Conceived in Liberty

by Howard Fast

  But I say nothing to him, and it comes to me that I’ll never speak to Ely again. I’ve left Ely. I’ve left him behind, and there’s no going back to him. As Wayne understood us this morning, when he saw his picked corps—his beloved Pennsylvanians—melt away like a pack of frightened deer, in that way I understand Wayne now. I understand Washington. There’s no joy in that, no achievement. I’m cold inside—and empty.

  They form for attack. Afterwards, I learn that these are the Royal Fusiliers who are attacking us. That they are picked men, the sons of the noble families of England, the finest soldiers in the world. That they are men without fear.

  I don’t know that now. I see a column of English soldiers marching to sweep us out of the way. They have detached themselves from the main body, and they come across the fields, boldly and bravely. They hold their muskets at salute, and they march the way men march on parade. I have never seen such marching, and I recognize the perfected thing which Steuben tried so vainly to teach us. But we are not soldiers, and we will never march like that. We are farmers, naked, filthy man-things. I cry it to myself; I speak it to myself the way I would sing a song I loved: we are not soldiers. We will never march as they march. We are farmers. We are free men, and we know fear—we know hate and suffering. We are weak the way men are weak. We can fight only for what is ours, only for what is ours.

  I notice how the men are staring at the English column. It has a fascination for them. It is unreal, lifeless. It has no association with life. We are a part of life, and we know only things that are a part of life. But this is no part of life, this column of men marching into the face of our guns with perfect precision, with drums beating and with fifes playing. I recognize the tune they play—“Hot Stuff”—the tune they played when they marched up Bunker Hill.

  For myself, I destroy the fascination, the illusion. There’s enough ice inside of me to destroy it. These are men—men out of the other world—to be destroyed. Ice inside of me to destroy them. I walk up and down our line, speaking softly:

  “Hold your fire—hold your fire. No man is to shoot until I give the word. I’ll kill any man who leaves the ranks. Keep down; keep out of sight. Don’t watch them.”

  I see a boy, no more than a boy, a lean farm lad, rising to his feet, staring with his mouth wide. I crash my open hand into his face.

  “Get down! Behind the wall! Don’t watch them! Keep under the wall.”

  Wayne is behind us, sitting on his horse, smiling a little, a man of ice—a man who is all ice. He bends his head at me, but I don’t want his praise. I turn my back on him, stand behind the wall watching the English.

  They are very close to us now, still they have not moved their muskets from parade position. With each step, the long line of bayonets sways, a crop of shining, shimmering steel. A drummer walks at one end of the line, his hat pushed back on his head, his head moving to the rhythm of his drum. He carries a high, English military drum, gold bands at top and bottom, a crown and lions on the side of it. He has a broad grin on his face, and he struts as he plays his sticks.

  Their officers march out in front, sabres bared. They turn sometimes, glancing back at their men, as if they were reviewing the column on parade, swinging on their heels.

  It seems that for a moment the battle has paused—to watch this, to watch a single regiment of young, fearless fools sweep a lot of farm louts out of their way.

  I say to myself, This is England—this is all of Europe. This is what we are fighting, this crass contempt of man, this laughing contempt of the life of man, of the soul of man, of man’s right to live, to know simple things and to be happy with simple things—to have no man over him. I say to myself, This is what we shall be fighting always, time without end. The fight will go on, and there will be no rest. We are life. Naked, starving, dirty farmers are life. They, out there—they are a laughing contempt for life. I tell myself that.

