Proceed, Sergeant Lamb

by Robert Graves

  The only commerce of which this remote country was capable was in horses. They multiplied very fast in the swamps and were sold in the Spring to drovers from Pennsylvania who grazed them upon the road on their return. Agriculture here was patriarchal, that is to say, only enough crops were raised for the consumption of the growers. Each plantation raised and dressed its own wool and leather, and the chief lack appeared to be nails and salt. Yet so skilful were the settlers with axe and hatchet that at a pinch they could construct and roof huts without a single nail—a most tedious business.

  The day before we reached Cross Creek an incident occurred which went far to prove that the Quaker of New Garden had been telling the truth. An extraordinary-looking person came to join our Colours, who looked (so someone truly remarked) as if he had escaped from the collection of natural monstrosities exhibited at Surgeons’ Hall in London. He was bent with rheumatic pains, and shaken with ague; his hair was white as snow, his body utterly emaciated. He was but thirty-eight years old, he said, but for three years had lived the life of a beast in the swamps, having scooped a den for himself in the bank of a river and provided it with a concealed entrance. Nobody of his kin or acquaintance remained to supply him with necessaries, except some cousins who lived at a great distance and once or twice in a year ventured to visit him. He had often been pursued and shot at by his rancorous enemies, but always escaped. His meat was terrapin, fish and small animals, generally eaten raw; and his bread was acorns, which from long use had become quite agreeable to him. His clothing was composed entirely of skins, jobbed together with sinews. On his head was a racoon-skin cap. But for having no umbrella, no musket and no Man Friday, he would have well served for a cut in illustration of Mr. De Foe’s Robinson Crusoe. He was now enlisted in the Provincial Forces. By living so much alone, this poor fellow had contracted the habit of talking to himself in a debate of two voices, and his wits were almost turned; but he proved a valuable scout and had not lost his skill with a rifle. When Mr. Brice, who distributed the rations of the Provincial Forces, gave him his share, the new recruit let great tears fall into the pannikin of flour and exclaimed: ‘At last, Sir, I know myself for a human being again, by the token of beef and flour.’

  Of this very disagreeable march, there are two more incidents worthy of the reader’s attention. The first happened at Ramsay’s Crossing, about March 22nd. That evening I was called upon to mount guard upon the American officer-prisoners, which was a duty given to regular sergeants, though the guards themselves were American militia. The Provost-Marshal of the Army, instructing me in my duties, warned me that a certain cavalry officer was a very dangerous person and would do all in his power to escape: since conscious that he had not only violated his oath of allegiance but acted with great cruelty against the inhabitants of the Carolinas. He feared the gibbet were he sent to trial at Charleston, of which he was a native. I desired to have the officer pointed out to me, and the Provost-Marshal did so. ‘I know the gentleman,’ said I, ‘I have even eaten and drunk at his expense. He is Captain Gale, is he not, of Wappo Creek? He was a Furious Tory when I last heard him declaim. Well, your Honour, I shall take all precautions to keep him with us.’

  ‘Do so, Sergeant,’ said the Provost-Marshal, ‘for if he escapes, I fear he will prove unlucky to the river-people who have assisted us in our march.’

  He went off, and not being able to lock the prisoners into any hut, none being available for that purpose, I bound Captain Gale’s wrists and ankles with a cord, one end of which I fastened to my own wrist as I slept. Towards morning I awoke, at some slight noise, but jerking the cord found it still attached, as I thought, to the captive, and resumed my sleep. To my astonishment and alarm, when dawn came, I discovered that the Captain was gone, and the other end of the cord was tied to a little bush. I questioned the sentinel who had been on guard, but he professed to know nothing. I instantly confined him, raised the alarm and reported my loss to the Provost-Marshal, who sent out cavalry in pursuit; but to no purpose. We never caught Captain Gale.

