Conceived in Liberty

by Howard Fast

  I stumble, and Jacob helps me up. He says: “Stay close to me, Allen—we’ll get by. Stay close to me.”

  Wayne’s voice, crying: “Powder dry—powder dry—for God’s sake, keep your guns out of that mud.”

  As an echo: “Watch your powder pans—keep your flints clean——”

  Our brigade is climbing out of the ravine, men wet to their waists with mud. We stumble up through the trees, and hear a flurry of shots. It means that our scouts have come into contact with the British rearguard.

  As we are, on the slope, with the ravine full of mud to our backs, we’re in a trap. The body of the army is beyond us, perhaps a mile to the rear. It comes like a flash of red fire in our brains; we stop; we stare at one another, our mouths open. I think of getting back out of the ravine—only out of the ravine. I guess we all think of that.

  Wayne spurs his horse along our front, screaming madly for us to go ahead. “To the top!” he screams. “Climb to the top!”

  I wonder dully how we could have come here, who placed us in a trap like this. Like cattle—to be caught in the mud and shot down.

  Ely is shaking his head, like a man in a dream.

  Jacob is cursing and screaming along with Wayne. He is ahead of the rest of us, clawing his way up. He seems to slide up through the trees—no volition of his own—slide up through the trees.

  We go ahead—as if Wayne were drawing us. Stumbling, falling, we climb the hill, come out on top, drag ourselves forward with our muskets and make a line. More and more men. We make a line, and then we see the Virginian scouts running back through the trees, beyond them a glint of red.

  The British drumbeat wakes the morning air into waves of heat. It throbs into our heads, pulses through the ground. It turns over and over, like wheels rolling, beats our thoughts into oblivion, seems an incarnation of the heat. Wayne, dismounted, dashes along the line, pleading:

  “Hold them here—hold them here!”

  Charles Lee, on his white, mud-splashed horse, reins up, cries: “We have to get out of here, General—we have to get out of here. We’re like rats in a trap. We have to retreat.”

  Wayne screams: “Sir—you can retreat—you can retreat to hell, sir!”

  “I’m in command!”

  “You can go to hell, sir!” Wayne sobs.

  The British are less than a hundred yards away now, marching in three columns, their muskets presented, their bayonets glittering in the sun. The drums waver from a marching beat to a light, rippling rhythm, a rhythm of heat laughing at us. They come on steadily.

  I try to count them—how many? Their lines are endless. The entire rear of the British army is marching to attack a few Pennsylvania and New England brigades. Where is the army? What kind of fools’ sacrifice are we?

  We don’t know what to do. Lee is in command. Lee has given an order to retreat. La Fayette and Wayne are raging like madmen—screaming for us to hold our lines. Down the line, Scott stands and shakes his head. We are under the spell of the heat. We are still in a dream of the hell at Valley Forge—heat for cold. Hell is hot; hell is cold. Some of the men drop their muskets and bolt back into the ravine. Some of the men let go their muskets and stand watching the British—dumb. We have forgotten how to be an army, how to do anything but suffer.

  We suffer now; we suffer in retrospect. We’re bound up in ourselves. As a parade across our eyes are the days and nights in the dugouts, the nights in the freezing cold when we stood on sentry duty, the days when we lay like sodden beasts, starving. The dead who were piled like logs in the snow—unburied. The weight of a nation unborn on the shoulders of men—who are no more than men. We have not the power to suffer as women suffer, to give birth out of agony and rise full and new from the bed of pain. We have not the power to see beyond our sufferings, to make dreams from pain. There are no dreams from pain; we’re lost men, conquered men.

  The British come on, and we hear their officers speaking commands in sharp, clear voices. Strange voicces. Accents of another land, another world. They’re on parade, the British soldiers, men without fear, men marching to victory.

  And a sobbing voice, the voice of Wayne—who understands now, who will no more ask giant deeds from men who are not giants. The voice of Wayne who sees a spectre of Valley Forge rising to overwhelm him. Wayne grows; Wayne is a man without fear, a madman without fear. But bigger than Wayne is a picture of men becoming beasts, men trying to drag themselves out of hell.

