Prelude to Glory, Vol. 9

by Ron Carter

  “The general wants to see you.”

  Eli followed the man back to the headquarters building and into Van Rensselaer’s office.

  “You want to see me?”

  The general’s face was a mask, unreadable. “Yes. I have written orders for Captain McCown at the Lewiston camp. Would you deliver them tonight?”

  It took Eli a few seconds to consider. “Yes.”

  Without a word Van Rensselaer handed him a sealed letter. Eli took it and pushed it inside his shirt.

  The general’s words were crisp, formal. “You are dismissed.”

  Eli walked out into the gathering dusk, across the parade ground, out of the fort into the forest. He gathered his belongings and turned south to disappear into the forest. Dusk became deep twilight, and the stars began to appear. Stopping from time to time to listen, the aging woodsman worked his way south, staying in sight of the black ribbon to his right that was the river, glancing at the nighthawks darting overhead, listening to the occasional question asked by owls, “Whooo?”

  An hour before midnight he was half a mile from the Lewiston camp. He saw the glow from the campfires, and he came the last quarter mile standing upright, rifle held over his head, calling out, “Eli Stroud. Friend. From Fort Niagara.” Two hundred yards from the camp, a picket challenged him, he answered, and the picket fell in behind to follow him into the flickering light of the campfires.

  “I have a written message from General Van Rensselaer for Captain McCown,” he told the lieutenant on duty. Minutes later McCown came, buttoning his tunic, hair awry.

  “You have something from General Van Rensselaer?”

  Eli handed him the sealed orders.

  McCown broke the seal and opened it while he turned to catch the light of the fire. He pored over the orders before he raised his head and turned to the young lieutenant.

  “Everybody awake,” he exclaimed. “The troops from the fort are on their way with boats and oars. We make the attack at seven o’clock in the morning. Forty cartridges for every man. Check all weapons. The cooks are to have morning mess ready at three o’clock am.”

  Three minutes later a half-dressed, sleep-fogged drummer hammered out reveille. Barefooted soldiers in their long underwear stumbled out of their tents, squinting against the light of the campfires while they struggled to understand the shouted orders of their officers.

  Eli stood at one side of the sprawling camp, watching it come alive. He shared hot mush and burned sowbelly with the enlisted, then watched while they stood in line to receive their forty paper cartridges, counting them into the small leather cases on their belts.

  In the faint light of the quarter moon, the longboats carrying the oars from Fort Niagara arrived at the docks while the cleanup crew was washing the huge mush pots and taking down the nine-foot tripods on which they were mounted. More than one hundred men crowded to unload 240 oars, and others counted them out, six for each of the longboats that had been tied to the dock for the last ten days.

  The eastern sky was gray, and the stars overhead were fading when the sounds of the army marching from Fort Niagara reached them through the woods, and twenty minutes later they were in camp. They dropped their backpacks and sat down, breathing hard from their five-hour forced march through the dead of night. Within minutes Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer called them to attention.

  “We will load into the boats immediately and start the crossing on my command. The two hundred men I previously designated will lead. When they have reached the west bank, the balance of the regiments will follow in the order of the march.” He stopped, gave hand signals to his regimental officers, and walked briskly to the longboats with the troops following, piling into the boats, crowding to take seats, cursing their backpacks.

