Washington and Caesar

by Christian Cameron

  They were practicing loading and firing while lying flat on the ground, firing prone. Caesar had never seen the Fourteenth do it, and he resolved to ask Steele whether he knew the trick of it. He could tell that it was not simple; the movement of the ramrod in the barrel while lying on your back clearly took tremendous coordination, and the men were all now soaking wet. But it was the last drill of the evening, and as the rain began to lash down, Honey had the sergeants form them up again and march them back to their cantonment. Caesar followed at a fair distance. It wasn’t that any of the marines had shown the hostility that Honey had to the black men, but that Caesar didn’t feel he wanted to give them an opportunity to show it. He was becoming careful.

  Instead, he crossed through the lines to where Steele and his mess group had a hordled tent on the right of the Fourteenth. Three men of Steele’s six were sick, making the tent seem empty. Caesar knocked on the pole, taking extra care not to give rise to any resentment. White soldiers in groups were not always friendly.

  “Who’s that, then?”

  “Julius Caesar.”

  “You know, mate, from anyone else, that name would be a joke. Come in out of the wet, then, and don’t bring it with you.”

  Caesar unhooked the tent flap and slipped in. There was a dense fug of pipe smoke and unwashed soldier inside, but it was warm and snug, like the tobacco-drying shed. The men of the Fourteenth were veterans, and they knew how to live in the field. Even their mess fires were covered in brush wigwams that occasionally caught fire but kept the men warm and dry while they cooked, a habit they had “learned in Germany”. Germany was just a name to Caesar, although it occurred nightly in his readings with Sergeant Peters. Germany was a place the real Caesar had fought in, where the barbarians were hard men and cruel. Caesar liked to think that the Fourteenth had served there.

  Caesar sat on another man’s pack when an outstretched palm indicated that he was welcome to it. He reached into his haversack and pulled out his tobacco box, offered it around. One soldier filled his pipe and the others simply nodded, as if accepting that he hadn’t come empty-handed. No one spoke for a moment and pipes were lit. The period before the drummers beat last call was too precious to be wasted in idle chat.

  “I have questions about the drill, Tom.”

  “God in heaven, look at this one, mates. He’s still on about the drill. What is it, then?” Steele turned a tolerant eye on Caesar, whose passion to learn the military arts brought a patronizing amusement in most of the regular establishment NCOs.

  “Do you know how to fire lying down, Tom?”

  “You’ve been watching the Jollies, you have,” said another man, Herbert Atkins by name. “They have a different manual from us, any road. No knowing what them buggers will do. All that ‘expanding’ and ‘contracting’. Poor bastards won’t know how to form a company front, soon enough.”

  “Looks useful, though,” said Caesar. “Think of Great Bridge, when the rebels were in entrenchments.”

  “Think how long it would take you to get to your feet and get your kit stowed if you had to move fast,” said Steele, but kindly. “I was in the Light Company, back in ’74. I probably will be again. We did some of those antics—and not another word from you, Bert Atkins. Sure, I can show you some of it. But it’s gey hard, I’ll tell you.”

  “I’d esteem it a favor, Tom. And another thing. What’s an adjutant?”

  Steele just shook his head. “Adjutant is an officer doing the job of a sergeant, to my way of thinkin’. He takes the rolls an’ musters, and keeps the men at their drill, but in the old days when the army was in Europe, the sergeants and the sergeant major did all that.”

  “We don’ have either one.” Caesar hated going to the officers of other regiments with his accounts and muster rolls.

  “You don’t have ten companies, mate,” said Bert Atkins. “Stands to reason that you don’t get all the extrees until you’ve met the establishment of a regiment.”

  Steele looked embarrassed. “Every company has a barrack-room lawyer, Caesar. Bert’s ours.”

  Caesar nodded at Bert, encouraging him to go on.

