Blood Upon The Snow

by Martin Ganzglass

  McNeil motioned for the riflemen to wait. After a few minutes, a fifth Hessian emerged from the woods at the top of the meadow, leading a large dark brown cow, her udder full, trailed by a young calf. His comrades greeted him with shouts followed by loud laughter and sucking sounds. The man grinned and tied the cow to a thicket and leaned his musket against a tree trunk.

  McNeil nodded and the riflemen emerged from the underbrush and motioned for the Hessians to stand up. They rose confused and then, one by one, smiled and held their arms open, signaling they would not resist.

  Bant stepped forward and motioned for the first one to unbuckle his sword. The man glanced down at his waist and nervously fumbled with the strap before handing it to him. Bant unsheathed it, and threw the sword on the ground behind him. Standing in front of the second prisoner, he made the same gesture and so on down the line. When he came to the fifth one, the Hessian had already unbuckled the sword and waited with a look of bemusement on his face for Bant to stand in front of him. He was at least a foot taller than Bant, even without his brass cap. He grinned, revealing two broken front teeth and handed the dull black worn scabbard, hilt first to Bant. The Hessian tugged his own ears and said something that made the other Hessians laugh. Bant knew the soldier was making fun of his knobby curled ears. He said nothing and drew the short blade from the sheath. It was stained with fresh blood.

  Bant, looked up at the Hessian’s eyes, smiled and thrust the sword deep into the man’s chest. He collapsed with a look of dismay on his face, changing to fear as blood frothed from his mouth. The four other Hessians raised their hands higher and began imploring Bant, in words and gestures not to kill them.

  McNeil nodded at Bant. “It could have been the blood of someone else,” he said. “Or even an animal.”

  “It was the woman’s,” Bant replied with certainty.

  “Well, it is done with. We need to bring the other prisoners back to camp for the Lieutenant to question. No more killing,” McNeil said.

  They made their prisoners carry the plunder wrapped in their own field blankets, holding them in front of their chests. The woman came out to the broken front door as the riflemen marched the four prisoners past her stone house, leaning weakly against the door frame, her good hand resting on her son’s shoulder.

  “Cut off their hands and feet and let them bleed to death,” she screeched after them. “They do not deserve to live. Kill them all, kill them all,” she yelled and her words followed them after they were out of sight. 2

  It was late in the afternoon when they arrived back at their makeshift camp and delivered the four cowering Hessians to Lieutenant Patten. Some of the newer men, who had never seen Hessians close up, left their dinner fires and wandered by out of curiosity. Others listened to McNeil as he explained the reason for the terrifying shrieks and the ordeal of the woman. Some voiced approval of Bant’s killing of the fifth Hessian and several thought the remaining four should be done in as well.

  Lieutenant Patten drew some marks in the dirt on the ground and with the assistance of a Pennsylvania rifleman who spoke some German, questioned the Hessians. The four agreed their lines were no more than a few miles away. They had passed through their own sentries, ostensibly to forage for food for their Company, but that had only been a pretense to go plundering on their own. They openly named the Regiments they knew of and indicated there were many more British soldiers quartered in the camp. They had no knowledge of the Army’s proposed line of march although they hoped to capture Philadelphia because they had heard the city was among the richest in the colonies. Lieutenant Patten sent a scouting party out to ascertain the veracity of the Hessians’ information. The prisoners were placed under guard, their hands tied behind their backs and made to sit crosslegged on the ground.

  Bant and McNeil joined a few of the men around a cooking fire, preparing to share two rabbits one of the men had caught with a snare in the woods. One of the soldiers slowly turned the carcasses, pierced through with the long rifle ramrods, over the flames evenly browning the dark flesh. Another, used a thick stick to shift a pan in which some quick bread was baking.

  “I say we slit their throats,” one of the soldiers said, pointing with his skinning knife at the others around the fire. “Bant did right and the others deserve the same.”

