over him trying to staunch the blood with a torn shirt.

  “Sergeant,” Isaiah said, bringing Merriam out of his religious fulmination. “We have orders to move the wounded. To the Anglican Church.” Merriam nodded, almost absentmindedly counting the number of wounded. “Organize the able bodied Hessians to carry the wounded. I need volunteers to escort them.”

  “I am terrified you will c
all down lightening bolts upon this House of God,” Levi Tyler said, wiping the melting snow from his hair with his bare hand. “It will be safer for me to be outside in the storm with these bleeding Hessians.” He looked around to see if any one else enjoyed his joke.

  Isaiah ignored him. “I will go,” he said and walked over to several Hessians who seemed uninjured. He motioned for them to get up and pointed at the wounded lying about. By gestures and shouts, they got the Hessians to help the thirty or so wounded who were able to walk or who could be carried out the arched double door and back into the storm. Those too seriously wounded to be moved, were left where they lay, pools of blood seeping from their uniforms onto the stone floor. Will stood in the Church door and looked back at them. They would probably die before any surgeon came to help them.

  The Anglican Church had been converted into a field hospital. Outside, a pile of severed limbs, the blood frozen to the sawed off stumps, tendons and flesh, stained the snow-covered graveyard. The walking wounded, supported by their comrades, hesitated at the grim sight, then lowered their bare heads and entered the Church. Inside, it was clear the Hessians had not desecrated this place of worship. The pews were intact and had been pushed off to the sides to make room for makeshift operating tables of doors and planks resting unsteadily on chairs. The soft groans of those in pain, lying on the stone floor, awaiting their turn, were drowned out by the intermittent screams of agony as the surgeons sawed through tissue, muscle and bone.

  A Hessian lay on the plank table, his shattered forearm hanging by a single strip of skin to his hand. Will felt the acid bile rising from his empty stomach and fill his throat. He backed out the door. The mixture of snow and sleet that had fallen all morning during the battle had changed to rain. Will forced down the urge to dry heave, sucking in large breaths of icy cold air.

  Victorious Continentals strode up King Street, stepping around the frozen bodies of dead Hessians, whose lifeless bodies were partially covered by the freshly fallen snow. The American troops carried Hessian brass helmets, swords and bayonets. Some wore overcoats and blankets on top of their worn uniforms. A boy ran uphill, his old regimental drum strapped to his back, and his newly acquired brass Hessian drum proudly worn on his front. Will wondered if the Hessian drummer boy was alive. He shuddered at the memory of the small crumpled body of the Hessian lad, cut in two by their musket fire, his drum lying by the side of that narrow road leading from Pelham Bay. He could handle death during the fighting. It was the bloody aftermath that bothered him. A horrible, long agonizing scream came from inside the Church. Will realized he could not go back inside.

  “There is rum to be had,” one passing already inebriated soldier shouted at Will, waving an open canteen. “Hogsheads of good Jamaican rum,” his companion added, tipping back his head to drink. The Hessian brass hat fell off his head into the slush.

  Isaiah emerged and took Will by the elbow.

  “I have seen enough amputated limbs for one day,” he said.

  “Come. There is no need for us to remain here.” Together they walked back to the Presbyterian Church. Inside, several bodies covered with blankets, lay neatly arranged near a side door. Sergeant Merriam waved Will and Isaiah over to barrels of salted meat and hard biscuits.

  “Tis not much better than our fare.”

  “It tastes better when washed down with rum,” one of the company said offering his canteen. “There is plenty more where that came from. Down near the old stone barracks.”

  “None of that now,” Merriam said sternly. “Our orders are clear. The prisoners, under guard, will bury these dead in the Churchyard. The rest of us are to bring our cannon and the brass three and sixpounders taken from these Hessians to the Trenton Ferry. Lieutenant Hadley said we will cross the river again before nightfall.”

  Will walked through the ankle deep slush back up King Street, fighting the strong wind and rain. He shuddered as he passed the dead horse of the Hessian gun crew, it’s hind quarters torn off by a cannon ball. He found Big Red where he had left him, in the copse of snow-covered evergreens, a little ways up the Pennington Road. The horse whinnied as he approached. Will brushed the sleet from his shaggy mane and scratched Big Red’s rough chin. He leaned his head against the horse’s neck. He thought he was relieved to see Big Red unharmed, but realized the relief came from having survived the battle unscathed. He had acquitted himself well. Of course he had, he thought smiling. What other soldier attacks an enemy gun crew with a shattered wooden bucket?

  Once back in town, he and Isaiah hitched two of the six cannons captured from the Hessians to Big Red. At Will’s insistence, he helped Sergeant Merriam, still nursing his weak ankle, up onto the horse, and walked up King Street, leading Big Red by the reins. The other two gun crews followed, each horse pulling one cannon. The Hessian prisoners pushed the remaining artillery pieces, guarded by the jubilant men of the Massachusetts Regiment. Part way up King, the column veered west onto a broad, rutted, frozen road paralleling the river, until they arrived at the upper ferry about a quarter of a mile beyond the town. They loaded the cannons and some of the prisoners on the flat-bottomed ferries and waited, exposed to the wind and rain from the northwest.

