Prelude to Glory, Vol. 5

by Ron Carter

  Valley Forge! Just over the next rise? Or the next one? Winter quarters! The freezing and the starving over! Winter quarters!

  A little after one o’clock the snow dwindled and stopped, and a raw north wind came quartering in. They crested the last rise and slowed, then stopped, and the heart went out of them.

  There was no valley. There was no town. Only the forested, rolling hills of Pennsylvania lay before them, broken with an occasional field of what had been wheat or rye or corn. A few log homes were scattered about. To the south, scarcely visible in the trees, were a few more. Ahead was the King of Prussia Inn but no village. In the distance they could see Valley Creek and the wreckage of the forge where Isaac Potts and William Dewees had pounded white hot pig iron into farm implements until the British burned the structure to the ground, on September nineteenth, as they passed through on their way to take Philadelphia. Across the creek from the forge was the dam and the water wheel that had turned the grinding stone inside the grist mill. The British had intended to burn the mill along with the forge, but for reasons unknown had failed to do so.

  Scattered about the mill and the black wreckage of the forge were the homes of Abijah Stephens, Wilsey Bodles, John Brown and his son, David Stephens, and Zachary Davis and no others. Just past the forge were the homes of Potts and Dewees.

  There was little else. No granaries. No cattle. No barns filled with winter fodder for horses or oxen. No orchards. No corn silos. No storage sheds. No shelter for an army. Nothing.

  The Continentals hitched up their muskets and marched on, spiritless, freezing, bellies empty and gnawing, with a growing anger that Congress and their officers had brought them to this forsaken place. The sun traveled its eternal arc westward and touched the western rim, and still they came. Dusk had settled when the last of them arrived.

  The wagons with the tents rolled in from Trappe, and while some of the ravaged, exhausted men struggled to erect tents against the frigid north wind, others slowly set about erecting the tripods for their cook kettles. It was only then they learned the nearest water was the Schuylkill River, over a mile to the north. In the dark they trudged barefooted over trackless ground with buckets, while others swung the axes to cut firewood. They boiled whatever they could find and drank it scalding.

  Never had General Washington seen his army as they now were. Disillusioned, spiritless, angry, betrayed, starving, freezing, hopeless. Scarcely able to control the pain in his heart, he issued his orders for the night. There would be no pickets posted tonight. There would be no camp protocol, no tattoo, no discipline. The men were to seek their own comfort, and Washington would not sleep in better conditions than they had until their lot was improved. General Washington spent the night, as did some of his men, huddled in a tent with the sides billowing from the north wind. The thousands who were without blankets built crude windbreaks and sat huddled around fires to keep from freezing to death.

  The troops could not know that Washington had desired to take the entire army to a location closer to their sources of supply. But the Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council had insisted that the army be stationed as near Philadelphia as possible, to protect the eastern section of Pennsylvania from the British, and they were adamant that Valley Forge was the location of their choice. The members of the national Congress had long since fled across the Susquehanna River to York, eighty miles south and west, where they intended to remain until they could return to Philadelphia. And once again Washington chose to allow the military to be guided by the civilian government. At whatever cost, the army would winter in Valley Forge.

  Sometime in the night the snow began again, driven by the north wind. Dawn came gray, and the wind died. To the north the Schuylkill River was frozen solid. To keep from freezing, the starving, emaciated men fed their fires and once more picked up their axes to build crude shelters.

  With the snow falling on his shoulders and collecting in his brows, General Washington left his tent to walk slowly through the camp, scattered four miles east to west, parallel to the river. He saw the scarecrow men gritting their teeth to swing the axes, and he saw the blood from their blue feet in the snow. More than half had no coats, and their ragged shirts showed their bare shoulders and backs through the holes. Open sores on their faces wept pus and blood into their beards. He saw their diverted eyes, and he said nothing when he passed men who did not salute.

  A smoldering rage began to take shape in his chest. He returned to his tent, dug a pencil and paper from his pack, drew up a wooden crate for a desk, and did the only thing he could. He drafted orders by which his men would begin, immediately, to build their camp.