  We’re in hell, Wayne with us, Lee cursed by the doom he brought on himself, the men leaderless.

  Fifty paces from us, the British form for the bayonet charge. We can see them very clearly now, each face under the high, pointed hat, the gold on their red uniforms I can see one man’s mouth move as he chews a wad of tobacco. I can see the drummers, spraying their roll. I can see their powder cases flap against their sides as they march. I can see one man’s yellow hair waving from beneath his hat.

  We begin to fire. Men let off their muskets wildly, without aim, without reason. A few of the British fall to the ground. I see one man clutch at his belly, stagger out of line and sit down with his back against a tree. The rest of them begin to run toward us. Their bayonets flutter like a line of fire, and their red coats are fire beyond their bayonets. Their muskets roar, and they smash out of the smoke.

  I fire my musket. For some reason I am surprised at its recoil against my shoulder. Suddenly, I am alone with Ely. Jacob lies on the ground, on his back, a hole in his head. In that instant, I see and understand Jacob. Jacob who lived like a torch, who went out like a torch. Jacob, who was beyond men, beyond Wayne, beyond Washington, Jacob who was the single purpose of revolution. I see others beyond Jacob, there must be others. What Ely meant when he spoke to me, told me there would be no peace, no rest …

  Ely is pulling me away. The English are almost up on us, their bayonets sweeping like a scythe. A Virginian scout, ahead of us, is cut down, four bayonets in him while he swings with his clubbed rifle. They have no bayonets, the Virginian—only their long, small-bore rifles.

  With a great strength, Ely is pulling me through the trees. We run together, blindly, falling, picking ourselves up. There are other men in front of us, naked men, running, crying out like frightened beasts, falling, hurtling into trees—bruised, bloody, panic-stricken men without thought and in the grip of only one idea—to get away from the merciless line of English bayonets, to get out of the path of the scythe.

  We come to the edge of the ravine, stumble down into it. There, on the edge, I have one brief picture of Wayne, a man on a horse—sobbing. He cries out: “What does it mean? What does it mean? Where are my troops? My men?”

  We roll down the slope, crash against trees. We struggle through the mud. The morass is full of men—filthy, panic-stricken wretches. They mill around blindly. I am as blind as any; I try to make for the farther bank, but Ely pulls me back.

  The British have formed on the top, and they are shooting mercilessly, picking off the men as they come out of the mud and try to scramble up the farther bank. In spite of that, hundreds of them break through. I point, I cry to Ely:

  “We’ll go that way, Ely!”

  Ely drags me through the mud, down the ravine. I see one man, just ahead of me, pitch forward, as if struck by a hammer blow on the back. He tries to steady himself, wavers, falls, and sinks into the mud. I watch fascinated as bullets strike the mud, splash. I know this place; I have been in Inferno before.

  Down the ravine, a few hundred men stand waist-deep in the mud, Pennsylvania brigades. Somehow, they’ve gathered there, and the officers are trying to beat them into a sort of order.

  We go toward them, merge ourselves in their ranks. It gives me a feeling of security and order to see men standing around me and firing their muskets.

  The rout goes on before our eyes, as if we were an audience and a stage of fear-maddened men were set before us. Step by step, we retreat down the ravine, our steps to the tone of the brigade commanders:

  “L
oad—wipe your pans—clean your flints—load easy and fire.”

  I ram my musket. All of a sudden, I am calm, as if a great fire inside of me had stilled itself. I stand there, wondering why I should have run before, why I should be afraid of anything. What can hurt me? What can bring me pain? Death is rest. There’s no other rest for me. Inside, I am cold as ice, in spite of the hellish heat.

  Ely says to me: “Jacob’s dead.” He says it dully, as if he didn’t quite understand.

  “He’s dead,” I say coldly. “He wouldn’t have lived through this. It’s the way for him—to be dead.”

  “God rest him …”

  “There’s rest for Jacob now.”

  I load carefully. It’s almost terrifying, the calm that has come over me. I load as if I were on parade. We are still moving down the ravine, close—I don’t know how many of us, maybe three or four hundred. Muller is there—two more officers. Muller stands out in front of us, cool. The man has courage.