  “Tis better to go by ferry than to retrace our route by foot,” Levi Tyler said.

  “Yes and this time, you have proper boots, I notice,” Isaiah observed, pointing to the black shiny calf high boots on Levi’s feet. “They look like they came from a Hessian officer.”

  “He no longer had any use for them,” Levi replied without elaborating. “I have a pair of shoes in my haversack. They are well made and serviceable. Two pairs of gaiters as well. And once we get these miserable prisoners to their new home, they will have no need for footwear. They will have wooden working clogs instead. For my part, I care not if they go barefoot.”

  Will only half listened to their talk back and forth. With his back to the river and facing the road, he was the first to see the Mariners arrive. He smiled and hallooed loudly as he recognized Nat, Adam and Solomon, Jeremiah and Titus, and others he knew when he had stayed in their barracks in Cambridge. They arrived with a few hundred Hessians, walking bare headed and hunched down, looking much smaller and less formidable than they had last summer on the Brooklyn battlefield. Will dashed down the plank to shore and embraced Nat first and then Adam.

  “It is about time you arrived to ferry us across. The Hessians have not killed us but this weather will freeze us to death before long,” Will said.

  “You must be patient a little longer,” Nat replied. “Others are to ferry you across. We have an eight-mile march ahead of us with these prisoners to retrieve the Durhams. If the ice is not too thick, we can pole down river to our camp on the Pennsylvania shore. If it is,” he shrugged, “we will have to make land and march down. It matters not.”

  “Why so?” Will asked.

  “Our term of service is over at the end of the month. Colonel Glover has informed us he will lead us home.”

  “Yes,” Adam said smiling. “After that, no more marching. We will go back on the water.”

  “As privateers,” Solomon exclaimed. “Where money can be made far beyond a soldier’s pay in Continentals.”

  “Nat. Will you be a privateer?” Will asked, remembering his friend had told him the British hung privateers as pirates, when they captured them.

  “Not immediately. Anna is expecting our child in January. With Providence’s blessing, after I see her safely through childbirth, I expect to be Captain of my own vessel. This marching is not for me, Will. I am done with it.”

  They clasped each other by the shoulders. “I will see you on the Pennsylvania shore,” Will called, as the Marblehead Mariners marched north on the river road. “Do not leave without saying goodbye,” Will yelled. Nat turned and waved farewell.

  After a long, wet slog of a march, the Mariners reached the ice encrusted Durhams in the late afternoon. The tie lines were rigid and the water in the holds had frozen.

  Holmes
divided the prisoners into lots of fifty each. With much gesturing and prodding with bayonets at the end of muskets, the first twenty-five struggled over the jumbled mass of ice floes on the shore and clambered over the gunnels. They stood in the hold shivering, their lips quivering uncontrollably.

  “Tell them to jump up and down,” Nat said to Adam.

  “Jump,” Adam shouted. “Afspringen,” he yelled in Dutch. The Hessians understood.

  “Ja. Springen, springen” several of them said nodding. They began jumping up and down in the hold breaking the ice under their feet. Adam laughed. The other Mariners around him broke into hoots and guffaws. The Hessians made a comical sight. The frozen tied tails of their hair stuck straight out behind them, stiffly moving up and down as they jumped.

  “They do not appear now as menacing and fearsome as they did in on the road from Pelham Bay,” Holmes observed.

  Adam bent down, grabbed a chunk of ice and threw it overboard. He motioned for them to do the same. The Hessians grabbed the ice in their bare hands, emptying the boat of the additional weight.

  “Now,” Adam said in Dutch. “Up here on the walkways.” He motioned for some of the Hessians to climb up. A few gingerly joined him, slipping on the ice-covered wood. “Afspringen,” Adam commanded again, showing them how. The Hessians gingerly jumped only a few inches, cautiously maintaining their balance. With some practice, one and then another jumped higher or stomped their heels on the thin ice sheen, until the walkways were clear.

  “Back down into the hold,” Adam ordered. Solomon had untied the Durham and the Mariners pushed the boat off into the swirling river.

  Georg stood in the freezing ankle deep water of the black boat. His teeth were chattering. Hatless, with only his uniform jacket to protect him from the chilling wind and rain, he was as cold as he had ever been. The only warmth came from the men on each side of him, huddled together for the crossing. He prayed to God on high, the boat would not sink, crushed by a giant ice floe, or that he would not freeze to death in the frigid waters. Georg thought of the Regiment’s terrifying crossing of the North Sea. Their pastor had led them in the Psalms. He looked at Christoph, next to him and the men beyond. Every man’s lips were blue. The chins of some moved up and down as if controlled by some force outside their bodies. Georg lifted up his voice in song, recalling the words of the Psalm. Fervently, the Hessians bent their heads and sang the sacred words, which were carried away by the roar of the wind and grinding of the ice in the river.