Let the Hessians sing, Nat Holmes thought, manning the steering sweep. They would be on the Pennsylvania side soon enough. Then, fresh troops would guard the Hessians and take them to wherever. He did not care. He was exhausted. The Mariners had been on the move continuously for more than thirty-six hours, starting from their camp at four in the morning the previous day. They had covered eight miles to McConkey’s Ferry, poled the Army across the Delaware, marched another eight miles to Trenton, fought and won the battle and marched back to the landing site with their prisoners. All he wanted was warm quarters, a hot meal and dry clothes. After that, he would not mind if he had to walk to Salem, to Anna and their baby yet unborn, even if it stormed the entire time. He was ready to go home.
Chapter 2 - Keeping the Enemy at Bay
The early morning fog had lifted. They were on the Princeton Road, Bant estimated maybe seven miles north of Trenton. He avoided the deep mud brought on by yesterday’s thaw and trotted quickly on the grass beside the muck to keep up with the advance patrol of long legged riflemen of Colonel Hand’s Regiment. He held his five and one half foot long rifle in his right hand, his palm warm on the smooth wood, his fingers tight around the cold metal of the barrel pointing in front of him. The rifle’s eight pounds were no more a burden to him than his own arm and he took comfort from its familiar feel.
The other men were mostly from Maryland and Pennsylvania, backwoodsmen armed with their long rifles, hatchets, tomahawks and knives, clad in deerskin hunting shirts, leggings and moccasins, with all sorts of headgear made from animal heads, tails and skins. Bant fit right in with his hunting frock but was one of the few wearing a tri-corn. He and a dozen others from New Jersey militias had been accepted by Colonel Hand, desperate to refill his Regiment’s ranks, seriously reduced by battle and disease. After the victory at Trenton, hundreds of new recruits had eagerly joined local militias, enticed by the broadsheets trumpeting the great battle- one thousand Hessians killed and another thousand captured, hogsheads of rum for the taking and a share of the captured plunder, rumored to be dozens of cannons, kegs of powder and the entire payroll chest for three Hessian Regiments.
Bant had joined Hand’s Regiment for the opportunity to kill more British. Even the ten dollar bonus for re-enlisting, payable immediately upon signing up, and in sterling or Spanish hard dollars, was meaningless to him, as was the half of a gill of rum. 1 If the army was now going to carry the fight to the enemy, he was willing to leave the local militia and ambushing small patrols and pickets. Here was a chance to pick off cavalry and field officers. To take revenge for what he had seen and still saw in his nightmares. To assuage the guilt that was always with him.
“You move well for a little man,” the rifleman to his right said, coming closer to Bant to skirt a long muddy stretch of the road. He was taller than Bant, a few inches under six feet, all sinew, tendon and muscle, with leathery brown skin, large knuckled hands and dark, sunken eyes, hidden under a protruding bony forehead, like two lumps of coal sitting under a bat cave’s overhang. His chin curved outward in an aggressive J, that gave his entire visage a determined, pronounced forward thrust. Bant grunted, acknowledging the compliment without inviting further conversation. The man had introduced himself last night when he and Bant had volunteered as one of twenty plus advance skirmishers. James McNeill, he said from some place in western Maryland. Bant had forgotten where.
“Tis a good omen on the first day of this new year we are marching toward the British with our army massing in Trenton,” McNeill continued. “If we defeat them here, less likelihood this year will be the one of the hangman for us.” 2
Bant froze in mid-step at the mention of hanging. He pretended he had slipped on a clump of grass and regained his footing. Ahead, on a large elm, its bare branches silhouetted against the grey sky, Bant again saw the bodies of the militia men, swinging from ropes, their eyes bulging, their tongues extended from their mouths, blood dripping from their nostrils. And him hiding up a tree while the British troopers looked for him, before hanging the others. He shook his head and the image disappeared to be replaced by a Redcoat on his horse under the tree, directing the hanging of another three men.
“Have you seen a ghost?” McNeil asked, staring at him. “You are as pale as a new canvas tent.”
“Demons,” Bant muttered and instantly regretted it. “What demons?” McNeil asked, looking at the small man
strangely.
“It is nothing. They come and go. I still see clearly enough to hit
a charging cavalry man in the throat,” he added defensively. McNeil continued to ask him questions but Bant stubbornly
refused to respond. He stared off into the distance, concentrating on
the target of an imaginary Dragoon riding toward him before Bant’s
rifle ball blew him off his horse.
That night when the group of skirmishers had finished eating
two geese, that some of the men had “liberated,” from a farm they had
passed earlier, it became obvious to Bant, that McNeil had mentioned
his demons to the others. He did not mind. Ignoring the strange looks
they gave him, he moved away from the fire, his tri-corn pulled down
tightly over his small curled ears. He wrapped himself in a blanket and
fell asleep leaning against a thick tree trunk.
