by Ron Carter
“Absolutely not. They think themselves quite clever with their hands. Let them use their hands.”
The hard-packed dirt floor of the barn reeked with the stench of horse droppings and urine and the rot and mold that had accumulated over two decades in the unrelenting humidity. In the twenty days the American prisoners worked in the sweltering, stifling heat of the Savannah fall, none were allowed out of the tattered clothing they wore, nor were they allowed to bathe or shave. They did not know they would live thus throughout the winter. Six died of dysentery and gangrenous wounds, and the British loaded their bodies into a freight wagon and hauled them to the swamp.
Tearing out the horse stalls, the prisoners uncovered four horseshoes in the packed dirt of the barn floor—two large ones, calked heel and toe for draft horses, and two smaller flat-plates for thoroughbred saddle mounts. There were eight bent, rusted horseshoe nails in each shoe. Patiently they used one shoe to pound the nails in another straight, then drew them out, and used them to dig out the spikes the British had driven into the wooden window frames to seal them shut. They worked until they could remove and insert the spikes at will. In the nighttime they were able to withdraw the spikes and open the windows a few inches inward. Unnoticed by the pickets, the open windows provided some little relief from the heavy, moist stink that filled the barn like something alive. To keep their handiwork from prying British eyes, they smeared dirt and decayed horse dung over the tops of the spikes each time they replaced them and kept the horseshoes and the nails buried in a corner of the barn.
On the day in November when the prisoners finished clearing the stalls from the barn, the British rolled a twenty-four-pound cannon up to each side of the building. A short, pedantic captain ordered the Americans out of the barn to watch while the cannon crews loaded the big guns with grapeshot. The pompous little officer smiled and swaggered before them as he spoke.
“The cannon will be turned on any who attempt escape. Should an uprising or a riot occur, we will turn them on the building and destroy it utterly, with everyone inside. Are there any questions?”
The rebels stood mute with sullen, dark faces.
“Very good. You will be tempted to dig a tunnel under the walls of this building to escape. I give you fair notice. Each day while you are at mess, a patrol of my men will inspect each wall from the inside. Should there be evidence of digging such a tunnel, those responsible shall be flogged. If we are unable to determine who is responsible, we will take the first ten men from the alphabetical list and flog them. Thirty stripes. Then the next ten, until one of you informs us who attempted the escape. Are there any questions now?”
There were none.
The prisoners filed back into the barn, silent, surly, to face the oncoming winter months. They woodenly accepted the daily routine of being strung together on a rope by their left ankles, and marching twice a day to an open field, taking their rotation with prisoners from other buildings for two meals, one early in the morning, one in the late afternoon. Hunger became their dread companion; most walked hunched forward to relieve the pangs. December became January, then February, and the rains of winter soaked and chilled them; they learned to curl up on the dirt floor to save body heat as they slept.
With the chill of a February night coming on, the line of prisoners marched from evening mess in the field, to the barn and stopped at the door, silent, grim, filthy, for the hated routine of being untied and counted like cattle. Two British regulars went to their knees to loosen the ankle rope on one man at a time, each waiting while a sergeant called the names and made his mark on the list before he was allowed to enter the barn.
“Barlow.” The man nodded and disappeared into the gloom of the building.
“Crofts.” The man grunted and moved on.
“Dobrinski.” A Polish soldier stepped through the door.
“Dunson.” Caleb glanced at the sergeant and stepped inside the door. He waited for two seconds while his eyes adjusted to the deep gloom, then pushed his way to one of the windows in the south wall. Quickly he pulled the spikes and swung the sash of the dirty window inward four inches, just enough to peer out at the cannon and crew. For the fifth time in five days he carefully gauged the distance.
Fifty feet. Seventeen yards.
Then he narrowed his eyes to gauge the distance from the cannon to the edge of the thick tangle of Georgia trees and forest growth.
Eighty yards. Less than one hundred.
