Conceived in Liberty

by Howard Fast

  “Come out of your hole—clean up!”

  He met our eyes and smiled. He had courage, that man. “Parade with fixed bayonets. Stump!”

  “The army moves?” I asked Ely.

  “I don’t know.”

  A while later, General Wayne stepped into the dugout. We stood at attention, in spite of ourselves. There was a simple, natural dignity in Wayne, a spark of fire in his light blue eyes. For Muller we had not moved.

  He walked round the hut without speaking, took up our muskets, looked at the flints. He nodded, said:

  “You’re soldiers. A man may go to hell, but he keeps his musket in firing condition.” He looked at our feet, man to man—stopped at Ely’s. “You can walk?”

  “I can walk, sir,” Ely said.

  “I pleaded for shoes, God knows. Maybe we’ll have them soon.”

  “Yes, sir, I trust so. But I’m fair afraid no shoes’ll fit my feet again.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  He stopped at the door, said bluntly: “You’re New York men, but my troops now. We’ve all seen hell. I pleaded for you at the court-martial.” Then he walked out.

  We assemble outside the dugouts in brigade formation. The snow is a slush, and with each step we sink into it, ankle-deep. The drummers stand around, trying to tighten their drumheads. There is movement, new life in the air. Finally, the order comes to march—eight hundred of the Pennsylvania line.

  We go through the trees, the slush falling into our faces. At the Gulph Road, we fall in behind the Massachusetts regiments. The Virginian men join in behind us, cursing in their soft drawl. We curse them back.

  We march out onto the parade. Across the meadow, the Rhode Island men face us, next to them the Maryland brigades, then the long stretch of the New Jersey line. Thin, white-faced, bearded, filthy, no man with a whole, decent suit of clothes, we make a strange, nightmarish picture of an army. An army come back from hell, crippled beggars collected from the ends of the earth.

  The drummers march out to beat their roll, but the noise is dulled. Their drum-skins are wet. Clouds hang low overhead. We can hear the cracking and rushing of ice in the Schuylkill.

  Washington rides out, with his staff. They canter to the centre of the parade, draw in their horses and dismount. The men stand in the slush—waiting. With Washington there is a stranger, and all eyes are on him. He wears a blue and white uniform, gold-trimmed, and a white cocked hat, high black boots. We ask each other who he is. Nobody seems to know.

  He walks toward the Pennsylvania brigades, Washington behind him. Wayne comes out, takes his hand, and they stand in a little group, talking. They are too far away for us to hear what they’re saying, but suddenly the stranger breaks out into a roar of laughter—real laughter, the kind we have not heard for months. It takes effect. We look at each other.

  He walks toward the brigades, stiffly. He’s a stocky man, a broad flat face. He kicks his feet out in front of him, splashing the slush. When he is a few yards from us, he stops; his eyes widen. He walks along, his head turned sidewise, staring at man after man. He comes to one man who has no breeches, who wears an improvised sort of kilt instead. Then the stranger stops. For a moment, he stares straight ahead of him, then turns his head slowly—warily to look at the man. The head goes back. Still warily, it seeks out General Washington—then back to the man with the kilt. It takes us. We begin to smile. The brigades smile. A flurry of rain comes—and still the brigades smile.

  Wayne says: “You must understand, Baron—we have suffered a winter of hell.”

  The stranger answers in German: “Ja—Ich versteh’.”

  “You must allow.”

  “Ja——”

  He turns his head again. Then, slowly, he walks toward the man. I know the man, his name is Enoch Farrer. He’s a tall thin man. As the stranger approaches him, he backs away, stooping down to hide his knees.

  The stranger stops. “Come here!”

  Enoch knows no German.

  “Come here and turn round.”

  I know Dutch well enough to make out the German. Most of the Pennsylvania men can speak a Dutch or German dialect. Farrer is a north Pennsylvania man, of English stock. He backs away from the German, making an effort to draw his kilt down over his knees. Then he drops his musket.

  “God-damn thing’s wet,” he snaps, fumbling for it. “Who the hell are you, mister?”