  They are very close to us, none of them much more than boys—laughing, flinging jokes at each other with a twist of the head. They show their teeth, hold their heads high. Their clean-shaven, clean-cut faces laugh contempt at us, contempt at death, contempt at life. They’ve lost life; they’ve lost fear. They’ve lost the power to suffer and endure and exist. They’re of the past. They are magnificent, but their magnificence doesn’t touch me. What is that to me, who have spent a winter in hell, who have seen men die, men who were the blood and soul of me?—Kenton Brenner, who died in shame so that I might live; Charley Green; Aaron Levy—a Jew who had come five thousand miles to die with a dream that someday men might be free; Jacob Eagen, a man of flame and selfless in that flame; Edward Flagg, a farmer who went because he believed in something. The Fusiliers are to be pitied, but I don’t pity them. How can I pity them? I walked into the log hospital at Valley Forge and saw a thousand men dying in hell; and the hell was theirs before ever they were dead. I saw nameless men piled in the snow, because the ground was frozen like iron. They were meat for the wolves that roamed the camp, and they didn’t die smiling. They died clinging to life, wanting life. They were the blood of men who had always clung to life, who recognized the life of man, the free, beautiful life of man as the one holy thing on God’s earth. They died crying out for life. They didn’t throw life away.

  One of the officers, marching in advance, turns, shouts a command. The field of bayonets sweeps to a horizontal position. The laughing boys break into a run …

  I cry out: “Now—now—give them hell!”

  The Pennsylvania farmers rise up—naked, mud-streaked figures. Their wide-bore muskets belch fire. The hedgerow and the wall burn with a sheet of fire. A blasting, crackling sheet of fire that mingles with the screaming of men. The red line of Royal Fusiliers is a tangled mass of screaming, dying men. Their laughing voices are hoarse with the agony of death. They claw at their bellies and retch blood. They stumble, try to run. Their line is broken, shattered. They give back and back, distorted broken figures through the smoke. Or they crawl forward to the wall where the Pennsylvania farmers brain them with clubbed muskets.

  I scream: “Load—load again! Stay behind the wall and load again! Stay behind the wall! Load again! Dry your flints!”

  I hear Wayne’s voice, as from far off: “Reload—prepare to fire!”

  The smoke lifts. They are standing out there on the field, beyond the wreckage of shattered bodies. Their officers form them into ranks. The drummer, half his drum shattered, beats a dull roll. Their courage is beyond reason, beyond life. They form calmly, and again they are on parade. One of their officers walks towards us, stepping backwards until he is no more than thirty yards from the stone wall. He addresses his men in clipped English tones, his voice trembling between rage and pride.

  We hear his words clearly: “—peasantry—do men of blood turn their backs?”

  They come toward us again. The sun is burning down. We run sweat. I can see how our men are sweating. There is no moisture left in their dry, lean bodies, yet they sweat.

  I beat them down under the wall. “Don’t look—don’t look. No man show his face!”

  They are on parade, forcing themselves to smile. They swing their feet and kick up the dust. They laugh. They are glorious, but we have seen death that is not glorious—too much.

  Their officer walks ahead of them until he is within ten yards of the wall. Then he stands there, his sword at salute, looking at me and smiling his contempt I don’t hate him. I feel a thrill of savage pleasure in that—in the fact that I am beyond hate. He is part of what must go. I know only that, that he must go. He and all his contempt of life and suffering must go. Their insane, stupid courage must be destroyed. They must be taught that life is good, not to be laughed at.

  They advance as before—thirty paces, twenty, fifteen. Their bayonets flash for harvest and they dash toward us.

  I cry again: “Now—now!”

  The farmers rise up, and the fire rages through the Fusiliers. They go down as before, men screaming in the contorted agony of death. B
ut the Pennsylvanians can’t be held now. They’ve seen what they have never seen before—British regulars shattered to pieces by their fire, on the open field.

  They are over the wall, playing Steuben’s game. They drive forward with their bayonets, slashing, thrusting, destroying with all the pent-up fury of the winter months of hell. They are hell now—all the slow, kindling hate in them let loose. These are the men who took their city, who kept them in the snow, starving.

  I am with them. Life doesn’t matter. Death doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but that we should clear them out of our path. Destroy them. They were sent to destroy us. They laughed at us. They laughed at country bumpkins hiding behind stone walls. They laughed at a rabble without uniform. They laughed at naked men, filthy, emaciated. Their laughter still burns in us.

  I drive my bayonet into a fleeing man, tear it free and leap past him. I am a machine to kill—ice inside. I am no longer a man. I have discovered Jacob.