How long would it take to drop out the window and cover seventeen yards in the deep purple of dusk while the British were checking off the remaining prisoners and before the cannon crew built their fire? Four seconds? Five? If the cannon crew saw him, or heard him hit the ground, how long would it take them to bring the cannon to bear, smack the linstock onto the touchhole, and fire it? Less than five seconds? How long would it take them to unsling their huge Brown Bess muskets, cock the hammers, bring them level, and fire? Three seconds? Four? Could he reach them before they could do either? If he did reach them, could he silence them before they could shout an alarm to the other cannon crews?
And if he did, how long to cover eighty yards in thick grass to reach the forest, in the dark? Fifteen seconds? Less than twenty? He would have to pass two other buildings to get there—the great barn where more than three hundred prisoners were held, and a granary with just less than one hundred. Pickets and cannon were positioned to cover both buildings. He had been in enough battles to know that surprise was one of the great weapons in war, but surprise would gain him five or six seconds—no more. Was it enough? Was it?
If he reached the forest, which direction would he go? Where had Prevost and Maitland—the two British officers who commanded the defenses of Savannah—positioned the remainder of their force? Would he go east, down the river to the bay, and the Atlantic? West, up river? North, across the river? South, away from the river?
The rage of a cornered animal rose within, and he pushed his way to the place on the floor that had become his, against the north wall. He sat down, back against the wooden planking, forearms resting on his drawn-up knees. He felt the cold chill coming through the holes in his shoes and the unending hunger gnawing in his belly, and he smelled the sour stink of four months of sweat on his body and in his clothes, and listened to the British counting in the last of the prisoners, and something inside snapped.
He no longer cared if he were shot or caught and hanged. It did not matter if he got away only to blunder into a British patrol. Fear of reprisals against the other prisoners was gone. He knew only a burning hatred for the British, and that he was going to make his try to escape from this purgatory, live or die, kill or be killed. If he survived, he would make them pay. If not, at least he would be free of the unbearable tortures.
The British gun crews started their nightly fires, yellow light flickering through the dirty windows to cast eerie shadows on the walls inside the barn. The regulars at the barn door completed the count of the prisoners and closed and barred the heavy double doors. Inside, men quietly pulled the spikes from the other windows and carefully opened them enough to let the night breeze stir the stale air. Caleb pushed all thoughts from his mind and tipped his head forward, eyes closed, trying to think of nothing. Four months had taught him this basic art of survival.
He felt a nudge against his foot and opened his eyes as he raised his head. In the shadowy twilight was the silhouette of two men standing at his feet. They dropped to their haunches and leaned close. One spoke quietly.
“You fixin’ to try an’ escape?”
The voice was high, the dialect soft, musical. It flashed in Caleb’s mind—Southern. Georgia militia.
“Who are you?”
“The name’s Sheffield, sir. I hail from Georgia, an’ I calculate you to be from somewhere up nawth, possibly Boston. An’ I asked a question. You fixin’ to try an’ escape?”
Caleb lowered his hands, irate, temper rising. “I’m fixin’ to go to sleep.”
“You thoug
ht of the misery an escape could bring on the rest of us?”
“I’ve thought of the misery no sleep can bring on us.”
“Sir, I’d appreciate it if you’d respond to my question.”
Caleb stood and the two men came to their feet facing him. All the pain and suffering, all the anguish and frustration came boiling up, and Caleb’s voice became brittle.
“I’ll tell you what I am not going to do. I am not going to sit here and die of starvation and dysentery and watch the British haul us away one and two at a time in that freight wagon and dump our bodies in a swamp. I’m not going to watch that captain strut and tell us he’ll beat us all half to death, or turn cannon on us, or hang us, and I’m not going to sit here in my own filth like a whipped animal.”
Caleb’s voice was rising, and shadowy figures were gathering around.
“Now I’ll tell you what I am going to do. I’m going to find a way to get out of here. I’m going to find the Americans, or the Polish, or the slaves, or anyone down here that’s willing to fight the British, and I’m going to join them.” He caught himself short, blood up, breathing heavy, and paused until he had control.
