by Ron Carter
British General Cornwallis coming with his eight thousand troops under orders of General Howe to find and destroy the entire American army—including General Washington—Washington sitting his gray horse at the south end of the Trenton Bridge in the gathering dusk of January 2, 1777, while Colonel Edward Hand led his intrepid band of riflemen running across—the roar of British cannon and muskets kicking dirt and water fifty feet into the air as they tried to kill him and Washington—the American guns blasting out their defiant answer—holding the bridge until dark—moving the entire army around the British camp at the north end of Trenton overnight—marching twelve miles on Old Quaker Road—taking Princeton from British Colonel Mawhood the next morning—Cornwallis and his officers sitting their horses on the banks of the Delaware at sunrise, dumbfounded that the only sign the Americans had ever been there were the campfires they had left burning in the night to trick the British—the towering fury of Cornwallis and Howe when they learned the American rabble had done the impossible—taken both Trenton and Princeton.
Billy finished his scant meal, wiped the crumbs from his beard, repacked his old summer clothing, and left the Delaware behind as he struck out south and west in bright, frigid sunlight, cross-country, searching for Whitemarsh and the Continental Army. The sun had slipped below the western rim, and the cloudless heavens were taking on ever-deeper hues of purple when he walked past the outbuildings to rap on the back door of a log farm home. A stout woman with two small children clinging to her ankle-length dress opened the door, and the lantern glow cast a long, misshapen shaft of yellow light on the frozen ground around Billy as he spoke.
“I do not mean to frighten you, ma’am. I’m looking for Whitemarsh. The American army.”
Her husband was away, but she could spare a little food.
He ate cold sliced pork and bread and drank water for his supper, slept on straw in the barn, cut half a cord of firewood to pay for his keep, and moved on. The sun was two hours past its zenith when he met a man with two sheltie dogs driving sheep on the winding wagon ruts that passed for a road, and Billy stopped to inquire.
The man turned to point due south. “Whitemarsh’s that way, two miles and a little more. Army’s there.”
The sun was a frozen yellow ball touching the bare branches of the trees to the west when Billy crested one of the gentle, rolling hills of southeastern Pennsylvania and stopped at the rare sight spread before him. With the sun at his back, casting long shadows eastward, he drew the thick, gray, knitted cap from his head and for a time studied the random sprawl of the American army camp that lay in the cup of a broad valley, with a tiny settlement beyond, toward the southwest. Columns of cook-fire smoke rose straight as a die into the dead, frigid air, glowing golden with the rays of the setting sun. The tents and the lean-tos were not set in orderly rows, nor were the divisions and regiments organized according to any plan. Rather, they were scattered, each according to its own whim and fancy.
He tugged his cap back onto his head and walked on down the trace of a road through the woods, toward the sprawling muddle of the American camp, watching for the first sign of a Massachusetts regiment and a bandy-legged little sergeant with a scraggly beard and a high, raspy voice.
Notes
Following the battle of Germantown, General Washington camped his army at Whitemarsh, about eight miles north of Germantown, on the Missahickon Creek. See the map in Freeman, Washington, p. 321.
The Continental Army on the march
Near Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania
Late November 1777
CHAPTER XVI
* * *
In gathering dusk, Sergeant Alvin Turlock, Boston Company, Massachusetts Regiment, dumped an armload of firewood onto the growing heap next to a leg of the tall, iron tripod. Diminutive, thin, hawk-faced, he rammed two sticks into the fire beneath the great, black, pot-bellied cook kettle that hung from the chain. Vapor rose from his face as he stepped back from the heat of the fire, intently watching, studying his men as they moved about, making camp for the night. And once again the pain rose within.
Half his company had no shoes. A few had wrapped their feet in strips of canvas cut and stolen from tarps that covered the army’s freight wagons. Others had taken the woolen coats from men who had been killed in battle or who had died from disease or freezing to fashion wraps for their feet. Too many were barefooted, feet blue and bleeding from the days of marching on frozen ridges of mud and snow and rocks. Turlock had cut the leg from the trousers of a dead soldier, wrapped it over the top of his head, and tied it beneath his chin to keep his ears from freezing, but most of his men were bareheaded, vapor trailing behind as they moved about.