  “Aye, well, you lot are lucky to have the likes of me to keep you from abuse, is all I can say. Caesar, when you have filled ten companies with recruits, and when the king has granted commissions to all your officers, so that every company has sixty men, and a captain an’ his lieutenant and perhaps an ensign, why then they call your battalion ‘complete’. An’ from that date, they muster you and give you a number, an’ you are regulars, or they muster you only for local service an’ call you provincials.”

  “We don’t have ten companies,” said Caesar.

  “That’s why you don’t have a sergeant major or an adjutant, then. Every complete battalion has ten companies of sixty men and three officers, and one of those companies are grenadiers in their high fur hats and fancy clothes, an’ the other is the poor light bobs in regiments that have them, always running about or being on patrol like huntsmen on a hunt day. They wear short coats and little leather helmets.”

  “The Fourteenth don’t have a light company just now, Caesar. If they did, Bert would be in less of a hurry to speak ill of them.”

  “Why not?” asked Caesar, regretting the question immediately from the gleam in Bert’s eye.

  “Because light bobs cost money, don’t they? And the colonel runs his regiment like a business, don’t he? An’ is the purpose of his business to win wars? No, boys, it is not. Is the purpose that Bert an’ Tom and their mates be comfortable and warm in the field? No, mates, it is not. Is the purpose that the colonel makes a tidy profit on every cheap coat he sells us?”

  Caesar interrupted the indignant flow. “Sells you?”

  “Oh, aye!” called another from the back of the tent, and Steele turned a tolerant eye on Caesar.

  “We buy all our gear, don’t we? Every copper is charged against our pay. But is it ours? No, lad, it ain’t. Can a lad sell his musket for a few tots? Not unless he wants a bloody back.”

  “Some regiments is run different,” said Bert. “I’ve seen some as the colonel don’t care to make a copper on his lads, an’ they have all the best. Good coats, rainshirts, fancy packs that keep the wet out.”

  “Like the marines?” asked Caesar, and they all looked at him as if he’d grown an extra head.

  “Marines ain’t in the army, lad,” said Steele, shaking his head at Caesar’s ignorance. “They’re in the navy.”

  “Paid more an’ us, too,” said another voice.

  “Better an’ more o’ everything.”

  “So they’re in the navy. And you don’t have a light company?”

  “Even though we are required to by the warrants,” said Bert triumphantly.

  “But until we have one, we won’t get our own adjutant?” asked Caesar.

  Steele nodded.

  Caesar nodded back at him, with much to ponder, and silence fell again, until Bert poked forward a little from his place in the back, hesitant.

  “Saw you bury your man today.”

  The other three white soldiers nodded, solemnly.

  “Very proper, your lot looked. Sorry you lost another—we’ve been hit hard our own selves.”

  Caesar nodded, surprised to be so affected by their comment.

  “Thankee, gentlemen. I’ll pass your kindness to my company.” He rose as the drummer at the head of camp began tapping his drum and pulling the head taut, no easy feat in the rain, but a fair warning that the camp was about to close up. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Julius Caesar!” they called from the warmth of the tent, and men in the next tent laughed.

  5

  Head of Elk, Pennsylvania, April 6, 1776

  Of all the drummers in the regiment, theirs beat the best assembly. He was the best at all the calls, which didn’t keep Bludner from hating him. He was standing in front of them now, beating the call to arms like an important man, and Bludner couldn’t abide it. The drummer was the capt
ain’s pet. He turned his flare of temper on his men.

  “You bastards going to take all day?” Sergeant Bludner watched the men fall in with something like contempt. “This ain’t the milishee any more, boys. This is the Continental Army. An’ we don’ jus’ fall in whenever we feel the urge.” He had the iron ramrod from his Brown Bess musket in his hand, and he used it viciously, cutting at the last man into the line. The man fell down.

  “Jesus Gawd!” the man gasped.

  “Get up! Get up before I hit you again.” The man climbed slowly to his feet and Bludner regarded them all with amusement.