  “Divide the men into squads of twelve. Build huts in rows facing each other, with a street between, doors facing the street. The huts shall be fourteen feet by sixteen feet each, sides, ends, and roofs made of logs, the roof made tight with split slabs, the sides made tight with clay. Opposite the door will be a fireplace made of wood, secured with clay eighteen inches thick. Doors to be made of split oak slabs, unless boards are available. Side walls to be six and one half feet high. Bunks, six to the side, shall be arranged against the two long walls. All available straw from the citizens near camp shall be obtained to cover the roofs and for bedding for the soldiers. A proclamation shall be issued to all citizens within seventy miles of camp that they are to thresh all their grain within sixty days and make the straw available to the army, and should they fail, their grain shall be seized in the sheaves and paid for as straw.”

  Washington paused, and his forehead wrinkled in thought before he continued.

  “I shall reward that party in each regiment, which finishes their hut in the quickest and most workmanlike manner with twelve dollars, drawn from my own pocket. Further, I shall reward any officer or soldier with one hundred dollars, who in the opinion of Generals Sullivan, Greene, and Stirling, shall discover or invent some other covering for the huts that may be cheaper and quicker made than boards, since finding boards will be nearly impossible, and there is no time to saw them.”

  With his written orders in hand, he stood and walked from his tent to find Alexander Hamilton.

  “Gather the officers. We must be about the business of sheltering and feeding and clothing these men or this army will disintegrate.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Notes

  The horrible, destitute condition of the Continental Army as it marched toward Valley Forge is accurately described herein. The heartbreak felt by the men as they first saw Valley Forge is also accurate. Valley Forge is not a valley but hilly country. The forge itself had been burned by the British on September 19. The description of the homes and buildings and the owners is correct. The men had to go more than one mile to get fresh water. Sensing the desolate mood of his men and with snow commencing, Washington rescinded all orders for military protocol for the night of December 19, 1777. Washington desired to locate winter quarters nearer their source of supply but deferred to the will of Congress. The morning of December 20, Washington drafted and issued orders to his army to begin building their small huts, the dimensions and construction of which are quoted nearly verbatim from his written orders. See Martin, Private Yankee Doodle, pp. 100, 102, 103, 167; Higginbotham, The War of American Independence, pp. 303–4; Wildes, Valley Forge, pp. 144–51; Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 434; Reed, Valley Forge: Crucible of Victory, pp. 5, 9–10; Jackson, Valley Forge: Pinnacle of Courage, pp. 17–19.

  Valley Forge

  December 21, 1777

  CHAPTER XX

  * * *

  They moved slowly, the younger man with the hand-driven cross-cut saw cutting the trimmed tree trunks to measured eighteen-foot lengths, the older man with a broadax, notching the ends so they would form a wall sixteen feet in length when assembled. Two other men in their twelve-man squad were mixing clods of frozen clay with hot water in a hole three feet in diameter and one foot deep that they had hacked in the frozen ground. Four others were hoisting the finished logs into place
on the wall, matching the notches with those beneath, while the last four men were carrying the thick clay mix from the hole in the ground to the wall, where they jammed it between the logs, careful to seal every cleft and gap.

  They stopped often, weak, exhausted, their breath coming fast with vapors rising in the gray overcast. Seven of the twelve men were without shoes, working on numb, bloodied feet that were in the first stages of frostbite. They glanced often at the heavens, gauging time by the position of the sun, which was a dull ball behind the cloud cover. It was cold enough to snow again, but no flakes had yet fallen. They guessed it was shortly past ten o’clock, and they swallowed at the thought of something—anything—hot for their midday meal. They had had nothing to eat since noon, twenty-two hours earlier and had learned to work hunched over to relieve the cramps in their empty bellies.

  Unexpected movement toward the Schuylkill caught the eye of the older man, and he turned his head, then stopped work, and straightened. He laid his broadax down and picked up his musket, his face drawn as he studied a man striding toward them. The younger man stared, searching for what had stopped his companion.