He watched the ones assigned to cooking detail for the evening meal. Eight days ago as they passed by a farm some of them had stolen and slaughtered a pig. By eating everything—the meat, hocks, tongue, brain, lungs, heart, liver, kidneys—they had made it last six days, even cutting the skin into chunks and frying it in the lard to make pork cracklings. All that remained was the empty stomach and the intestines. Turlock grimly watched while they washed them as best they could in snow water, chopped them, and threw them into the smoking cook kettle.
One backwoodsman returned from a nearby stream, where he had dug fourteen toads from the frozen mud and bundled them in a dirty, ragged piece of cloth to carry them back to camp. He dumped them into a bucket of snow water to wash them, then tossed them into the pot, just as they were. Another brought the skinned head of a sheep, eyes and tongue still intact, and dropped it splashing into the steaming water. An old soldier, limping on a bare foot with two toes gone black, dropped the skinned carcass of a porcupine into the great, black kettle.
They had used the last of their turnips ten days ago. There were no potatoes nor cabbages. Some men were stripping the inner bark from maple and sycamore trees to add to the mix. A few came with jimson roots and a handful of nuts and seeds the squirrels had missed in their gather for the winter. Turlock set his jaw at the stench that rose from the pot to reach out in the still, frigid air.
With the sun below the horizon, the temperature dropped. White spots began to appear on the faces of his men, and their breath froze white in their beards. The sparse talk dwindled to nothing as they cut branches from pines and firs for bedding for the night, while their eyes continually diverted to the fires and the kettles in anticipation of something hot in their shriveled bellies. They had eaten nothing since dawn, when they were given one wooden spoonful of the last of the rice boiled in creek water.
Turlock wiped at the frozen moisture in his beard and called his orders. “All right, you lovelies, get your utensils. Time to eat this banquet.”
He watched as they went to their bedrolls for wooden bowls and spoons and their canteens and formed the line. Cooks dipped the simmering gruel with their mouths clamped shut, breathing light against the reeking odor.
Turlock heard the murmured questions, “No salt? No bread? No turnips?”
His voice rose high, raspy, loud. “You want to ruin the taste of this stew?”
A few men grinned. Most did not.
Standing in the frigid air, watching his men silently file past the cook kettle, from the corner of his eye Turlock caught unexpected movement on the wagon ruts they called a road, and he turned his head to look. His eyes narrowed as he studied a man in a heavy, dark woolen coat, striding steadily eastward. He had a full, sandy-red beard, and his hair was tied back with a leather lace. He carried his musket in his right hand, with the thumb of his left hand hooked under the rope that held his bedroll on his back.
Recognition flashed, and Turlock started, then raised a hand to call, “Weems! Corporal Billy Weems! Is that you?”
Billy’s head swung toward the familiar sound as he stopped in his tracks, searching. In the twilight he saw the small, wiry figure trotting toward him, and for a moment a feeling of deep gratitude rose to choke him. He’s alive! Then a grin formed in his beard as he turned and quickened his pace toward t
he little man. They stopped with three feet separating them, and Turlock reached to grasp Billy by both arms and shake him roughly.
“You’re back! I was beginnin’ to worry the Mohawk got you.”
Billy was grinning broadly. “Not likely. I’m fine. You?”
“Alive.” An instant of fear flashed in his eyes. “Eli?”
“Alive. Good. A long story.”
“Good or bad story?”
“The best.”
Turlock’s eyes widened and he blurted, “Found his sister?”
“Sister, husband, and two children.”
Turlock’s head rolled back, and his eyes closed as he uttered a long, “Ohhhhh. The Almighty smiled on him.”
“He surely did. You camped nearby?”
Turlock hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Over there. Come on. Just in time for evening mess. Got a real good meal goin’ in the pot. Pig paunch, sheep’s head, porcupine, toads, tree bark, and some nuts the squirrels missed. Wish King George was here to help eat it. Might end the war right on the spot.”