  We stand, panting. Bloody, grimed spectres. We have destroyed the Royal British Fusiliers. We have destroyed the picked troops of Europe, wiped them out in hand-to-hand battle. They are strewn over the rocky field, dead, dying—the blood of England wetting the ground of America. There is an America born out of blood and out of death. They are our blood—but no longer us. A world is ours, made here, made out of a winter of hell and the blood of the Fusiliers.

  For a moment we stand that way, weary, victors on a field of battle. We look around us and wonder at what we have done. We are not soldiers. Maybe it comes to most of us then—that we are not soldiers, that we have done this thing once. Forget. A cool place to lie down and sleep. A long sleep to forget. A long, long, sleep.

  Wayne is riding among us, calling for a retreat. I stare at him dully. Some of the men drop where they stand, their bodies tried beyond endurance. We look at Wayne. Haven’t we done enough—held them?

  The British army is advancing. We stare at that great horde of men moving down on us, and shake our heads. We are a few hundred men in the path of an army. They come in long lines of green and red, Hessians to the front, bayonets set. A field of bayonets. We try to retreat. We stumble out of the way. I call the men to follow me, call my body to run. My feet move slowly, as in a dream. I fall once—pick myself up. The musket fire is a raging blast in our ears. Nothing can live in that, nothing can exist. It is an eternity before we reach the stone wall, climb over it. I look round, and half the men are gone. Somewhere back there—with the Fusiliers. Dying in a moment that encompasses all the sorrow of winter.

  The musket fire of the advancing British seems to sweep the world clean—clean of life. We try to run, twist, get out of that musketfire. We reach the brook, and the men fall flat into it, soak their heads, gulp the water.

  It’s like a wave of life, the water. I gulp it in, feel it run through my body. I stand up and order the men to go ahead. Ice inside of me. I walk through the water and give commands calmly, coolly, as if this moment the world were not going mad. The men file past. Greene’s regiments are lying ahead of us, waiting behind their entrenchments. Waiting.

  One of the men remains in the brook. I say to him: “Get up there, you damn fool!”

  “My brother’s back there, Captain Hale.”

  “He’s dead. Get out of here.”

  “He’s not dead. I saw him move when he fell.”

  “I tell you, he’s dead. Get out of here.”

  He walks on, looking back over his shoulder, shaking his head. Wayne passes me, his horse grinding water from the brook. Wayne is lost in the battle, a madman shrieking his battlecry.

  I look for Ely. He didn’t pass me by with the men. I look for him to come, and I see only the rolling mass of the British attack.

  I say to myself: “Ely’s dead. He’s back there—somewhere, and he’s dead.”

  Walking toward our lines, I hear men shrieking in warning. The attack is coming—behind me. I try to think, to cut the rushing, blasting sound of fire out of my ears. I must think. I must kill the emptiness inside of me and think about Ely. I must understand what has happened to Ely—who was with me all my life, who stood outside my house with my father when my mother gave birth to me, who heard my mother scream with agony. Where is Ely? Why have I lost him?

  Ely’s dead, and why does his death mean nothing? They are all dead—and I am the last. I’m alive, and all the rest of them are dead.

  I’m running. I must live. I can’t rest.

  I break into the Continental lines. What’s left of the Pennsylvania men are there, sprawled and half-asleep over their muskets. It’s a New Jersey line, men fresh for the battle and waiting. It’s hot. It’s too hot to think, but not hot enough to kill the cold inside of me. I’m in command of men. I must tell them to load and shoot, to dry their flints. My head is aching, bursting with pain, but I must tell them to dry their flints. I wake them. They want to sleep, but I won’t let them sleep. I drive them into a battle line.

  The British are attacking. A great wave of them roll down to Wenrock Brook. My voice is lost in sound, a solid wall of sound. I see the Hessians sprawling into the brook. They die in the brook. The American front is one solid wall of flame, thousands of men shooting together. A wall of sound and a wall of flame. A pain in my head—bursting it apart. The brook runs red with blood. The British officers, horses shot under them, roll on the ground. The attack falters and gives back. Grapeshot tears the front to pieces. The brook is red; the whole world is red. The blazing sun of day is beginning to set, leaving a red world behind. The Pennsylvanians sleep over their guns. They are no more a part of battle. The crash of sound does not awaken them. A long, long sleep.