  The stranger roars with laughter. His whole body shakes with laughter. He sways from side to side, clapping his hands together. Washington, Wayne, Greene—they stand and regard him with indignant silence. He turns to them, stumbling through the snow, shaking his big head.

  “I’m sorry—sorry—but in Europe I hear of an army. An army that stands the English nation on end. An army they chase all over America——”

  “We have muskets, sir,” Washington says stiffly.

  “I know—I’m sorry. Forgive me.” But he stands there laughing. He can’t stop himself.

  It was the first time we had seen Baron von Steuben. He came to the Pennsylvanians first. He came to us when we were almost finished.

  That day, we stood in the rain for three hours, half-frozen, soaked through and through. Nothing else could have kept us there—nothing but the fat German who stamped up and down, cursed us furiously, and then roared with laughter at our blank expressions.

  We began to remember. Maybe our thoughts went back to that day at Bunker Hill in Boston, when a rabble suddenly became an army.

  He walked up and down our lines impatiently. He would tear a musket from a man’s hands, grip it with his own, roar in German: “Like this—God damn your cursed peasant soul, hold it like this! It’s a musket—not a log of wood! Like this!”

  He would thrust it back at the man, a Massachusetts farmer, and the man would hold it limply—as he held it before.

  The Baron would snatch it back, become livid with fury. “Like this—like this—pig—peasant—fool!”

  The blank face and a sheepish smile. The Baron would groan, give him back the musket, walk back and forth, groaning and shaking his head.

  “An army out of this! God—to make an army out of this!”

  Or else he would break out laughing, great, animal-like bursts of laughter that echoed across the parade. Then he would try again.

  “A manual of arms—one—two—three—four.”

  A blank, wondering face.

  “Ah, God—God, why can’t I speak their accursed tongue? Why can’t I speak their miserable, savage tongue?”

  He marched us back and forth. He stood in the centre of the parade, roaring out his orders. When we began to march, he mounted his horse, rode up and down our lines, cursing us, trying to keep the brigades in line.

  “In line—in line—eyes right! Wayne—God in heaven, come and speak for me!”

  The rain grew harder. For hours we marched back and forth, while Steuben roared and cursed. I could see Washington pleading with him to let us rest. He shook his head, drove us.

  Weary to death, we staggered back to the dugouts, through the rain. We built up the fire and crouched close to it, trembling with cold and fatigue.

  But Jacob was smiling. He stood by the fire, staring into the flames, smiling. Jacob had found a man and an officer.

  XVIII

  RAINS—a ray of sunlight darting through—a sky of rolling black and grey clouds, an eternity of rain that turns the snow to slush and the slush to black mud. The dugouts leak. The floors are muddy. We become creatures of mud and slime.

  Some day, the sun will come out.

  Baron von Steuben drives us. It seems that the German is working against time. Who is he? What does he expect? Does he hope to make an army out of the few hundred of us that are left? The army of revolution is learning to laugh again—at itself, at the few hundred pitiful men who make up the ranks.

  Eleven thousand men came onto the Valley Forge encampment in December. Today, half the dugouts are empty, their roofs fallen in. In the Pennsylvania
line, two and three men make up a regiment.

  And Steuben drives us. Out into the pouring rain, onto the grand parade, a mockery of drumsticks threshing over wet skins. Form brigades. We drag our bandaged feet through the mud, back and forth, back and forth—drill. We understand the German for one, two, three, four—manual of arms. Men drop out of the ranks, sprawl on their faces in the mud. Bayonet charge—a thin line of tattered men stumbling against the rain. Re-form ranks, charge back. Back and forth until we can no longer stand. Our beards run water. We stand limply, look at one another—then laugh. We have reached the bottoms of misery, of filth, of wretchedness. We can go no lower—we are beasts of the earth.

  Steuben roars his orders, more, more—but we stand limply. You can’t ask more of a man when he has no strength left. Steuben pleads with us.

  “My children—once more.”