  Lord Cornwallis was highly displeased when the circumstance was made known to him, and commanded the Sergeant of the Guard to be brought before him; threatening to ‘break him for so gross a dereliction of duty’. I was thereupon summoned to Headquarters and felt very bad as I approached his Lordship’s presence; but to my great relief his stern frown changed into a smile when he recognized me. He said to his aide-de-camp: ‘Why ’tis the sergeant of whom I told you—he who proved a good fairy to me in the wood during the battle. This case is over before it has begun. The sentinel was bribed, that’s clear. Put him on trial for his life: the Sergeant may return to his regiment and will act as witness.’

  I may add that Lord Cornwallis frequently addressed a ‘good morning’ or a few kind words to me afterwards when we met; and I was often employed by him to copy out the duplicates of his despatches. The latter circumstance accounts for the knowledge that I acquired, from casual talk and the confidence of his military family, of the direction of the war by Lord George Germaine and Sir Henry Clinton.

  The second interesting circumstance of the march happened when we were at Grange’s plantation, but two days’ march from Wilmington, on April 5th. It was then that I first witnessed at close range one of the great wonders of nature for which the American Continent is famous. It was an unusually sultry day, provocative of petulant tempers, and bred no less than three duels (one fatal) among the Hessian officers of Bose’s Regiment. Hot streams of air now were felt and sudden gusts from different points of the compass. One gust twitched off my cap and wig as I was passing across the yard of the plantation where we were about to be quartered. They were cleverly caught before they fell by two little negro boys, who laughed merrily at me as I restored the honours of my head. All at once a great cloud of darkness rose in the north, and from the distance I heard a great roaring, grinding noise gradually approaching, like the noise of crunched sugar prodigiously magnified. I knew it at once for a tornado. I was for taking shelter in the great red barn opposite; but thought better of it and remained where I was in the open yard.

  Now with a resounding clap the tornado struck. It carried with it a great cloud of green leaves, torn branches, dust, hay and rotten wood, and cut a twisted path a hundred yards across in which barns, trees, houses were alike levelled with the ground. I turned, clutching at my cap with both hands and was thrown flat on my face as the whirlwind passed over me. All the breath was sucked out of my lungs and I nearly choked. Down went the great barn, collapsing inwards by some atmospheric trick, and the ‘meat-houses’, or negro cabins, beyond, were blown clean away. As I raised myself on my elbows, and looked up, I saw a most remarkable sight: a great empty butt (of the sort in which the stinking mash is kept when they make their peach-brandy) sailing through the air as if it had been fired from a mortar. It crashed squelch against a stable wall, which went down like a house of balanced playing-cards. Stones, planks and bricks were now flying about me, as hot as under a cannonade, and this continued for three minutes during the whole of which I found it very difficult to breathe.

  A slight lull followed and then came a storm of thunder and lightning and drenching cold rain which lasted for another hour. A tall tulip-tree that had escaped the whirlwind, from standing a little outside its track, was struck before my eyes and scathed the whole length of its smooth grey trunk. Two of the wounded and a number of negroes were killed. That storm proved very annoying to me, for it carried away, with my other poor baggage, the journal that I had kept posted every day throughout the campaign; my memory, being none of the best, has played many tricks with me in attempting, so many years since, to reconstruct the sequence of my adventures.

  CHAPTER XIII

  We were fast approaching the end of the War, which had now been six years in progress, and Guildford Court House proved the last pitched battle in which I took part. I had fought in six. Yet I was by no means yet at the end of my fighting, still less of my wide wanderings, and I may affirm wi
thout boasting or fear of contradiction that, before I had done, the track of my feet upon the American Continent marked a longer and more distant route than that of any other soldier in the Royal armies.

  Wilmington was a poor place and though we found stores awaiting us there which were very grateful, especially rum and a few hundred pairs of shoes, our necessities could not yet be wholly supplied. We had eighteen days’ rest, which together with sea-baths restored most of the convalescents to duty.