  The first arc of the sun was rising behind them when Colonel Van Rensselaer shouted his order, and his boat pushed off into the river, with others on both sides. Eli watched with held breath when the big boats hit the fast-flowing main channel and were suddenly swept downstream sideways, out of control. The frantic oarsmen dug deep and hard and slowly the longboats corrected, bows pointed upriver, working toward the west bank and the steep granite cliffs. Eli lifted his eyes to study the rim on the far side of the river, and they were there—British regulars, Canadian civilians, Indians—with their muskets, waiting for the oncoming Americans to come within range. The lead boats were less than thirty yards from shore when the popping of the muskets high above them commenced and held. Some of the men in the longboats slumped, struck. Oarsmen groaned and fell back and others pushed them aside to take their place, heaving on the oars with all their strength. Behind them, on the west bank of the river, General Stephen Van Rensselaer and the waiting soldiers stood silent, unmoving, staring at the longboats and the men inside them that were caught beneath the enemy guns, without cover, without the possibility of retreat. They flinched when the first longboat hit the far bank and the troops leaped ashore to sprint for the nearest rocks for a shield, and then all the other boats were on the bank and men were running in all directions to escape the deadly fire from above. Eli saw Solomon Van Rensselaer stumble and go down, then struggle to his feet as a sergeant grabbed him and jammed him down behind a huge boulder at the base of the cliff.

  The oarsmen pushed the boats back into the river and turned them to recross the river with the dead and wounded, while those behind them among the rocks raised their muskets to fire upward at the British. The return was faster than the crossing, and waiting hands lifted the wounded and the dead from the boats to lay them on spread blankets while the surgeon and his aides began their frantic, heartbreaking work of deciding which ones were fatally wounded and which ones they might save.

  The second regiment loaded into their longboats, and Eli saw the need. He stepped into the lead longboat and sat on the first bench, hunched forward, rifle between his knees. He felt the current suck the boat downstream and then heard the grunt of the oarsmen behind as they strained to correct their course, and he watched as the far bank came into clear definition with the Americans crouched behind anything that would shield them while they fired upward at the barrage coming down from the British on top of the cliffs. He heard the hits and the groans behind him and he saw the two-foot geysers of water leap around the boats when the .75-caliber British musket balls struck the river. The boat was ten feet from the rocky shore when Eli leaped into the water and waded in, waiting to hold the bow of the boat steady while the others jumped into the river and slogged their way onto the bank and into the rocks to cover.

  Eli ran, crouched, dodging, to the place where Colonel Van Rensselaer was slumped against the sheltering boulder, with his head bowed, eyes closed, his jaw clenched against the pain, blood running from his forehead and shoulder and right side. The white-faced sergeant who had saved him looked at Eli and shook his head.

  “Six hits.”

  Eli gently shook the colonel by the shoulders. “Can you hear me?”

  The colonel managed to raise his head to look Eli in the face. “Yes.”

  “Can you stand it if I take you back to the longboat?”

  “I can try.”

  As gently as he could, Eli picked up the stricken man and turned back toward the boats with the sergeant beside him, trying to bear some of the weight. They reached the longboats with musket balls ricocheting off the rocks around them, and Eli waded into the river up to his waist to lift the colonel into the reaching hands of the waiting oarsmen in the nearest longboat.

  “Get him back across,” Eli shouted as he turned back to shore and the safety of the rocks where the sergeant was waiting.

  Above the rattle of the musket fire, Eli shouted, “Who’s next in command?”

  The sergeant pondered for a moment. “Captain Wool. John Wool. I saw him over there.” The sergeant pointed, and Eli sprinted. Captain John E. Wool saw him coming and was waiting when Eli dropped beside him in the shelter of a rock, breathless.

  Wool spoke. “The colonel?”

>   “Alive,” Eli exclaimed. “Barely. Are you in command?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “What are your orders?”

  Wool was struggling to recover from the shock. “We’ve got to get these men off this riverbank.”

  “Do you know the trails up the cliffs?”

  Wool shook his head. “No. No one ever showed us.”

  There was anger in Eli’s voice. “Wait here. I’ll be back.”

  For more than five minutes Wool waited, shouting what encouragement he could to his men, before Eli came running to once again crouch beside him.

  “There,” Eli exclaimed, pointing south. “Maybe one hundred yards. There’s a trail leading up. I think it’s one used by fishermen.”

  Wool bobbed his head. “Let’s go.”