He was awakened by the loud noise of thick rain drops pelting the
ground. Bant sat up, gathering his legs closer to his chest and remained
shivering in the darkness before dawn. His nightmares had returned
with a vengeance, disturbing his sleep with contorted purple faces, pleas
for mercy, the thud of bodies being dropped to the ground with ugly
red rope marks on their bare dirty necks, and the overpowering smell
of human shit, released from the bowels of the dead men. He wrapped
his blanket more tightly around his shoulders and sat up blinking. He
gagged at the smell of shit and shook his head to make it go away. He
was no longer dreaming. He was awake. He heard a loud fart. A soldier
emerged from the woods close by. The pickets had dug a shallow pit
as a field latrine, oblivious to Bant’s presence or perhaps deliberately
placing it near where he slept. Stiff and cold, Bant raised himself up
and moved closer to the dying fire and away from the stench. At breakfast, McNeil, to make amends, offered Bant some coffee.
“More bark than beans,” he said apologetically. Bant held out his cup.
It was hot and he nodded in appreciation.
By mid-morning, the skirmishers were hidden one hundred feet
on either side of the road where it dipped into a small creek. Someone
said it was called Eight Mile Run, but whether that meant eight miles to Trenton or Princeton, Bant did not know. He found a place along the southeast side of the Run, away from where the road crossed the creek. It was well protected by brush and logs. He rested his rifle on a thick fallen trunk and smoothed the ground next to him. He would fire, roll to his right parallel to the log, reload, roll to his right again and aim and fire. Behind him, the woods were thick with shrubs and
brambles, enough to slow any cavalryman foolish enough to enter. Bant looked up at the sun and guessed it was between ten and
eleven, closer to eleven he thought. The day was unusually mild for the
second one of the new year. The temperature was well above freezing,
an unexpected warming that was uncommon for January in New
Jersey. It would be a muddy slog on the roads, he thought. Better to
retreat through the woods and fields, when the time came. 3 He shuddered, recalling McNeil’s words- 1777-the year of the
hangman. Now that he thought of it, the number seven did resemble
a gallows. One did not need a properly constructed gallows. His
nightmar
es reminded him that a gnarled tree limb, high enough off
the ground, served just as well to hang a man.
He removed the black gaiters he had taken from a dead British
soldier and folded them into his haversack. He could run faster without
them. He had no trouble waiting. It was only a matter of time. The
Colonel had said the British would march down this highway from
Princeton. Their Regiment would be the first to draw blood and make
the British and Hessians pay in dead and wounded the entire way
before they even confronted the American Army digging in at Trenton. The road leading to Eight Mile Run was straight for several
hundred yards. It was muddy so there was no telltale sign of dust but
Bant saw the horsemen in the distance approaching from Princeton.
At first, they were mere dark specks. They turned into red splotches
on horseback and finally individual troopers of a cavalry screen for
the army that was following. Bant thought there were around forty
of them, trotting leisurely, three abreast. He could not distinguish an
officer from a trooper. No matter. He would let them come to within
one hundred and fifty yards and from his angle to the side, pick off the
rider closest to him in the second row. After he reloaded, if the cavalry remained on the road, he would aim for another further up
the column.
They were a little more than two hundred yards away. Bant
calmly sighted down the rifle’s three foot long barrel. As the cavalry
came closer, Bant could make out the death’s head insignia on the
black front plate of the trooper’s brass helmet. The helmet, with its red
crest, covered the middle of the rider’s forehead. Bant aimed for the
exposed bone just above the man’s eye. He waited patiently, carefully
gauging the distance. At approximately one hundred and fifty yards he
fired. The trooper fell back on his horse, his black booted feet trapped
in the stirrups. Several other shots rang out, as Bant rolled to his right,
removed his ramrod and cleaned the barrel. He tore open a cartridge
with his teeth, primed the pan, covered it, poured in the powder
followed by the ball, rammed it home, reattached his rod, and peered
over the log. In the less than a minute it had taken him to reload,
the riflemen’s first volley had emptied a dozen saddles. The frightened
riderless horses among the forward ranks milled around, blocking
any forward movement on the road by the remaining cavalry. Three
troopers spurred their horses into an open field and riding low in the
saddle galloped toward Bant’s position. A shot from a rifleman brought
down one horse, causing the horse of another to shy away. Bant had a
shot at the trooper from the side. He pulled back the hammer to full
cock, aimed for his temple and fired. He watched with satisfaction
as the man’s head exploded in a blood red spray. He stood up as the
few remaining dragoons retreated up the road and the masses of redcoated troops still marching toward them.
