From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  GENERAL MUHLENBERG SALUTED GENERAL GREENE AND then spurred his horse down to a knot of officers near the flag of the 8th Virginia. He talked rapidly to them while pointing toward the roar of the invisible battle. Soon Jonathan came trotting along from company to company, stopping at each one and talking fast.

  “Hey, old Johnny,” he cried, running up and grabbing him by the bicep, grinning through the dust that was caked on his sweaty face. “Here’s what. Sullivan’s troops likely will fall back right through here. We open and let ’em through. Then when the lobsterbacks come up the hill, we meet ’em with massed volleys and bayonets. Got that, brother mine?”

  “Plain as day.”

  “It’ll be a tangle,” Jonathan said in a tight voice with a hard squeeze on Johnny’s arm. “Don’t forget to pray for me, and I’ll do likewise for you.”

  And then he was gone.

  AND NOW SULLIVAN’S RETREATING TROOPS WERE APPEARING on the meadows below in a commotion of shouting and shooting and disorderly running. Officers were riding back and forth in haste and confusion, waving their swords and shouting unintelligible commands, which sounded more like pleas. Some of the retreating men were running pell-mell across the meadows, not even looking back; some were hesitating and looking for their leaders; some were stopping to kneel and fire their guns back toward the woods before they came on. Some limped along, some were carrying wounded.

  Johnny dressed his ranks and had his men look to their flintlocks. Many swigged from their canteens as they waited. “All right, then, all right!” Johnny shouted, too nervous to be still, “When those Redcoats get here, they’ll think they’ve stepped into hell by mistake, hey? Stand your ground!”

  Now the retreating troops, straining for breath, came straggling into view over the brow of the hill, heads wobbling, and strange, poignant looks of surprise came onto the faces of some of them when they saw the long ranks of Virginians standing there waiting. They passed among the Virginians and went into the woods behind them. Down on the meadow now, tight, precise, rectangular companies of British infantry were coming, bayonets leveled, each company followed by its drummer; white leggings rose and fell in unison as they came over the bright grass, stepping over bodies, flowing around shattered gun wheels and dead horses, coming on inexorably.

  Now a bugle sounded, and General Muhlenberg rode downward with his sword pointing toward the enemy. And the Virginians, still not recovered from their long run, moved forward in neat ranks over the brow of the hill and started down the slope. The first ranks of Redcoats now were a hundred yards downslope, climbing steadily.

  The command came down the line to halt and deliver fire. “First rank,” Johnny shouted, “kneel and aim.” They knelt. “Fire!” Their muskets sputtered and crashed, and he saw several Redcoats stagger and fall. “Reload! Second rank, stand and fire!” Another crackling volley, and more Englishmen sagged and fell, and their comrades closed ranks around them and kept coming on. “Second rank, kneel and load, third rank stand and aim! Fire!” More Redcoats tumbled. But the companies came on, and the distance was closing, and there were too many of them to kill with volleys of bullets. Now a bugle played the charge, and Johnny bellowed, as if these would be his last words, his voice breaking: “Let’s go!” and led them at a run down the slope toward the advancing scarlet line. They ran with that untidy variety of noises running infantry make: bullet bags jouncing and rattling, breath wheezing, cloth swishing, muskets rattling, canteens clunking, shoes thumping, men grunting and farting. The air was hazy with powder smoke. Other companies were running ahead, to the right, the white Xs across their backs bobbing as they jogged downhill in the eye-blurring smoke. Men were straggling and stumbling, the lines in poor array; it was a sloppy charge. And now there was nothing between Johnny’s company and the enemy; it was as if an icy hand had gripped his hot, pounding heart when he really began to see them, see their faces forty feet away. It was a veritable wall of grim-faced human beings, their glinting bayonets leveled at waist height, dense as fence pickets, their odd, erect black hats making them look tall as giants—but their faces were the faces of people: pugnacious, grim, half-scared, perhaps, but determined and angry.

  Somehow it was not just a dreadful phalanx of marching mechanisms now, nor was it a league of granite Romans, but mortal people; and the Virginians, seeing vulnerable faces, began howling like wolves and Indians and hurled themselves the last few feet onto the enemy line.