  He stands in the rain, bareheaded. His uniform no longer sparkles with gold lace and braid. His white breeches have become a dirty grey and brown. He stumps along, man to man, pleading with us, losing himself, roaring out in wrath—and then becoming gentle as a woman. He takes a musket and goes through the drill.

  “My children, listen to me. I am not making an army out of you. I am making a nation out of you. You and I, we will march across this country—victorious. You understand?”

  We stand limply, beggars.

  “All right—go home.”

  Jacob and Ely and I come back to the dugout. Charley has a fever, perhaps the same fever that took him after the flogging. He coughs continuously, and sometimes there’s a splatter of red on his lips.

  Tired, wet, we come in and crouch close to the fire. We build it up into a great roaring blaze. The rain is harder, like a steady flow of pebbles onto the roof.

  Charley calls to me: “Allen——”

  I take a rag and go over to his bed. I sit there, wiping the mud and water from my musket. His woman no longer sleeps with him. But sometimes she comes into the dugout to sit with him. In a way, she must still care for the little printer. Now she sits at the opposite side of the dugout, watching us.

  “You’re better?” I ask him. “You don’t look so bitter hot today, Charley.”

  “I’m used up, Allen—all used up.”

  “That’s no way for a man to talk—that’s a foolish way for a man to talk.”

  “Allen, I want you to swear that you’ll bury me. Deep in the earth, deep as the height of a man standing. I have a great fear of lying out in the cold. I want to be below where the ground freezes—far below.”

  “You’re talking foolish.”

  “But you’ll bury me, Allen?”

  I nod, stand up and put away my musket. When I turn back, Charley is lying with his eyes closed, breathing hoarsely. I go to the fire.

  “He’s no better,” Jacob says.

  “He’s used up by the whipping. Kenton would have lived.”

  “The rain will stop soon—after that, he’ll gain strength.”

  “We should bleed him.”

  “Or take him to the hospital. They say there’s two new men there, doctors from Boston.”

  “Not to the hospital,” I mutter. “There’s no man coming out of that hospital.”

  “I wouldn’t want to live—coming into that hospital.”

  The next day, Ely went to the hospital. He came back, wet and tired.

  “There’s no doctor would come up to the dugouts,” he said.

  “You asked them?”

  “They said bring him there. It’s like going into hell to go into that hospital. They have the beds built one layer over another, with the men lying so close they can’t move. The doctors are Boston men, not caring much one way or another.”

  “We’ll bring him there?”

  Ely shook his head. We went over to Charley’s bed. He lay there, his eyes closed, speaking softly.

  “Bleed him,” Mary pleaded.

  “I can’t bleed a man,” Ely muttered. “I don’t hold with bleeding.”

  “Can’t you see he’s far gone? Bleed him——”

  “You’d better,” Jacob said. “It will relieve him of the evil sickness in his blood.”

  Ely nodded. I brought a pan. Jacob sharpened his knife on a stone, and then cut into a vein on the inside of Charley’s arm, just above the elbow. Charley didn’t seem to feel the pain of the cut; he went on talking to himself, talking nonsense. Jacob found the vein, but he wasn’t very skillful at bleeding; he cut almost all through the vein, and the blood poured forth in a thick, red stream. It frightened me, the gush of blood. It didn’t seem that a man could lose blood that way and live.

  “Give over!” I cried. “He’ll bleed to death.”

  “Till he comes to his senses, Allen,” Ely whispered. “Otherwise he’ll die in madness. Let him come to his senses.”

  The pan filled with blood. The flush passed from Charley’s face, and his skin became the color of dirty parchment. He sighed and opened his eyes. He glanced from face to face, and he knew us. Somehow, he managed to smile.

  Clumsily, we bound up his arm, but we were unable to stop the flow of blood completely. It still seeped through the bandage. For a while—and then he bled no more.

  “You’ll be a new man in a few days,” Ely told him.

  “In less time than that,” Charley whispered. “Tonight, the rains stop, Ely. I have that in mind. A peace on earth.”

  We nodded. Charley’s woman went to a bed, lay down. We heard her lips moving in a soft prayer.