Billy shook his head with a cryptic smile. “Things don’t change much, do they?”
With the meal finished and the kettle scrubbed with sand and snow and ice, Billy and Turlock rolled a six-foot section of pine log close to the fire and sat down in full darkness. Overhead, countless points of light dotted the frigid, black heavens. With hands extended and palms outward toward the warmth of the flames, Turlock spoke.
“Eli?”
“It was after the battle at Saratoga. The last battle. We went looking. We found a captain named Ben Fielding from the New Hampshire regiment. Tall, good man. Turned out his father was Cyrus Fielding, the man who took in Eli’s sister eighteen years ago when the two of them were orphaned. The Iroquois got Eli.”
“What’s her name? Eli could only remember ‘Iddi.’”
“Lydia.”
Turlock smiled. “Lydia. A little brother would remember it as Iddi.”
“Ben Fielding took us to his home. Lydia is a tall, strong, beautiful woman. Good woman. He married her. They built their own home. Cleared their own farm. Two children—a boy and a girl.”
Turlock turned, with the firelight making crags and shadow ridges in his weathered face. “What names?”
“Samuel and Hannah. Hannah’s four. Samuel’s two. Hannah looks like her mother. Samuel looks a little like his father but maybe more like Eli.”
Billy could see the deep pleasure in Turlock’s eyes as he spoke. “Eli stayed there?”
“For a while. He’ll be coming when they finish the harvest and have meat smoked for the winter.”
“I’m glad. Glad for him.”
The two men let a little time pass while Turlock created mental images of Eli with the profound joy and the peace of being with the sister he had lost and found; of working side by side with her and her husband to finish the work of harvest and preparing for winter; of sitting at the hearth at night with a small, tow-headed, blocky little boy on his knee while the family read from the Bible or listening while Ben and Eli told stories of the forest or while Lydia sang.
Billy turned his head to speak. “I promised Eli to ask about Mary Flint. Do you remember her?”
Turlock brightened. “I surely do. She was nursin’ at the hospital in Morristown when we marched out. She came there lookin’ for Eli. She has a strong feelin’ for him.”
“Seen her lately?”
“No. But as soon as we get to our winter campground and get a hospital, she’ll likely show up. Life has sure dealt her some hardships. Husband gone, baby gone, family gone, lost everything she ever had.” He bowed his head for a moment. “She’s pure gold, that girl is. Does Eli have a feelin’ for her?”
“He does. Made me promise to find her and tell her he’s all right. He’ll be coming down soon, and he intends finding her.”
Turlock smiled. “That’s the way it should be.”
They sat quietly for a while before Turlock spoke again. “What happened up there with the Iroquois? Did you find Joseph Brant?”
“We found him.”
“What’s his Mohawk name?”
“Thayendanegea.”
“Where’d you find him?”
“Up at Three Rivers, near Fort Stanwix. Eli went right into their camp at night, in a storm. Knocked the Indian picket unconscious and dumped him through the flap into Brant’s lodge. Brant came out, and Eli faced him less than six feet away. Eli could have killed Brant, and Brant knew it. Eli did it so Brant would talk with him later. He left, and Brant didn’t follow him.”
A small sound came from Turlock as he rounded his lips and blew air that rose in vapor.
Billy continued. “Brant and his Mohawk ambushed Herkimer a few days later. That was probably the bloodiest fight I ever saw.”
“Saw? You weren’t in it?”
“Eli and I were in it. Herkimer died from it, along with over half his command.” Billy paused, and Turlock saw his eyes narrow as the terrible memories came flooding.
“Afterward General Washington sent General Benedict Arnold to help. Eli saw a prisoner named Han Yost who is not right in the head. Slow. Eli told Arnold that the Mohawk regard such people as touched by Taronhiawagon.”
“Taronhiawagon?”
“The Mohawk god. So Eli and Arnold arranged to have an Indian guide named Ponsee take Yost to Joseph Brant to tell him that it was useless to fight the Americans because they were coming in such numbers that they could not be stopped. Yost did it. Then later Eli walked right into Brant’s camp in daylight carrying a wampum belt he had made. It gave us safe passage into camp but not back out again. He asked to talk to Brant, and Brant came, and Brant remembered Eli from the night he faced him in the storm. He remembered Eli could have killed him but didn’t.”