  The two fronts crashed together in a din of brutal noises: grunts, howls, and screams, steel clashing on steel, cloth ripping, metal crunching on bone and cartilage, metal whacking on wood. The Virginians were past the control of commands now; and that deep part of them that had always been Indian fighter, hunter, barnyard brawler and shivaree roughneck, took over their desperate souls. They bared their teeth, used their guns like spears and clubs and quarterstaffs, crouched and pounced, choked, gouged, and bit their way past the bayonets and into the red ranks. With a hum of tension in his throat, Johnny waded in, slashing and hacking with his saber at flesh, brass, wood, and steel. A bayonet punched through his clothes and scraped past his ribs; with his lower lip bitten between his teeth he hacked at the Englishman holding it until, bathing his hands and face in hot blood, the Englishman yielded and sank down and the bayonet fell out of Johnny’s clothes. Then came another bayonet, jabbing toward his eyes; he caught the steel in his left hand, twisting it aside and down with all his might. This Englishman was strong, with a ruddy, heavy-jowled workingman’s face and light blue, wide-open eyes, and he nearly lifted Johnny off the ground as he strained with both arms on the musket. Johnny stared into the light blue eyes, cocked his sword arm, and thrust the blade in under the Englishman’s ribs.

  Now it was a deadly Donnybrook Fair here in this corner of the battlefield. The sweeping designs of generals were forgotten; each man was simply striving at each moment to murder another man before that man could murder him. A Virginian lay on the bloody grass with a bayonet through his groin, trying to throttle the Redcoat who leaned over him. Another Virginian, eyes nearly popping out of his head, stood wrestling with a British lieutenant, twisting his sword away with one hand while thumbgouging his eye out with the other. Another Virginian had produced a non-regulation tomahawk from an underarm sheath, and was splitting British skulls with sickening wet whacks.

  Johnny was too busy fighting to give any orders, and there were no orders anyway that would have had any effect, unless he had screamed, Kill! And that order would have been unnecessary.

  THERE WERE SEVERAL SUCH BRAWLS BEING FOUGHT ALONG this sector now. Not all the American companies were fighting so fiercely. Some had been scattered and put to flight by the British charge; others had been simply overrun by it, stabbed and trampled to the last man.

  One melee was going on under the flag of the 8th Virginia. Jonathan Clark chopped off the left hand of a British grenadier with a mighty swishing saber stroke, and the same stroke laid open the thigh of one of his own sergeants, who was fighting alongside him. The fighting quarters were too close. The ranks were coagulating into mobs: dense masses of contorted faces, straining limbs, jabbing steel, point-blank pistol shots, knife fights and fist fights. A six-foot British soldier jerked his bayonet out of the ribs of a Virginian, stepped over the body, and ran with his bloody spike aimed at the youth who carried the regimental banner. The boy saw him coming, lowered the pole, and impaled the Redcoat with the brass spear on its end. Blood spurted onto the pink silk as the Englishman fell, his weight snapping the slender pole. But while the young flag-bearer was trying to extricate the banner staff from the Englishman’s writhing body, he was clubbed to death by another Redcoat.

  YARD BY YARD NOW, THE AMERICANS WERE BEING FORCED back up the hill by wave upon wave of English companies. Some of the enemy ranks now trotting forward out of the woods wore blue coats, red breeches, and red, high-pointed hats. It was a moment before Jonathan realized that he was seeing Hessians. Cornwallis had German mercenaries, and these were com
ing now, it seemed, by the thousands, from some inexhaustible Germanic reserve in the depth of the woods. Some of the Germans in the 8th Virginia now were hearing the German commands coming from the enemy’s side; their faces went strange, but they kept fighting as they had been. And the enemy kept materializing in the shadows of the trees, then emerging into the smoky, bright sunglow of the meadow battlefield, their drummers rattling away incessantly.

  The Virginians, borne back and back, their clothes tattered, hands bloodied, were beginning to glance around in desperation for their officers now. Their murderous passions were growing exhausted, and they needed guidance now, some order that would recombine their individual desperations into a common will. Each had been alone in hell fighting those countless red demons for as long as he could stand it. Now they needed their comrades; they needed to feel their fellows shoulder to shoulder with them again, because there were too many red demons, too many bayonets poking at them like pitchforks.