  “I’ll say this one more time, boys. We ain’t in the milishee no more. And when Captain Lawrence tells you to fall in, you fall in. You don’ dawdle around looking for food, or whatever you last few was doin’. Listen for the drum. That drum will tell you everything you need to know to keep me on your good side. You hear assembly, you jus’ drop what you’re doin’ an’ get here with your kit on an’ your musket clean.”

  He looked over the company, mostly raised from men like himself and Weymes—back-country men, hard men. But a few were farmers’ sons from the Tidewater, and they resented his bullying. He didn’t care; they were fit, but they were soft, and he had to lick them into shape.

  Bludner had served in Dunmore’s campaign against the Indians in ’74. He had a low opinion of militia at the best of times, and the politically charged militia who had come out to fight the British were the worst of the lot. Most of the men who had stayed to enlist in the Virginia Regiment and join the Continental Army were men to whom a steady job of soldiering came as financial advancement. The promise of land grants was too good to be missed. Everyone in Virginia knew someone who had been enriched by the land grants to the veterans of the last war. So most of the big talkers were gone, but a few lingered, and Bludner was watching them.

  “Sergeant Bludner?”

  “Sergeant McCoy. Your company, sir!”

  McCoy nodded and Bludner walked back to his position on the left as the company’s junior sergeant. McCoy stood in front of them for a moment as if considering them.

  “On the drum. Poise your firelocks!”

  Beat.

  It burned Bludner that they had to go through the motions to the nigger’s drum. He didn’t resent McCoy, who was a soldier, but he hated the appearance that the darky was giving orders.

  They weren’t ragged. Every musket came up, and every eye was looking through his trigger guard at some invisible point in the distance.

  “Rest your firelocks!”

  Beat.

  Almost crisp, the muskets sank to a position over the right knee, firmly grasped in both hands.

  “Order your firelocks!”

  Beat.

  Every musket was brought down to the ground next to the owner’s right foot, held upright by his right hand. Sergeant McCoy had served in various armies since he was a very small boy; he had seen both better and worse. They were lucky to have such a fine drummer. It gave the men an advantage that they already knew how to follow the drum, because in battle the drum would still sound when all the voices were shouted out. He needed powder and ball to get much further. That, and time to drill with the rest of the battalion. McCoy executed a sharp about-face, glanced up and down to see if the other senior sergeants were in line, and took off his hat to indicate that his company was ready. Throughout the battalion, the same orders were repeated. Some sergeants walked along the ranks inspecting the men, while others simply talked to their men, made jokes, or stood silent. No two companies were commanded the same way.

  When they were all ready, the adjutant, a small man with livid smallpox scars, called the regiment to attention.

  “Fall in the officers!”

  A long line of the regiment’s officers marched on to the parade. Captain Lawrence marched stiffly up to Sergeant McCoy, now posted on the right of the company. Lawrence seemed inconvenienced by the spontoon he now carried at the commander’s insistence, a weapon like a spear with a six-foot haft and a short spear blade and crossbar. McCoy fell back a step and Lawrence stepped into his place. Off to the center of the regiment, the adjutant passed command over to the colonel, who saluted him with his sword.

  At the other end of the company, Sergeant Bludner was allowing his body to run like an automaton; his mind was elsewhere. While the colonel addressed them on the seeds of tyranny and love of liberty, Sergeant Bludner was examining the Captain’s drummer, and seriously considering how to seize him before they marched into Philadelphia.

  Because on the docks in Philadelphia, he’d fetch them a pretty penny.

  Near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 5, 1776

  George Lake wanted to whistle along with the fifers, his heart was so high as they marched through Philadelphia. The regiment looked splendid, in good brown coats and new breeches, all of Russian linen that wore like iron. Their hats were already showing the signs of shoddy workmanship and poor edging. George had made his share of hats as an apprentice, and his own was stiff with shellac and as fine as any regular’s, as well as possessing the fine quality of shedding water. And George had a white mohair knot on his shoulder, indicating that he was a corporal in the Virginia Regiment, and hence in the Continental Army. He’d obtained the knot only because he could read and write, but he’d held it fair and square, though there were other men with more experience.