  With Eli leading, the two men ran, dodging among the rocks, shouting, “Follow us, follow us.” Those who could broke from cover to run from the field of fire to the place where Eli stopped, and they gathered at the base of the cliff. Eli pointed to a place where a rocky path made its crooked way upward across the face of the steep rock wall, partially sheltered from above by an overhang. He turned to Wool who stood pasty-faced and panting, and he pointed.

  “That leads to the top. We’ve got to get these men up there before the British figure out what we’re doing.”

  Wool nodded, and Eli started up the path at a trot, hunched low, with Wool behind and the troops following. The musket fire overhead dwindled and became sporadic and had nearly stopped when Eli broke out on top of the cliff, breathing hard, sweating, with the soldiers right behind. He paused only long enough to turn to Wool and point.

  “I don’t think they know we’re here yet. Keep moving!”

  They came charging in from the right flank of the startled British, muskets blasting, bayonets flashing. Red-coated soldiers and Canadians and Indians went down, and suddenly those still on their feet broke into a scrambling retreat with the screaming Americans scattering them in all directions. Within minutes the small advance party of Americans held the crest of the cliffs and the village of Queenston Heights.

  Eli dropped to his haunches beside a dazed British soldier who was trying to tie a tourniquet around his right thigh, sweating, teeth gritted against the pain and blood of a ragged hole made by an American musket ball.

  “Let me,” Eli said, detaching the bayonet from the British musket lying beside the wounded man. He thrust it through the bandage loosely looped around the leg and began rotating it until it came tight, and the flow of blood quit pulsing from the wound. Eli took the soldier’s hand and placed it on the bayonet and said, “Hold that until someone comes to help.”

  The soldier looked him in the eye. “Thank you,” he said, his voice barely audible.

  “Who’s your commanding officer?”

  “Brock, sir. General Isaac Brock.”

  Eli started. “The one who took Fort Detroit?”

  “The same.”

  “He came here?”

  “On orders.”

  “Where is he?”

  A look of pain came into the eyes of the British soldier. “I believe I saw him fall in your first volley. Over there.” He pointed east, toward the bluffs.

  Eli walked through the white gun smoke hanging in the air, the American soldiers giddy with relief, and the wounded and dead British, looking for the one with the gold on his shoulders. He was just yards from the bluffs when he saw him, on his face, arms thrown outward, hat with the gold braid lying beside his golden hair. Eli knelt beside the still body and gently felt at the wrist, then the throat, and knew he was dead. One of the best.

  For a moment Eli felt deep sadness at the waste, and he looked about at the others who were dead or writhing in pain, and an anger came welling at the evil of wars and the sickness of the human race that left it unable to stop them. In his life he had seen too much of it, and he rose and walked on to the crest and stood with spread feet, watching the next command of longboats working their way through the current to unload, followed by another. Within half an hour there were six hundred Americans assembled on the heights, among them Lieutenant Colonel Winfield Scott, who was the highest ranking officer and who took command.

  He called together his war council and Eli listened as he gave them his orders.

  “They have about twice our number in reserve just to the north of us, and we can expect a counterattack as soon as they rally. General Van Rensselaer will bring the balance of our command across the river at once, but we’ve got to hold here until they arrive. Use anything you can find for breastworks. Form four battle lines facing north.”

  The Americans seized the British supply wagons, British backpacks, and discarded shipping crates and began forming barricades facing north. Eli walked to the bluff once more to watch twelve longboats crossing but could not understand why thirty others remained tied near the dock, empty, while soldiers stood on the banks, muskets in hand, doing nothing. He watched the twelve boats unload and the soldiers start up the path to the top, and he walked to meet them. He fell in beside the officer in charge.

  “Isn’t the general coming with the others?”

  The officer stopped to look down at the river. “That was the plan.”

  “What’s holding them? There’s a counterattack coming, and we need them.”

  A blank look crossed the officer’s face and he shrugged. “I don’t know what’s happened.”

  The sure knowledge struck Eli like something physical. He trotted down the trail to where men were unloading cased ammunition and crated medicines and stopped the nearest lieutenant.

  “Are the others coming across to reinforce Colonel Scott?”