The skirmishers fell back, loping silently through the woods,
crossed an open field, avoiding the deep mud from the melted snow and
took shelter among the trees at the far end. They rested there briefly,
before continuing south paralleling the road. Behind them, they heard
cannon fire from British artillery, spraying the woods with grape shot
where they had ambushed the cavalry. Bant decided he would like to
pick off an artillery officer if the opportunity afforded itself. He and the other skirmishers passed through their Regiment’s
pickets and took up positions on the south side of a larger creek. Bant
appraised the place. It was a dense pine and cedar forest, with an occasional clump of bare branched oaks and maples. There were no paths for cavalry to enter and stout fallen trunks and thick brambles provided excellent ground cover. The British would either have to follow the road and wade across the creek where the bridge had stood before being torn down by Colonel Hand’s men, or fan out in open
fields and ford the creek where they could.
Bant knelt down behind a fallen tree. The deep shade of the forest
was cooling. He brushed the remaining unmelted snow off the log
and rested his rifle on the wet bark. With his hand, he dug away the
soft earth and reddish fiber pulp from the decomposed tree to make
a comfortable depression for his right knee and waited. McNeil was
to his immediate right about four feet away. On both sides of them
riflemen were spread out in a line, well hidden from view. Several
cannon were in position near the place where the woods met the road. Colonel Hand moved slowly and calmly from one group of
riflemen to another. In the early afternoon heat, he had removed his
tri-corn, revealing his high forehead and bald pate, like a pink cap
stopping at his ears. He was a tall, lean man and when he reached Bant
and the others around him, he towered over the kneeling riflemen.
Hand gestured there was no need for them to stand.
“Men,” Colonel Hand said, coolly, as if addressing them before
a rifle competition. “The entire British Army is coming down the
Maidenhead Road. Their intention is to attack our troops in Trenton.
Our orders are to delay their advance until nightfall.”
He unbuttoned his blue jacket and rested a hand casually on his
sword pommel. “We will let the Redcoats come within close range and
fire together. I will give the order. Major Miller on the left side of the
road will do likewise. Surprise and ambush will make the British break
ranks. Remember, no one fires until I give the order.” Several of the
men grunted their understanding.
Bant remained kneeling and thought about the Colonel’s words.
He would have preferred to pick them off at a distance but he would
follow orders. This time, he was excited. The entire British Army. Let
them come. Maybe he would bag a General.
It seemed odd to be crossing the Delaware without the Mariners
manning the boats. Yet, on the first day of the new year, having
said farewell to Nat, Adam, Solomon, and the others, Will held Big
Red’s reins and stood on a flat bottomed scow, along with Sergeant
Merriam and others from the gun crews. They left Beatty’s Ferry on
the Pennsylvania shore, swiftly crossed the river and crunched through
the thin ice at the Trenton Ferry landing.
“Give me a hand, lad,” Sergeant Merriam asked as they
disembarked. “I fear the mud will grasp my swollen ankle and pull it
from my leg.”
“Please, sir. You rode Big Red out of Trenton after our victory.
Tis fitting you ride him back into town.” Will helped Merriam place
his good foot into the stirrup and gave his ample butt a push as the
Sergeant hoisted himself into the saddle. With a groan, he eased himself
forward as Will nimbly swung up behind him. Big Red plodded up
the muddy slope, pulling a captured Hessian brass six-pounder and
carrying the two riders.
Slowly, they rode down King Street, the sight of the bloodiest
fighting less than a week ago. The studded wheels of the gun carriage
clattered on the cobblestones. Big Red shied away and nervously
tossed his head at the stench from the remains of the dead He
ssian
artillery horse, lying where it had fallen. The head and chest were all
that remained. Crows perched on the blood stained rib cage, picking
at morsels of flesh, oblivious or unafraid of the men marching by. Will
looked away as a crow hopped onto the dead horse’s head and pecked
at the eye socket. He was thankful the dead Hessians who had lain
twisted and frozen in the bloody snow were gone, as were the severed
limbs that had been stacked like cord wood outside the Anglican
Church.
When they reached the open fields at the end of town, Will saw
thousands of troops on the rising slopes across the stone bridge over
Assunpink Creek, furiously digging and constructing protective dirt
barriers. The earthen works were in three parallel lines rising up the
slopes running for more than two miles along the creek, with the
Delaware River on the Army’s left flank. Because of the steepness of the
slope, the troops behind each earthen work could fire simultaneously,
without shooting into the backs of men in the line in front of them. Hadley was on the lower part of the slope at the first earthen
works. He waved his tri-corn to attract Will’s attention. Will clicked
his tongue and urged Big Red forward. The horse’s massive chest
strained as he pulled the cannon, shot and powder up the muddy
slope, made more slippery by the feet of the many soldiers who had
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