  His company looked well, and they marched well, too, thanks to the drummer. Although more than half the men were back-country hicks who were fighting only for the pay, the other half were men of conviction, who had read all the letters from the Continental Congress and felt honored to be allowed to stand up for their colony and their conscience. George was honest enough to admit that the back-country men were harder, tougher on the long marches coming north, and stronger in the daily camp fights, but the younger men were coming along, and George thought they’d have the edge when it came to battle.

  He’d heard a great deal about battle from the older men. Some had fought Indians in the West, although that seemed neither here nor there. McCoy had fought in Europe and been in a real battle. Simmons, another older man, had been all the way to Fort Pitt in the last war, and though he’d never come to grips with the French, he knew his way around the camp like the other veterans. But all the veterans agreed that it was no easy thing to stand and receive the enemy’s fire, the great crashing volleys that sent thousands of musket balls whirling about your ears. And it was there, where it came to standing your ground, that George felt the younger men had an advantage. They believed. They wanted their liberty with a passion, and that liberty had some very concrete meaning. Other men might fight for rations, comrades, or a land grant in the Ohio country. They might stand the enemy’s fire, or they might not. But the true believers would be there until the end; of that George was sure.

  George could see the second platoon sergeant, Bludner, slightly out of place as he always was on the march. Sergeants had their spot in the line, marching even with the front rank and just to the right of the rightmost man, and Bludner was never quite there, as if he wouldn’t quite admit he belonged to the regiment despite his rank. He tended to carry his weapon, one of the company’s few rifles, in the crook of his arm instead of at his shoulder or at the advance like the other sergeants in the regiment. But Captain Lawrence seemed to tolerate him, despite the fact that even now he wasn’t in step. George had heard him tell his men that “marching in step is taking orders from the Negro.” It made George wild. He’d never seen much of black men, working in a trade as an apprentice until his master went broke and headed west, but Noah was the company’s pride, the best drummer in the regiment, and he made them look better in the drill.

  Bludner enforced discipline with a cheerful violence that Lake hated. He didn’t want the Continental Army run by bullies like the despotic British, but an army of men of conviction who didn’t need petty tyrants to beat them into line. Lake was determined to outshine Bludner. He wanted Bludner’s type o
ut of the army, and he wasn’t alone. As the true believers hardened their muscles, they also became firmer in their convictions: the old ways had to go; there could be no compromise with the king; America must be free and independent. He had heard the rumors that the Congress intended such a declaration, and it raised his heart to think that soon they would not just be defending their liberties but taking the cause of liberty to the enemy.

  He looked across the front of his rank. Tanner was inching up and just out of rhythm, although not quite out of step. He prodded the man with his eyes until Tanner caught the signal and adjusted himself, and then they were entering the main concourse of the city of Philadelphia, and the cheering began. Lake knew from the meetings in camp that many of the inhabitants were Tories or worse, or Quakers who wouldn’t fight for the cause. But he saw many a pretty face under black bonnets in the crowd, and many in caps as smart as anything he had seen in Williamsburg. Philadelphia was the largest city he had ever been to, and he was finally seeing the world.

  He tried not to turn his head to watch the crowd, but he did from time to time and what he saw always pleased him: men cheering lustily, and women waving and yelling with shrill, clear voices. They halted several times, not from purpose but because the long column of companies regularly jammed when an inept officer timed his wheeling motion badly, or just because of the different marching rates of all the battalions. When they halted, men and women would come out and offer the troops bread or beer.

  Near the City Tavern, in the prosperous heart of the city, they halted in the sun for so long that men were calling out to Captain Lawrence asking if they could fall out. Tanner took his tinderbox from his coat and lit a pipe, which the men passed around while Lake glowered.

  A very young girl, barely old enough to be thought a “young lady”, came out to them from a fine brick house with a stone pitcher of milk. Another older woman in an apron followed with another pitcher, and they began to serve it to the men. One of Bludner’s men laughed.