  It was here that Captain Champagné, who was an assiduous fox-hunter, called for volunteers among us to learn the equestrian art; for he said that this was cavalry country and horses’ legs could save our own on innumerable occasions, especially in scouting and foraging. About half the regiment came forward, Smutchy Steel and myself among them, and Colonel Tarleton, who was an old friend of the Captain’s, obliged him with a number of horses. So I became a recruit again, in a manner of speaking, though with this advantage over most of the other rank and file that as a boy in Ireland I had learned the rudiments of horsemanship from my patron, young Mr. Howard. The other marching regiments flocked as spectators to our riding-school, in order to laugh at our ungainly seats and awkward tumbles. But we knew that they secretly envied us, and we persevered. A sergeant of the Seventeenth Dragoons acted as our instructor, and taught us the proper care of our horses, besides. He said to me one day in a condescending manner: ‘Upon my word, Sergeant Lamb, I don’t wonder that as men of honour you are bent on learning our profession. For my part, I cannot comprehend how any man can enlist, without mortification, in any other arm of the service but the cavalry! I believe I would as lief be a churchwarden as a sergeant in the Line.’

  ‘Why,’ said I, disguising my resentment with a smile, ‘it is not all psalms and long faces in our poor foot-swinging congregation. I assure you that we have very lively meetings in the vestry on occasion.’

  ‘Ay, no doubt,’ he said magnificently. ‘But the cavalry rules the battle.’

  ‘At least it did not rule at Minden,’ said I, growing more nettled, ‘when six British regiments, mine among them, tumbled the whole French cavalry to ruin; and when the British cavalry never entered the action at all. And what is more, when shells and grape-shot are flying, I am thankful that I chose the Line. For I can answer for my own legs that they will not play the coward or prove unmanageable: as the boldest cavalryman cannot answer for the legs of his mount. You forget, Sergeant Haws, that an infantryman has his own proper pride.’

  He was a stupid man, but presently concluded that he had come near to a positive insult; and soon he begged my pardon, which I was glad to give, and we had a long drink together. Yet we never became close friends. The cavalryman in general regards the infantryman no more than a Jew does a pig; being raised three feet above him, he absurdly seeks to translate this superiority of altitude into a moral superiority. But it is generally accepted that, as a rule, mounted infantry fall less short of their duty in action than do dismounted cavalry.

  Sergeant Haws had a continuous complaint against the horses of Virginia, which he owned were fine animals, that they were marred for riding by the false gaits taught them by their lazy masters. For to a Southern planter a trot was odious, as unsettling to his liver; and a fair gallop he found most fatiguing. The horse was therefore taught those unnatural modes of progression, the pace and the wrack. In the first the animal moves his two legs on one side together alternatively with the other two, and, being therefore unable to spring from the ground as in a trot, proceeds with a sort of shuffling motion. The Virginian planter habitually sat with his toes just beneath his horse’s nose, the stirrups being extremely long and the saddle put about three or four inches forward on the mane. English ladies, monks, priests and lawyers once favoured the pace, under the name of the amble, but it disappeared from the manège about the time of the first George. A passage in Chambers’ Cyclopedia, I find, contradicts Sergeant Haws as to the unnaturalness of this gait, declaring that the pace or amble is usually the first natural step of young colts. In the wrack the horse gallops with his fore-feet and trots with those behind. This is a gait that looks very odd to the European, and greatly fatigues the horse; but the gentlemen of Virginia found it conducive to their ease, which was all that they considered. It was also judged to be a safer motion for a sleepy man, or a man far gone in liquor, than a trot or a gallop. The pace and the wrack were taught to the horses, when foals, by hoppling them—in the first case with two bands, one linking the two off legs, the other the near legs; in the second case with a single band for the hind legs.