  Jonathan was shouting, trying to rally his companies. But always, just down the slope, was that oncoming wall of stolid, clean-shaven, well-fed British faces, that picket fence of bayonets, the massed crimson of uniforms.

  B’God but they’re brave, he thought, and with a rush of admiration he thought, even in this desperate and murderous moment, he thought how fine a thing it was to have been born an Englishman.

  THE VIRGINIANS THUS FOUGHT AND FELL BACK, FOUGHT and fell back, delaying the British, allowing Sullivan’s wounded and shattered force to retreat. Cornwallis’s infantry kept coming, British and Hessians. The retreat was in the direction of the hamlet of Dilworth. Late in the afternoon the Virginians crossed through a draw near that village, regrouped still again, turned and set up another defensive line. Cannon came rolling up soon, pulled by lathered, wild-eyed horses nearly dead of overwork; the cannon were set up covering the defilade. Here, spewing grapeshot, they stalled the oncoming Redcoats for a bit, while General Greene conferred quickly with field officers in a farmhouse beside the Dilworth Road. Jonathan watched Greene limp to and fro on his bad knee. Greene was as good a Yankee as Jonathan had ever seen, a Rhode Island blacksmith’s son, a private risen to general on his merits.

  “My gentlemen,” he began, “due to a great cleverness today on the part of General Howe, we’re in an unfortunate situation. Cornwallis made a feint this morning that caused us to divide our forces in the face of a superior force. Due to that, our army is now in a general retreat, in the direction of Chester Town. We have the honor, sirs, of guarding the rear.” He paused a moment and looked at their faces. “This is an honor fraught with hazard, certainly. But it’s our opportunity to prevent defeat from becoming disaster. A very great honor, it is.

  “Your boys have had quite a day already, I know well. But if they keep Cornwallis delayed here for a while longer, they’ll have allowed the army to withdraw in an orderly way, not in a rout, and will have done perhaps the best service of the day. Here, sirs, are the specifics, and here’s what we’ll be required to do.”

  DELAY A WHILE LONGER, JONATHAN THOUGHT AS HE RETURNED to the 8th Virginia. Retreat. Philadelphia’s lost after today. He felt exhausted, heavy-hearted.

  Cannonades were still crashing along this front, and miles to the southwest, where this hellish day had begun, an eternity ago, it seemed, artillery still rumbled like a thunderstorm.

  He found Brother Johnny still alive, though limping and ragged. Johnny had no visible wound, but somehow had strained his thigh during the hand-to-hand fighting; he could not really remember where or how. Jonathan told Johnny what had come of the council in the farmhouse, and they parted once again. English cannonballs were whickering through the trees now, bringing down showers of splinters and bark, and the drums of the British brigades were coming closer and closer. The Virginians braced themselves to try once again to slow down Cornwall’s inexorable advance.

  AND THUS THE SUN WENT DOWN OVER THE BEAUTIFUL Brandywine Valley, a sun dimmed to brick-red by the haze of powdersmoke and dust. At dark the shooting ceased, and General Greene at last led his rear guard down the road toward Chester Town, their ears ringing in the silence.

  THE ROAD OF RETREAT WAS CLOGGED WITH EXHAUSTED INFANTRYMEN, with cannon, with pack horses, with wagons and litters carrying wounded men. The troops slogged and limped along the Chester Road, dark shapes on the starlit roadway. Their bandages, the belted Xs across their backs, were ghostly pale in the dark. Shouts for a clear road would come from behind; soldiers would curse and groan and edge into the roadside weeds. Troops of cavalry or dragoons would trot past, leather creaking, spurs and weapons clinking and rattling, horses blowing, leaving the smell of horse sweat in the air and dung on the road. More shouts, more hoofbeats, and the jingle of harness and rumble of wooden carriages and iron-rimmed wheels, and artillery caissons would rumble by up the road, their drivers calling ahead for clear highway. And after all this had passed, the Virginians came along. Behind them the road was empty.

  The refugee army crossed Chester Bridge long after nightfall in the flickering light of torches. The young Marquis de Lafayette was in command of the contingent guarding the bridge. His face was specter-pale in the torchlight as he sat on his warhorse and looked down at the passing troops. Johnny’s gaze slid down from the aristocratic face and saw linen bandages from Lafayette’s hip to calf, sopping crimson from a wound. It was no wonder he was pale. Johnny tipped his hat as he limped by, and the Marquis, his big feminine-looking eyes glinting, returned the gesture. It had been his first battle, too.