  “It is up to the Lieutenant to decide,” another man added. He took a long drink from his canteen. “This damn watered cider is barely fit to drink. Would we had some of that strong rum we tasted before parading through Philadelphia. A gill now would do me some good.” 3

  Bant squirmed uncomfortably, recalling the citizens of Philadelphia staring at him as he marched by. He knew by the way they looked at him, they knew his secret. He could see it in their faces. He was responsible for the militiamen being hung. He had witnessed it and to save his own hide had remained hidden. If only he had jumped down from the tree limb and surrendered, those twelve men would still be alive. One Philadelphia street had been lined with tall fan shaped chestnut trees, the rough brown husks protecting the not yet ripe lustrous mahogany colored nuts hidden inside, mocking him as they hung from the branches. He almost bolted from the line as he saw the faces of the dead militiamen appear in miniature on each husk, the stem turning into a hempen rope noose. He had lowered his head, watching the cobblestones and walked faster, bumping into the man marching in front who had snarled at him to keep his proper distance.

  A Hessian called out loudly to the soldier who had translated for Lieutenant Patten.

  “Essen, bitte. Essen und Trinken.”

  “What does he want?” one of the men around the fire asked.

  “Food and water,” the soldier translator said.

  “What for,” the man next to Bant said. “They will be dead soon enough.” The riflemen around the fire, eagerly tore into the roast rabbit, smacking their lips and licking their fingers to torment the prisoners.

  “Is it better to die on an empty or full stomach?” McNeil asked to no one in particular.

  “My preference would be to have enough rum in me so as to feel nothing.”

  “Whiskey would be even better,” another added.

  “Before we came here, my old Brigade marched for an entire night and most of the next day without a morsel to eat,” the man who favored rum recalled. “Twenty four miles at least, it was, before we made camp. I had found some half a dozen turnips along the way and stored them in my haversack. I was pinched with hunger. Those turnips were the best meal I had that entire month,” he reflected, lazily sucking on a small rabbit bone. 4 “A lot better than this rye and Injun meal they give us instead of real flour.”

  Bant listened as their voices merged with the noise of crickets, cicadas and the croaking of frogs from a nearby creek into a pleasant, soothing buzz blotting out their individual words. He was in a hypnotic trance-like sleep, stretched out near the fire and did not notice when the scouts returned to report to Lieutenant Patten.

  He awoke to a nudge from McNeil’s booted foot just before dawn. His first thought was to marvel that the nightmares had not come to him during his sleep.

  “The Lieutenant is giving our patrol the honor of hanging the four prisoners before we move on.”

  Bant shook his head in disbelief, thinking he was not awake and this was a different nightmare. He stood up and grabbed his rifle. Its comforting weight felt real enough, the long barrel cold and coated with a thin layer of dew. To calm himself, he did routine things, strapping on his large handled hunting knife and shouldering his haversack. He followed McNeil to the clearing where the Hessians stood, their hands still tied behind them, their lightened bags of plunder hanging from their chests. They stood with heads bowed as Lieutenant Patten’s words were translated.

  “General Washington himself has proclaimed and his orders have been read to all our troops- the penalty for Continentals caught plundering innocents is death. You, as our enemy, must be held to the same account. 5

  You will be hung and your bodies left
as a warning to others who may be tempted to terrorize the civilians living in your army’s path.”

  Patten turned and led the fifty odd riflemen in the early dawn down the road toward the British encampment, leaving McNeil and the others who had captured the Hessians to execute them.

  “Well, let us get to it,” McNeil said, nestling a noose around the neck of one of the Hessians, who was trembling uncontrollably.

  Bant let out a terrible wail, rivaling the scream of the poor woman they had heard the day before, in intensity of anguish and fear, and fell to his knees. The other riflemen stared at him in disbelief.

  “You stabbed one of them yourself yesterday, with his own sword, and rightly so,” a soldier said. “This is less bloody and will be over faster.”

  McNeil waved the man away, bent down and helped Bant to his feet.

  “Start walking slowly after our men,” he said softly. “We will finish the business here without you.”