  General Greene’s defeat had gained him as much as a victory. Our lack of stores and our great train of sick and wounded, had forced us to come so far away from our base in South Carolina, that he was now at liberty to enter that province himself with what remained of his army. I may note here that General Greene never won a battle in his whole career, yet always managed, as in this case, to obtain the fruits of victory. He wrote very frankly about himself that few generals had run faster and more lustily than he; but that he had taken care not to run too far and had commonly run as fast forward as backward. ‘Our army,’ he said, ‘has frequently been beaten but, like the stockfish, grows the better for it.’ Lord Cornwallis was indeed in a quandary when he had a clear and positive report that General Greene was pressing hard against Camden, where Lord Rawdon’s garrison was pitifully small. We did not have sufficient stores for marching back across the five hundred miles of barren country which intervened, and several broad rivers must be crossed, from which the enemy would no doubt remove all boats as we approached. To return by sea to Charleston, his Lordship thought disgraceful. Besides, sea-voyages usually proved ruinous to cavalry horses; and some weeks would be wasted in waiting for transports, during which time our army, already reduced to a mere fourteen hundred men, would suffer severely from sickness in the heats of this unhealthy station. A third and bolder course, however, remained, which was to go forward into the rich province of Virginia. There we could join forces with General Phillips’ army and perhaps do such widespread damage as to draw General Greene hurriedly away from South Carolina.

  In the event, the courage and determination of Lord Rawdon checked General Greene for a time; yet South Carolina was lost, except only Charleston. Even this would have gone, and none of our frontier garrisons have been brought away safe but for an accident—the arrival of three British regiments from Ireland. These had been intended by Lord George Germaine to reinforce Lord Cornwallis in South Carolina for his campaign against General Gates; but when the news of our victory at Camden arrived, Lord George had assumed that the province was finally reduced and sent a packet in pursuit of the transports with orders for them to sail to New York instead. An American privateer fortunately intercepted this despatch, and the troops continued to Charleston, where they arrived in the nick of time. General Greene remained encamped on the Neck near the city. Do what he might, he could not prevent the Whigs of South Carolina from attempting to extirpate the Tories, nor the Tories from retaliating in kind upon the Whigs. Thousands of men were hanged by grapevines from trees, or by cords from the poles of fodder stacks, in the very sight of their children and women-folk. A civil war is always more cruel and vengeful than a foreign war; but here the angry climate was chiefly to blame.

  Sir Henry Clinton was grieved when he heard that Lord Cornwallis had abandoned the Carolinas to their fate. He also trembled for his own safety at New York, were he the object of a combined attack of French and Americans. It lies outside the scope of this work to attempt to disentangle the web of cross-purposes that was then woven between Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis. Each had his own different plan of campaign and carried it out as best he could according to the limited knowledge that he had of the other’s situation and his own; both were equally hampered by orders and counter-orders from Lord George Germaine (whose plan of campaign differed from that of either) and by their ignorance of what help they could count upon from Lord George in Downin
g Street, and from the Earl of Sandwich at Admiralty House. None of the despatches that each wrote the other cleared up the mist of misunderstanding but only increased it. The Earl of Cornwallis was in the worse case, as being expected to serve two masters, Sir Henry and Lord George, who contradicted each other and each continually countermanded his own successive plans as he became aware of altered circumstances; moreover, most of these despatches reached their destination either too late or not at all. Lord Cornwallis must therefore incur no blame for acting upon his own judgment, even if that proved at fault. He confessed himself greatly disappointed with the Loyalists of the Carolinas; the hope of their rising in large numbers, as expressed by Lord George Germaine, being totally disappointed. Many hundreds of them at different times had ridden into camp to shake hands with him and congratulate him upon his victory; but not two companies could be persuaded to remain with our Standard. His Lordship told an officer too, in my hearing, that he was quite tired of marching about the great American Continent as it were in search of adventures.

  There were no memorable occurrences in our forward march from Wilmington on April 25th, 1781. Since many rivers and creeks intervened between the Cape Fear River and the James River in Virginia, including the considerable floods of Nuse, Tar and Roanoke, two boats mounted on wagons were drawn along with the army. We had sufficient rum, salt and flour for a three-weeks’ journey, and set off in good heart. The country was as barren as it had been described to us, but we were not molested in our march. Colonel Tarleton went ahead with his Greens and sixty mounted Royal Welch Fusiliers. Whenever he reached a settlement he was at pains greatly to magnify the size and power of our forces. I remained behind with the rest of the regiment, but was mounted and did some scouting and foraging.