  The British attempt to cross the ravine, but we sweep them with our flanking fire. I see the red coats stain with mud, fall, bubble down through the mud, try to crawl out of it. The ravine fills with smoke, and men move through that smoke like ghosts. From above, the British snipe us, but they are not good shots. Here and there a man groans, falls in the mud, struggles to bring himself up, struggles against the mud that is choking him.

  I load like a machine, aim carefully, trying to find a target in the smoke, trying to pick out a red or a green uniform. I wonder about the army. Have they deserted us? Forgotten us? Have they lost us? Don’t they hear the sounds of the battle? Where is Wayne? Where is La Fayette—Charles Lee? Where are Steuben and the artillery? Where are the thousands of militiamen?

  Was it too much for Wayne and La Fayette to see that they made a mistake, that men are only human, that men are not beasts to kill one another without fear, without compulsion? Was it too much for them to understand what Valley Forge did to us?

  We fight our way down the ravine. Time has no meaning any more. For an eternity, we draw our feet out of the clinging mud, put our feet down again, load until the muskets burn our hands. The heat is unbearable—a clinging, solid wall of heat, heat taking form.

  The sniping goes on. The British hang onto us like flies, and their bullets patter into the mud. Muller is only a few feet from me when a bullet strikes him. I see Ely go to him, attempt to raise him. He shakes himself loose, cries: “I’m dying, damn you! Can’t you see?”

  I watch him settle into the mud, thinking vaguely that there will be no burial—no stone or bit of crossed wood to mark his place. No rhyme to tell his virtues, whether he lived a good or a bad man. Nothing. After a while, not even a memory in the minds of others. He went alone.

  We keep on, desperately, guided by the strange, purposeless drive that animates men sometimes. We come to the end of the ravine, make our way out onto solid ground. The firing has fallen off round us. Some of the men wander off, aimlessly. I call them back—surprised at the sound of my own voice. I beat them into line, and they obey my commands. Ely stares at me, oddly. I tell him:

  “Keep them together! Can’t you see we have to stay together?”

  He nods, dully. I lead the men through high grass, along a hedgerow. The roar of the battle is off to our right—a huge sound, rising and falling, nearing suddenly and then retreating from us, a sound interspersed with the booming of cannon. The cannon are sharp and clear, the roaring of angry beasts.

  It’s hot out here, much hotter that it was in the ravine. Nothing to shield us from the sun; the sun is part of the enemy. I look behind at the men trailing after me, a few hundred exhausted men—hot, filthy, listless. I wonder why I’m leading them. Where are the brigade commanders? I saw Muller fall; Muller is dead. But there should be others. I look for them. I ask Ely:

  “Where is Captain Dean—Marcy?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Gainbroe?”

  He keeps shaking his head.

  There is an orchard ahead of us, an old barn and an apple orchard. There are men there—half-naked men like ourselves, hundreds of them, crouched over their guns.

  “Rhode Island men,” Ely says.

  “They’re waiting for the attack,” I think to myself. “They’re waiting like that. They don’t know what an attack is—so they’re waiting.”

  I see a man come riding toward us, a man covered with mud and blood. I tell the men behind me to halt. They stand there, dazed, staring at me, their mouths open, their breath coming hard.

  I cry: “Sit down—damn you, sit down and rest! Talk! You’re not dead!”

  The man dismounts, and through the mud I recognize Wayne. He says: “What men are these? Who are you?”

  “The Fourteenth Pennsylvania, sir—what’s left of it. The rest are Pennsylvania men too, I guess.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “We fought through the ravine—after the retreat. We came out there—through that wood.”

  “Where are your officers?”

  “Dead——”

  “Who led you out?”

  “After they died, sir? I led the men. There wasn’t a lot of leading to do.”

  Wayne stares at me, nods. He says brokenly: “You’re my men—all my men. You fought out of there alone—alone. Christ! I rode off with a retreat, and you covered it. Where are your officers, sir? Tell me!”

  “They’re dead.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Allen Hale.”

  I can see him searching his memory. He’s sick with heat. He keeps rubbing his eyes, and his hands are full of blood. He shakes his head. “Allen Hale—you were tried for murder——”

  “I was tried for murder.”