  Bant shuffled down the dusty road, the foliage glimmering in the rising sun, afraid to look back and terrified they would return on this very same road. For the first time since his nightmares had begun, he no longer thought killing British soldiers would ease his mind. Instead, he knew with certainty the only peace for him was death. He hoped a musket ball would kill him in the coming battle.

  The sounds of musket and rifle fire on the west side of the river, that had begun at dawn increased in intensity. Will paced back and forth behind the brass twelve-pounder, more nervous for Big Red’s safety, tied to a tree behind the battery, than the approaching Redcoats and Hessians. Two light six-pounders were spaced about twenty feet apart from his position.

  All three guns were on a tree-lined slope opposite the main road leading to the ford. During the night and into the early morning, the gun crews, with the help of some Continentals, had constructed rough breastworks of earth and cut trees and branches. After that work was done, they waited as the morning sun beat down on their shoulders, stiff from swinging axes and wielding shovels.

  From his vantage point, Will could clearly discern by the cloud of smoke that hovered over the skirmishing line of the Continentals and the oncoming enemy, where the two forces met. Thick woods ran down the rolling hills toward the river, bordering newly ploughed ground and cultivated fields of buckwheat and corn, and apple and peach orchards, the ripe fruit visible to him even at this distance.

  “If they come upon us soon,” Corporal Chandler said, standing next to Will, “the sun although higher in the sky will still be behind us and in their eyes.” Will grunted. He was pleased Captain Hadley had assigned Chandler to his gun crew. He appreciated the former bookbinder’s calmness and reliability. It occurred to Will there was another reason for Hadley adding Chandler. He would be a competent replacement to take command, in case Will was killed. Not a pleasant thought, with the British and Hessians slowly pushing the Continentals back toward the river.

  The core of the old gun crew was together again, Will, Chandler now as wormer and loader, Levi Tyler for the sponge and ram, and John Baldwin, vent tender. All except Sergeant Merriam who was with his family in Boston, and poor Simeon Webb, dead with his chin blown away at the Battle of Brooklyn, one year ago this past August. The new powder handler, Private Mordecai Grayson was a Massachusetts man, like the rest of them. He had been with Sergeant Otis’ gun crew and under fire at Trenton and Princeton. He was short and stout, barrel chested with narrow eyes peering out beneath thick, black eyebrows and a sag to the flesh above his upper lip which gave the appearance of a drooping mustache. He had placed the powder box about fifteen paces behind and to the left of the twelve-pounder and piled some stones in front of it for protection. When the battle began, Grayson would be in motion the most, dashing forward first with the canvas bags of powder and then rushing to the row of cannon balls closer to the gun and handing them to Chandler for loading.

  They could see the men of the rifle regiment being pushed back, giving ground slowly, ambushing the onrushing orderly red lines of enemy troops, withdrawing under covering fire and taking new positions amongst the trees and shrubs at the approach to the river ford. It took another thirty minutes or so before the outnumbered riflemen were forced to concede and cross the Brandywine. They retreated in good order up the sloping hill toward the gun batteries. The enemy’s ranks continued to swell as they massed in preparation to cross the shallow ford and assault the slopes manned by the Continentals. They were like so many red birds roosting low among the trees and shrubs lining the river, interspersed with light blue uniformed Hessian units, their brass hats reflecting the late morning sun.

  Will opened the flap of his quill holder and felt the smooth stems lying neatly on the bottom. Although he was commanding the heavier gun, he waited for a signal from Sergeant Otis at the six-pounder to his immediate left. He wondered, now that the enemy attack was imminent, whether Captain Hadley would reappear and take charge as battery commander.