  “I’ll be near Kenton,” he said. “I should never have taken myself away from Kenton …”

  I went out on sentry duty that night. A wind from the west had blown the skies clear. There were stars spread in a great circle over the land.

  I walk back and forth slowly. The earth is different, a new land. Most of the snow is gone. In the lee of hills, in places where the drifts were, there is still snow; but most of it is gone. The wind is cool and gentle.

  My feet sink into the soft earth. Once, I bend over to touch a patch of withered yellow grass. A blade of the grass, I hold in my fingers.

  I come to my contact and two of us stand there. We wait for the third sentry. He walks up, shaking his head like a man in a dream.

  “On the wind—the smell of the seasons.”

  “Spring——”

  “There’ll be green grass and warm winds. There’ll be wheat in the meadows and tall corn.”

  “It seemed like there would never be a time for growing things again, a time for planting.”

  “A time for breaking the earth—a time for hitching a horse to a plough. A time for the smell of new earth turned.”

  “I call to mind how the locusts bloom first. We had a spread of locust trees at home, all along the bank of the river. A good Pennsylvania tree.”

  “You’re a Mohawk man, Allen. Is there good crops and good planting in the Mohawk land?”

  I nod. My enlistment will be over soon—mine and Ely’s and Jacob’s. Three of us left.

  “You’ll be going home, Allen?”

  I look at the Pennsylvania men wonderingly. I say: “It’s a great distance for a man to walk—alone.”

  “There be none to go with you?”

  “I don’t know …”

  “There’ll be war again with the coming of the flowers,” a Pennsylvania man says. “There’ll be armies marching.”

  “They say Howe will attack the camp.”

  “It’s not to my thinking that the old man will keep us here. He’ll be out—marching.”

  “There’s little enough army left.”

  “Mark my word—there’ll be more. After the planting, they’ll come by the hundred.”

  “I put no faith in militia.”

  “There’s the German baron to train them.”

  “Feel the wind——”

  “It’s warm. It’s got a deep, strange warmth in it. It’s a wind out of the south and the west.”

  “There’ll be a fair sun tomorrow.”


  “A ripe sun.”

  “The ice knocked the bridge out of the river. The Maryland men were in cold water up to their necks, putting the bridge back.”

  “I’ve no love for Maryland men. Swedes or Pope-crawlers——”

  “Or envy—for men in icy water.”

  We separate. We wave our hands and plod back on our beats. My feet make a sucking sound as they part from the earth. At the lunette, I stop and lean against a fieldpiece. Its cold surface feels good to my hands, so much has the change wrought in me that I can enjoy the chill after the cold of winter.

  I think about going home. Ely and Jacob and myself. I try to picture the soft green fields of the Mohawk Valley. The realization that it will not be the same forces itself upon me, the realization that we are no longer a part of that life. I picture myself behind a plough, breaking open the land. Then I shake my head. The unrest inside of me won’t die. Horror can’t kill it—or hate—or suffering. We’ll go on and on.

  Jacob relieves me. He walks slowly, and he doesn’t look at me.

  “Go back to the dugout, Allen,” he says.

  “A clear, beautiful night, Jacob. You feel the wind out of the west?”

  He nods.

  “A warm breeze. I picked a blade of last summer’s grass, Jacob.”

  “There’ll be more grass, new grass with fertile soil to feed it.”

  “Blue skies. Jacob.”

  I walk back to the dugout. When I come in, I feel that something has happened. Then I see Charley’s woman kneeling by his bed. I go over to the fire and sit down. I look into the curling flames. A fire like this—night after night, all through the winter.

  Ely says: “We’ll endure, Allen.”

  I remember Washington’s words. How much can a man endure? I stare around the dugout curiously, as if I had never seen it before—smoke-blackened logs, packed dirt on the floor, a double tier of beds, built onto the wall, a few rags hanging from wooden pegs. A musket rack. Moss Fuller’s musket is there, Clark Vandeer’s, Henry Lane’s, Aaron Levy’s. Kenton Brenner’s, Edward Flagg’s, Meyer Smith’s, Charley Green’s——