  “I know,” he whispers. He looks at the men, sprawled out behind me. He says: “Take the brigade——”

  “I don’t want the brigade, sir.”

  “God damn you, do you think I want you for an officer? I said take the brigade. I brevet you captain. You’ll lead those men—or I swear to God, I’ll kill you where you stand.”

  I looked at him, stared into his bloodshot eyes for just a moment; then I nodded.

  I said: “I’ll lead the brigade, sir. I’ll lead them into hell, sir.”

  He repeated it, tonelessly: “You’ll lead ‘them into hell.” He said: “Form them behind that stone wall at the edge of the orchard. Go over their guns. They’ll address you as Captain Hale—you’ll command that. Prepare to resist any attack, as long as you have a man left.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He held out his hand, but I didn’t take it. I stood there watching his cold, blue eyes.

  He looked at me a moment, turned on his heel then and walked to his horse.

  I went to the men. They had heard Wayne. They were studying me curiously. Ely kept his eyes on me. His face was the face of a man who is in a dream—who knows that he dreams and that he’ll never wake out of that dream. I said evenly:

  “You’re to form as a brigade. I’m in command of you. You’re to address me as Captain Hale.”

  Nobody answered. Some of them nodded.

  “Brigade—attention! Form in fours!”

  They climbed to their feet, formed in line, dragging their guns. I marched them over to the stone wall and showed them their places behind it.

  “You will load—prepare, to return fire. I’ll give the command to fire.”

  I go over to Ely and sit down on the wall. The rocks are hot. The sun is dropping pellets of flame. The sweat runs off me, grooving lines in the dirt that covers my body. I look out over the field to where the battle is going on. Our main army is still behind us. The British will have to sweep us out of the way. I think of all that, and yet my thoughts are something apart from me. Inside I am cold and empty; my thoughts come out of that emptiness.

  Ely says: “So they’ve made you a captain, Allen.”

  “They’ve made me a captain.”

  There is no emotion inside of me, but I find that I a
m crying. I taste the hot salt tears with my tongue.

  XXIV

  THE MORNING passes, and we wait. They will attack some time—or never. Behind us, across the Wenrock Brook, General Greene has massed the army to throw off any attack. But meanwhile we are to hold off the British. We are to hold them off until they have exhausted themselves upon us, and then we are to let them roll over us—to be defeated by the massed Continental army, when it forms. We are a thin line of men behind a hedgerow and a stone wall. We have been fighting all morning—fighting in hell. We have sweated out all the water that is in us. We are bone-dry, fleshless, naked men. We are weary to death. We are three brigades formed into one, and God only knows what we will be tonight.

  We lie behind the stone wall, in the burning sun. The men crouch close to the wall, seeking shade, but the sun is almost directly overhead, and there is no shade. They plead with me to let them go to the brook and drink.

  I hold my musket and say: “I’ll kill any man who moves from this wall.” Yet I wonder who is saying it. Who is Allen Hale? Ely looks at me, almost with fear; but had he expected anything else? Hadn’t he known? Hadn’t he formed me for this, destroying himself? Now Jacob was dead. At the beginning—with a bloody round hole in his head. There are two men left, Ely and myself; and there is no rest for me.

  The battle rolls toward us. We stare at the long lines of redcoats, at the Hessians in their green uniforms. A play that we are watching.

  I count the cannon shots. I try to study the field. I don’t allow myself to remain still, to fall into the dull apathy that precedes sleep. I walk up and down the line, looking at muskets, feeling the powder pans, warning men to keep their wet hands from their flints. I speak out, and the words are strange to me as they come from my lips:

  “Don’t handle your flints. Keep your muskets in the sun. Keep your muskets dry. Let your powder bake in the sun. Hot powder is better than cold. Loosen your ramrods—loosen your ramrods.”

  Ely watching me—always watching me—his eyes never off me for a moment. I have an impulse to say to him: “Why, why don’t you understand? For the love of Christ—if you don’t understand, who will? Must I be alone—like Jacob, like Washington, men crying out in their loneliness, men impelled by fire and letting no man touch them for fear they will lose some of the fire? You’re left—you’re the only one! You planned this for me! Jacob’s dead.”