  “Gun crews, prepare for action,” Sergeant Otis yelled, looking to his right. Although the twelve-pounder had not been fired recently, Chandler first wormed the cannon, Tyler dipped the sponge in the water bucket, plunged the dripping pole down the muzzle, withdrew it and stepped nimbly aside as Grayson handed Chandler the long canvas bag of powder. Almost before Tyler had rammed it home, Grayson was back cradling the smooth twelve pound ball in his thick forearms. Will listened to it rumble down the brass barrel, waited until Tyler had rammed it home and then stepped forward. He pricked the canvas charge through the vent, inserted the quill in the touchhole and shouted “primed,” surprised at how steady his voice sounded. He waited for Otis’ command to fire, yelled “Give Fire,” inserted the slow match into the quill and took one step back. The three guns boomed almost simultaneously with a crashing roar. Soldiers further down the slope cheered. The slight breeze was behind them and he was unable, until the smoke dissipated, to see the damage the three cannon balls had done, plowing into a concentration of redcoats, massed on the road.

  After several more rounds, Will noticed the thick red lines of arriving troops step off the road to make way for their artillery. He judged they were all twelve-pounders, six of them, being pulled by teams of two horses each, the supply wagons with gun crews following. As they approached the ford, the horses veered to the right into an open ploughed field. The line of their artillery was broadside to Will’s battery now, as the red-coated riders hastened to get their guns further into the field.

  “Quick,” Will ordered. “Turn the tiller. We want to catch the horses in their traces.” He shuddered at his own words but Captain Hadley had drummed the soundness of the strategy into him, regardless of Will’s inhibitions about maiming the animals. Wounded horses in traces made it harder for the gun crews to get their cannons into position and afforded more time to destroy the artillery.

  Grayson, Tyler and Chandler swung the twelve-pounder to their right. Will determined to leave the barrel at the same elevation, wishing he had Sergeant Merriam to affirm his judgment. They loaded the charge and ball and fired. This time, the breeze blew from their right and their view was not obscured. Their aim was true. The ball landed just short of the team pulling the second cannon. It skimmed across the ground, struck the closest horse in the legs and threw its rider, and bounced into the gun carriage, shattering its wheel and yoke. Will heard the terrified whinny of the wounded horse and watched as the British riders struggled to control their panic stricken mounts pulling the other cannons.

  While the two six-pounders continued to bombard the massed troops, Will kept up a steady fire on the artillery. If they had another twelve-pounder, they could have destroyed all of the British artillery before they even fired a shot. As is, his one battery was able to smash two guns, which lay askew in the field, surrounded by their dead or wounded gun crews, like red flower petals that had fallen off their smoldering stalks.

  It took a while for the four remaining British gun crews to mount a counter barrage. They were at a disadvantage being ex
posed in a low, open field firing up at Will’s battery, protected by the breastworks of trees and branches. Their first shots, which either fell short or went wide, killed some of the Continental skirmishers dug in further down the slope. To their right, Will noticed a large body of British light infantry and Jaegers had avoided the ford, and were wading across the river, the water chest high, holding their muskets above their heads. Continental riflemen hidden in the woods were picking them off. Will hoped there were enough of them to hold the enemy back. If the British at the ford attacked now and charged up the slope, Will feared the battery would be over-run.

  Chandler tapped Will on the shoulder as Grayson ran up with another charge. “I have noticed their gun crews wait for our cannon flash and then leave their positions. They move several yards away and return after our ball has struck. Perhaps we can take advantage of their subterfuge.”

  Will ran over to Sergeant Otis. “Can you train the two sixpounders on their artillery? Aim not for the guns but wide. Their crews move on our flash. A few yards to either side of their own guns. Listen for my command, wait to the slow count of five and then fire.”

  Otis nodded. “It will give the Redcoats a respite from our bombardment. Hopefully they will not seize the moment to attempt to cross.”

  The twelve-pounder was loaded and waiting. Will pricked the canvas bag, inserted the quill, lit the powder and shouted “Give fire.” The boom of the gun was followed quickly by the lesser roars of the two six-pounders. The wind blew the smoke from the heavy musket and rifle fire back toward the British artillery in the open field. Before it enveloped their position, Chandler reported he had seen a few fallen redcoats.

  “One more round,” Will yelled to Otis. The six-pounders delayed their firing again.

  Only two guns in the British battery of four were now engaged in counter fire. Chandler stepped up on the breastworks and shaded his brow. “Tis a temporary victory until they bring up replacement gun crews.”