He continued in a quieter voice. “There are more than a thousand of us in the buildings on these grounds, and I doubt even the British would dare punish all of them, or even the ones in this building if I get out. The Americans have too many British prisoners of war who would suffer if that happened, and the British know it. I don’t want to bring trouble down on anyone, but if you take exception to what I’ve got in mind, then let’s get it out in the open and settle it right now.”
He flexed his hands and slipped his left foot slightly forward and outward.
There was a long, silent pause. No one moved or spoke, and then Caleb finished.
“One more thing. If the British single me out for punishment for what I just said, you’re the first man I’ll coming looking for as soon as I can walk. Do you understand?”
The only sound was the crackling of the picket fires outside the building as the two men turned and faded into the dim muddle of shapes behind them.
Caleb sat back down, hot, irresolute, frustrated, agitated by an overpowering compulsion to hurt the British and by the nagging dilemma that his escape might bring anguish on the heads of the other seventy-three men in the prison. He had known none of them until Admiral d’Estaing withdrew his ships and three thousand five hundred infantry, leaving Colonel Francis Marion and General Benjamin Lincoln and their troops at the mercy of the British, who shattered the American attack. Beaten soldiers scattered in every direction, Caleb among them. The British cornered him in a bog filled with palmetto trees and stagnant water, and forced him at bayonet point, first into a cowshed with twelve other captives, then on to Savannah with hundreds more.
Most of the others were from Georgia and spoke English, but with an accent and dialect and phrases and expressions that left him confused. Some were friendly, others quarrelsome, coarse, illiterate, ready to fight anyone for any reason, or no reason at all. Mixed among them were a few surviving Polish volunteers from the crack cavalry company led by Count Pulaski, who was killed leading his command into the Spring Hill fight in a failed attempt to support Colonel Francis Marion and General Benjamin Lincoln. The Polish were good soldiers, but most could speak no English. The few blacks among them stayed together, fearful of the whites, doing what they were told, speaking so rarely Caleb could not recall hearing any of them speak at all.
But regardless they were strangers, of mixed nationalities and colors and dialects and languages, they were part of the rag-tag collection of men who had come together from all over the world to defy a king and declare for liberty. What was his duty to such men?
For a long time Caleb sat with his knees drawn up, head bowed, slowly bringing his anger and thoughts under control. Would the British punish the others if he escaped? Would they dare? They knew the Americans were holding thousands of British soldiers and German Hessians as prisoners of war, and they knew that inevitably, atrocities by one side in such a war would become known to the other side, and reprisals would be taken. Slowly his mind settled. No, the strutting little peacock of a captain would not punish thousands for the escape of one.
Sitting among strangers with customs and dialects strange to everything he had known in Boston, in a dark horse barn that reeked with human and animal smells that sickened him, caught with the need to get out, and most of all, realizing that an attempt at getting out of the barn window and silencing a cannon crew in the dark without raising an alarm was close to suicide, he laid down on the cold dirt and curled up for warmth, to drift into troubled sleep.
In the chill of dawn he stood to have the rope tightened on his ankle, then marched shivering in step with the others the three hundred yards through grass dripping with cold morning dew to an open field. British regulars stood guard with fixed bayonets while others portioned out a greasy, lukewarm gruel of chicken skins and lentils, and a piece of hard black bread.
The prisoners remained standing to avoid sitting on the wet stubble in the field, and they ate slowly to stay out in the clean air as long as the British would let them. Back in the barn, Caleb sought his place and sat down, struggling to force a conclusion to his conflicted thoughts.
With the sun setting they were marched back to the field for their evening mess, then returned to the barn in the deep shadows of dusk. The British set their pickets by the door, two regulars went to their knees to work with the rope, and the sergeant stood ready with his list. Caleb listened to the call of the names of those ahead of him, still a man divided against himself, when the two regulars loosened the rope on his ankle, and the sergeant looked at him.