  The man approaching them was dressed in a gray wolf-skin coat that reached nearly to his knees. His breeches were soft, tanned deerskin. A parka covered his face. His legs from the knees down were covered with gray wolf-skin moccasins. He wore a weapons belt drawn about his midsection, with a black tomahawk thrust through on the right side, a belt knife in a beaded sheath on his left, together with a leather bullet pouch and a powder horn that hung from his neck. He carried a long, beautifully tooled Pennsylvania rifle loosely in his right hand as he swung along. The footprints he left in the snow were nearly in line.

  The older man cocked his musket. “Injun.”

  The incoming man raised his rifle high above his head and continued striding toward them, with the musket aimed at his chest. He stopped at twenty feet and drew back his parka. His eyes narrowed as he studied the emaciated, hollow-cheek, barefoot men before him, who were staring back at him from sunken eyes.

  “I didn’t see pickets.” The voice was white, not Indian. The face was regular, dark from summer sun and winter storms, with a strong Roman nose. The hair was long, drawn back by a leather thong.

  “Got no pickets out. Who are you?”

  “Eli Stroud. Returning from a scout to the north. I’m looking for the Massachusetts Division.”

  “Don’t recall seein’ you hereabouts before.”

  “Haven’t been hereabouts before, at least since you got here. I’m coming in from far to the north. Above Fort Ticonderoga.”

  “The fighting up there was over last fall.”

  “I was there. Have you seen the Massachusetts soldiers?”

  The younger soldier pointed east. “I think they’re back there, maybe two miles.”

  Eli nodded and continued on without further comment, rifle at his side. He did not look back at the twelve men who watched him out of sight, unable to tear their eyes from the wolf-skin coat and the moccasins. Warmth. Clearly this man was part of the wilderness, part of the woods, and there would be risk if they interfered.

  Eli left his parka pulled back, watching everything as he strode east through the camp. Silent men in threadbare clothing, legs and feet bare, shivering, sores visible on their faces and bodies, doggedly working slowly in squads of twelve to erect huts that would turn the snow and the wind. He saw no iron tripods, no kettles, no one bringing wood to start the midday cooking fires. Men glanced at him with listless eyes, then watched him out of sight. A few officers mounted on thin, spiritless horses moved through the camp, eyeing him suspiciously, but none stopped him.

  He had not gone half a mile when he understood he was witnessing a momentous calamity. The army he had left six months earlier, when he and Billy had walked out of Morristown on orders of General Washington, had nothing to do with the army he was now seeing. He had been with them one year earlier, when they were freezing and starving on the banks of the Delaware and had crossed the river to take Trenton from the Hessians. That was bad enough. But this? Never could he have guessed he would find eleven thousand of them in the death throes of extinction.

  “Eli! Over here!”

  The shout came from his left, toward the river, and he recognized the voice at the instant of hearing. He swung around and stopped, eyes searching, and then he saw the thick-shouldered, thick-necked man running toward him, long sandy-red hair tied back, round face grinning through a thick rusty beard. He wore a thick woolen coat and heavy leather shoes. Eli trotted to meet him, and the two men stopped to grasp each other by the shoulders.

  “Billy! You made it back!”

  “Weeks ago. Are you all right?”

  “Good.”

  “Are Ben and Lydia and the children all right?”

  Billy saw the light in Eli’s eyes as he answered. “Fine. Fine. Ready for winter.”

  “Did you get the room finished? Harvest finished? The meat salted?”

  “All done. Lydia said you’ve got to come back.”

  A great smile spread on Billy’s face. “As soon as I can. Come on. Sergeant—”

  Billy got no further. The high, nasal, raspy voice came piercing. “Stroud! Is that you?”

  Eli peered past Billy to see the feisty little sergeant trotting as fast as his bowed legs would allow.

  “It’s me.”

  “You two lovelies over here, and not inviting me?”

  Billy replied, “We were just coming to find you.”