  The lieutenant turned to peer back across the river. “I thought they were.”

  “Are you going back?”

  “Yes. To get another load of supplies.”

  Eli climbed into the longboat to help with the unloading, then settled onto a seat while the six oarsmen rowed back across the river. Eli was the first out of the boat, searching for General Van Rensselaer. He found him standing before a huge gathering of the New York State militia, red-faced, neck veins extended, ranting his condemnation of the entire force. The few soldiers who were not militia were crowded behind the general while his voice rang in the woods.

  “Mutiny! Treason! Cowardice in the face of the enemy! I will personally see to it you are hanged if it is the last act of my life! Each and every one!” His arm shot up to point across the river. “We have a thousand men over there who will be lost if you do not go to reinforce them! For the last time, I give you a direct order! Enter the longboats and cross the river and go to save your fellow soldiers!”

  Not one man among the New York militia moved. They stared at the ground, or the sky, or each other, with blank faces, and said nothing.

  The general was close to hysteria. “May the Almighty forgive you, because neither I nor the United States ever will!” He stopped and for a moment did not know what to do next. He had no words, no one to turn to, no way to force a thousand men to board the longboats. He backed up two steps and then turned to stalk off to his tent.

  Eli asked the nearest officer, “What’s happened?”

  There was outrage in the officer as he answered. “When the first boatloads of dead and wounded came back across the river, the militia took one look at them and got about half sick. When the second load got here, they started talking. When the general ordered them to load into the boats to make their crossing, they told him to his face that they were state militia, and they were not authorized to cross onto Canadian soil. They had not joined the army to fight on foreign soil. They refused. You know the rest.”

  For a full five seconds Eli stood in stunned disbelief. Foreign soil? The idea was insane! Beyond ridiculous! How could half an army sacrifice the other half? How could these men bear the shame? How could they ever hold their heads up again?

  From across the river came the deep boom of a single cannon, and then five more
cannon, and then an eruption of the rattle of muskets. Eli ran to the dock to shade his eyes while he watched the great granite bluffs. A soldier blurted, “What’s going on over there?” and another answered, “The British counterattack just began.”

  Time passed unnoticed as they stood there, staring, not knowing what was happening up on top of the bluffs. No one knew how long they were there before they saw the movement of men at the crest, and no one knew whether they were Americans or British until the Union Jack was hoisted with its blue field and red and white crosses, unmistakable in the bright fall sun.

  For a time the New York militia remained huddled together, afraid of the simmering rage in the small remainder of the soldiers. For a long time Eli stood at the dock, hoping against hope to see some of the American soldiers making their way down the trail to the river to be picked up, but there were none.

  A thousand men, dead or captured. A thousand men!

  Never had Eli been in, or heard of, a camp as violently divided as the one in which he now found himself. For a long time the few soldiers who had been willing to make the crossing stayed together with hatred and utter contempt that leaped from their eyes and faces like something alive, to reach and condemn the great gathering of New York militia who had refused to save their comrades in arms. The New Yorkers remained gathered, fearful of what would happen to them if they disbursed to their individual commands and tents.

  General Stephen Van Rensselaer refused to leave his tent, and his officers could hear him heaping venom on the New York militia, his voice rising and falling while he paced. In the camp, the tension and bitterness rode like a great, black pall. Camp discipline was forgotten. Without their commander, the soldiers degenerated into two groups, aimless, without focus. Finally the lesser officers gave the orders to prepare evening mess and be prepared to march back to Fort Niagara at four o’clock in the morning. Slowly the troops separated and walked back to their own tents.

  Evening mess was served to a tense, silent line, with the entire New York militia coming behind all others, to sit in the forest, away from the camp, raising their heads to peer into the woods, nervous, watching. The other soldiers turned their backs on them and let them go. Taps and the lowering of the flag was a mournful thing, with the smaller group of men staring at the larger group with an expression that could suggest only one word—traitor, traitor, traitor.