  Beyond the Chester Bridge the defeated army halted to make a tentless camp under the stars, and Johnny sat with a group of officers by a small fire on a meadow slope. Bill Croghan had lain back on the ground with a coat over him and fallen into a profound sleep. One of the officers was a New Jersey man, a major who had fought at White Plains in the disastrous autumn of ’76, and he was complaining about the commander-in-chief.

  “A farmer, that’s all he is. A damned Virginia farmer who thinks as slow as the seasons turn!”

  “We’re farmers, too,” Jonathan said softly. “Virginia farmers, like him.”

  The major was quiet for a while, appraising Jonathan’s tone. Then he resumed. “His Excellency has fine days now and then. Like at Trenton and the like. But then he makes blunders. Like today.”

  “Anyone makes blunders,” Jonathan said.

  “Perhaps so. But today our farmer-in-chief was monumentally stupid. He divides us, caught by a trick, so Cornwallis comes around on our rear with his six thousand or so. That’s what undone us today. You saw it.”

  It seemed that what the major was saying was true. Johnny could remember seeing the cavalry and infantry going up the river that morning.

  “And so, what’s he cost us, our brilliant farmer-in-chief?” the major went on in his rankling tone. “We seem to muster up this evening about a thousand short, I hear, and it looks like to me that half the rest of us are leakin’ blood. And Philadelphia’s lost for certain, I’d say. Well, sirs, it’s my feeling, the way to lose a war is, put a Virginia farmer in charge.”

  “Aye, well.” Jonathan tapped out his pipe on his bootheel, and seemed to enlarge in the dim fireglow. “You’re quite entitled to squawk about Virginia farmers, sir. But in Virginia we farmers have a sport with squawkers. First, we hang them up by their heels. Then we grease them up and yank their heads off.”

  The major from New Jersey, after a moment of silence, rose, excused himself, and went away muttering, and several officers of the 8th Virginia laughed him away.

  “It’s some’at true, though, isn’t it?” Johnny asked confidentially when he was at last alone with Jonathan, “that there do be brighter generals?”

  Jonathan’s strong arm snaked across and settled on his shoulders. “I’ll ask’ee to recollect somethin’ Ma always would say. Remember,” he went on in that deep, calming voice of his, “how she’d say, ‘I’ll vow I’ve never had a day I didn’t make at least one mistake in bringin’ you all up—but
ye haven’t thrown me out yet, so I must be doing fair in general.’ Remember her saying that?”

  Johnny grinned. He could remember how she’d sound when she said it: with a little upturned snap of pride at the end.

  “Anyway,” Jonathan said, “General Washington’s made some mistakes. But I doubt there’s another soul on this continent could keep this army together.”

  “No, I guess not,” Johnny said after a while. “Less they’d make Ma commander-in-chief.”

  And they pounded each other on the back, these Clark boys, raising a sound that was most rare in the beaten American army that night:

  Laughter.

  “HOLY GODLY, WHAT FUN THAT SPYIN’ BE!” BENJAMIN LINN slapped his thigh and set down the rum cup, nodding to it for a refill, and George poured, with a grin.

  “Didn’t I say it would be?”

  “Aye, Mister Clark, ye did, and right y’were as usual. Heh!”

  “That Sewer de Roachblob,” brayed Sam Moore. That had become their contemptuous pronunciation of the name of Sieur de Rocheblave, commandant at Kaskaskia. “What a gull he was! He just swallered whole that bag o’ malarkey we give ’im. He’s not a half as shrewd as he says he is.” Moore sipped from his cup and brushed some burrs from his leggings, then looked grinning up at George, who had opened a pocket-sized notebook on the table to a blank page and now was trimming a fresh nib on the quill he had taken from his old hat. Outside the open door, the curious of Harrod’s Town were loitering, excited about the mysterious return of the long-gone pair. It was rare for people to be gone from Harrod’s Town that long and come back alive.

  “Just start from the beginning,” George said, “and talk, and then I’ll throw ye questions I’ve got. Ben?”