  Sergeant Alvin Turlock eyed Eli, top to bottom. “Don’t look like that little skirmish up north did you any harm.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Your sister—Lydia? She and her family all right?”

  “Yes.”

  For a moment Turlock’s eyes closed, and his head rolled back. “I’m glad for you. I truly am. You back to stay?”

  “So far as I know. I notice things have changed since I’ve been gone.”

  Turlock glanced about. “You mean the look of this army?”

  Eli nodded.

  Turlock shook his head, searching for words. “We fought good this summer—twice—but we lost at Brandywine and Germantown, both. Brandywine because we was outgeneraled, and Germantown because of fog. Then Howe tricked us into goin’ up to Reading to save our stores while he went back to Philadelphia and took it without a fight. Not one shot.”

  Eli’s face drew down, and his eyes narrowed in disbelief. Turlock continued.

  “Things went from bad to worse. Food stopped. No blankets. No clothes.” He gestured toward the camp with his hand. “We’re goin’ to lose it all if something isn’t done.”

  He paused, and Eli saw a flinty look come into the eyes of the gritty little man. “But we aren’t goin’ to solve that standin’ here. Come on. You’re part of a squad. Twelve of us got to build us a hut or freeze to death. Makes choices real simple when you say it that way, don’t it?”

  Eli paused to thoughtfully stroke the three-inch scar on his jawbone. “No food?”

  “You want somethin’ to eat? Sorry to say, we got nothin’. Likely won’t get rations for the next two, three days.”

  Eli drew a deep breath. “When did these men last eat?”

  “Yesterday. Gruel. And then two days before that.”

  “No clothes?”

  “Six thousand don’t have blankets. More’n half don’t have shoes. Most don’t have coats. You see what they’re wearin’. Rags.”

  Eli was incredulous. “Washington let all this happen?”

  Turlock shook his head. “Not Washington. Congress. The High Supreme Council of Pennsylvania, if that’s what they call theirselves. Washington’s been with us all the way. His command tent’s up at the other end of camp, and he’s freezin’ and starvin’ just like the rest of us. From what I hear, he’s about ready to march this whole army on Congress or on the Pennsylvania Supreme Council, or whatever it’s called. Maybe a few bayonets in their faces will sober ’em up. C
ome on. We got work to do.”

  Eli spoke. “One more thing. Either of you know what became of Mary Flint?”

  Both Turlock and Billy saw the fear, the need in Eli’s eyes, and Turlock answered.

  “She wintered with us at Morristown. Worked in the hospital. Came there to find you. We talked the day the army marched out. She told me to look out for you. Said she’ll come when she can.” Turlock rubbed the back of his hand across his bearded mouth. “She’s a special lady, that one.”

  “Was she well? Healthy?”

  Turlock’s eyes dropped. “Mostly. Had a cough. A touch of pneumonia.”

  Eli’s breath caught. “Was she in the hospital?”

  “Oh, no. She was up and workin’. Workin’ too hard. She’ll come. Don’t ever think she won’t come.”

  For a moment the three stood there, two feeling the pain for the third.

  Turlock broke it off. “Well, we’ll have time for all the little stuff later. We better get back to buildin’ this hut.”

  Eli followed Turlock and Billy back to the edge of the woods, where axes rang as their squad cut and trimmed pine trees, measured, sawed, and notched them. The men stopped at the approach of the three, and Billy made the necessary brief introductions. Each man nodded to Eli in silence as he eyed his wolf-skin coat and leggings and moccasins, and Eli read the all-too-familiar question in their eyes.

  He waited until Billy stopped before he spoke.

  “I’m white. I was orphaned and raised Iroquois. I went north with Billy. I’m back.”

  It was enough. They all settled into their assigned work. It was then that Eli realized he was the twelfth man. Turlock had saved a place for him.

  Noon came and there was no meal. The men ate snow and sat down. Turlock gave them half an hour before he gave orders.

  “Back on your feet. The sooner we finish, the sooner we’re out of the cold.”