“Dunson.”
In that instant Caleb knew.
He glanced at the sergeant and walked through the door into the barn and did not stop. He pushed through to the corner of the barn and uncovered one of the two heavy horseshoes with the calked heel and toe for a draft horse, then strode to the window on the south wall. He pulled the spikes and opened the window four inches, peering out into the deep twilight. Both men on the cannon crew were kneeling, setting kindling for their nightly fire. Their muskets were leaning against the wheel of the cannon.
He swung the window wide and soundlessly lowered himself on the outside. The instant his feet touched the dirt he sprinted at the two regulars, the heavy horseshoe clutched in his right hand. At five yards the red-coated soldiers turned their faces his direction and started to rise, reaching for their muskets. One had his weapon in hand when Caleb plowed into them head-on, and they went down in a tangle. Caleb came to his feet first, and swung the horseshoe at the head of the nearest man as the soldier lunged upward groping for his lost musket. Caleb felt the solid hit and the man crumpled while the other picket leaped to the wagon wheel, grabbed his musket, and was earring back the big hammer when Caleb swung the horseshoe again. The man jerked his hand from the half-drawn hammer to ward off Caleb’s blow, and the hammer dropped just far enough to knock the frizzen open and strike a spark into the exposed powder pan. The heavy musket blasted orange flame five feet into the darkness, and the ball whistled harmlessly straight up into the heavens.
Too late too late too late. It flashed in Caleb’s mind as he swung the horseshoe again and it struck the man above his ear and he dropped in his tracks. For an instant Caleb stood stock-still, listening, and then a cannon crew was at the corner of the building, wheeling a cannon around, bringing it to bear on him from less than thirty yards away. He threw down the horseshoe and pivoted to the cannon at his left side and seized one of the trails with all his strength to try to turn it and it was moving too slow and then he was aware of another body hurtling through the darkness and he grabbed for the musket at his feet to use the bayonet when the man hit the barrel of the cannon and he heard the strained words, “Get the trails.”
Again he seized the trail as the dark shape before him threw his shoulder against the barrel, and the big gun swung
around.
“Stop! Shoot!”
Caleb jerked the smoking linstock from its mount on the cannon frame and slammed it down on the touchhole one half-second before the British crew at the corner touched their linstock to the powder. Caleb and the man in front of him threw themselves to the ground, arms thrown over their heads just as the big gun bucked and roared, echoing through the grounds and the woods beyond. The muzzle blast lighted up the estate for five hundred yards as twenty-four pounds of grapeshot ripped whistling through the night. Most of the load struck the British crew and their cannon, to knock the gunners rolling and shattering the right wheel of the cannon carriage. The muzzle dropped to the right as the gun blasted its load, tearing a fifteen-foot-long trench in the ground.
Instantly Caleb and the shadowy figure before him were on their feet, ears ringing, and Caleb heard the shouted command, “The woods! Follow me!”
Without a question he sprinted after the dark shape, away from the smoking cannon, running south with all his strength. They passed the two buildings that stood between them and the tree line with the gun crews shouting at them to stop. With his feet churning, Caleb waited for grapeshot to rip into him or a musketball to hit between his shoulder blades.
As in a dream they broke into the open beyond the buildings, and the tree line was only thirty yards away and then twenty yards and ten and two musketballs whistled high and two more came singing past their heads and then they were in the woods and they threw themselves down as two cannon blasted from behind and whistling grapeshot shredded the undergrowth and trees above them. Then they were back on their feet, plowing blindly through the dark foliage and dodging between the pines and oak trees.
Thirty seconds later the man ahead of him veered right, west, and one minute later turned again to the right, north, headed for the Savannah River, three-quarters of a mile distant. Branches and vines caught and tore at them as they ran, and they pushed them aside without thought of the pain. They smelled the swamps and bogs before they came to the river and they slowed, fighting for wind, waiting until they could control their breathing to listen.