“Where were you?”
“With him.”
“Scared?”
Billy shook his head. “You’ll never know how bad. Right there, surrounded by more painted warriors than I’ve ever seen before or since, all wanting to kill us on the spot, Eli told Brant of an old Indian legend about General Washington. Washington was with Braddock when the Mohawk ambushed and killed Braddock years ago, and the Mohawk sent eight warriors to kill Washington. They got close and shot but couldn’t hit him. They said they could feel a power protecting him. Their chief said he felt it, too. He made a prophecy. He said the Great Spirit had told him that Washington could not be killed by a musket or a cannon, that he would live to become the father of a great nation.”
Turlock leaned back slightly, mouth fallen open as he listened.
“Brant knew of the prophecy. That was when he led his Mohawk away. They quit.”
“They what?”
“Quit the British.”
“You and Eli got Brant to do that?”
Slowly Billy shook his head and for a time stared into the flames before he spoke. “No, not Eli, not me, the Almighty.”
For a long time Turlock stared, aware of a feeling that rose quietly in his breast to fill him. Finally he licked at his dry lips and spoke.
“Either one of you get hurt in all this?”
“No. Well, yes. I got hit by a tomahawk. On my back.”
“When?”
“On the way up the Hudson. The Mohawk sent about ten warriors down to get us. There was a fight.”
“How bad?”
“We killed about half of them. One got me with his tomahawk before I got him. Eighteen stitches or so.”
“Eli sewed you up?”
Billy nodded. “He got gall from a deer to wash it clean, and stitched it closed. Bound it up with jimson weed to draw out the pus and start to heal. Taught me a lot about the woods. A whole new world for me. The Indians can teach us a lot if we’d only listen.”
“I know. How’d you get away from those ten Mohawk assassins?”
“Eli got us to an Indian burial ground. Sacred. The Mohawk wouldn’t come in to fight.”
For a time Turlock stared into the
fire, lost in thought at the story he had heard. “Anything else?”
“One thing. We built a sweat lodge. Stayed in it for two days.”
Turlock stopped all movement. “You have a vision?”
Billy shook his head. “No vision. But we both knew we had to use the wampum belt to get into Brant’s camp and that we had to talk to him. We didn’t know if we’d get out alive, but while we were there, something happened. It didn’t matter if we got out. It only mattered that we were there, doing what we had to do and that we were doing it for freedom. Liberty. I can hardly explain it.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve felt it.”
Billy shifted and rubbed his hands together for a moment. “How about you? I been tracking the army from Morristown, and I never heard of such wanderings. What happened?”
Turlock shook his head. “I can’t hardly believe it myself. Gen’l Howe loaded his whole army onto Admiral Howe’s boats and sailed ’em all over the east coast, with us marchin’ up and down ready to fight ’em when they landed. North one day, south the next, east, west, up and down, until we wore out our shoes and our horses and most of the men for no good reason we ever knew. Then finally Howe landed clean down at Head of Elk on the Chesapeake Bay and started north towards Philadelphia. He was just as far from Philadelphia at Head of Elk as he was when he sailed out from Staten Island. Only him and the Almighty knows what was goin’ through his head, and sometimes I think it might have confused the Almighty.”
Billy nodded. “I heard about some of it.”
“Then when it looked like he was goin’ after Philadelphia, we engaged him on the Brandywine Creek. Things got pretty confused, and we lost it, but we scared ’em. Then Howe headed for Germantown and divided his army, so Washington decided to attack him at Germantown. We had the British bugles blowin’ the retreat when a heavy fog rolled in and everybody lost track of everybody else. Wound up with Wayne shootin’ at Stephen in the fog and Greene gettin’ lost because his guide couldn’t find his way, and we lost that one, too. But at Germantown, the British knew we had ’em beat until the fog saved ’em. Scared ’em bad.”