  A long sleep—to forget. Sleep to forget about Ely. Ely is dead. A good company—a great, fair company. They sleep in peace. No sound can wake them, no sound that the world makes can ever wake them. A deep peace and a deep sleep, without heat and without cold, without trouble, without longing. A rest as sweet as the heart of Ely—a great golden heart.

  A heart for man. Man is a holy thing, and his body is a holy thing. Man is made in the image of God, in the holy image of God.

  Smoke out of the battlefield and a sighing that is not sound. They have turned the water of the brook red.

  The British retreat. Their retreat turns into a rout, and broken columns flee the field. The Hessians, who bore the brunt of the first fire, can no longer endure the weight of their heavy uniforms. They stagger, sprawl and roll over. The field is dotted with little green heaps of their bodies. The lie in and out of the brook. We stop firing, but the dull booming of the cannon goes on. A wall of grapeshot between them and us.

  They splotch the field with red and green patches. They try to form as they retreat. They leave their dead behind them. They leave us the field, the dead and the dying.

  Time has been lost. The only measure of time is weariness, and how long have we been weary? Tonight, we’ll sleep.

  The sun is low. There is almost a breeze, a movement of air that sends the powder smoke into curling tendrils. A curl of smoke from the muzzle of my musket. Like a machine, I have been loading and reloading, firing. The musket is hot as fire in my hands. The bayonet is bent. I try to think how I bent my bayonet. I touch it gingerly. Dry blood—the life-blood of man.

  Like the blood of Ely. Ely sleeps. All round me, men are dropping to sleep over their guns. dropping to sleep where they lie. The officers try to wake them. Why? Why? The battle is over. They’ve earned their sleep—a long sleep and a deep one, a sleep to forget.

  But I can’t sleep. The pain in my head increases, a beating, rushing pain.

  I stand up and watch the retreat. The haze of twilight has fallen over the fields. The British columns are moving slowly, dragging themselves off a field they lost. A cannon booms, again and again. From somewhere in the distance, there is the crackle of musket fire.

  There is a wisp of white cloud in the sky in the east, and the setting sun stains it—a pink and then a blood-red. As if the groaning pain of the ba
ttlefield had gone into the sky.

  The cannon booms, again and again. Gradually, other sounds die away. The cannon booms out in a great stillness.

  Why don’t they stop firing?

  The British columns lose themselves in a haze of twilight. Green and red merge with the brown and green of the ground. I wait for the cannon, but it doesn’t come.

  The sun has set.

  The army sleep. Sprawled over their guns, sprawled in long lines behind their breastworks, the men sleep. The dead sleep beside them, but they are not afraid of the dead. It’s a long sleep.

  A sighing wind in the trees. I stand there, staring at my musket, which lies at my feet.

  I step over the breastworks—begin to walk. Each step is pain, but I have to walk.

  A man challenges me.

  I say: “Captain Hale—the Fourteenth Pennsylvania.”

  The man says: “It’s hell on guard. Let them have the dead. I’m going to sleep.”

  I walk on. Wounded men are groaning. A doctor and some stretcher bearers pass me by. “A man needs some sleep,” the doctor is muttering.

  A wounded man clutches at my foot. I call to the doctor.

  “Christ—I’m one man! How much can one man do?”

  The dead and the living lie together, naked, sleeping. I stumble on. Cold inside—cold as ice. Ely knew.

  I walk through the brook, walk among the bodies of the British dead. It is quite dark now. How long ago was it that we fought a battle?

  Somewhere—out there—is Ely. I could explain to Ely. He would understand. He understood how it was with Jacob.

  I walk toward a tree. There are two men sprawled under it. They are speaking. I make out the voice of Washington; I would know that voice anywhere. The other is La Fayette’s.