Spies and Deserters
A Novel of the American Revolution
MartinR.Ganzglass
ALSO BY MARTIN R. GANZGLASS Fiction The Orange Tree
Somalia: Short Fiction
In the American Revolutionary War Series Cannons for the Cause
Tories and Patriots
Blood Upon The Snow
Non-Fiction
The Penal Code of the Somali Democratic Republic (Cases, Commentary and Examples) The Restoration of the Somali Justice System, Learning From Somalia, The Lessons of Armed Humanitarian Intervention, Clarke & Herbst, Editors
The Forty-Eight Hour Rule, One Hand Does Not Catch a Buffalo, A.Barlow, Editor
Cover: The Taking of Major Andre by the Incorruptible Paulding, Williams and Vanvert Published by T.W. Freeman, 1812
Image Courtesy of The Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University
In Memory of My Grandparents and Parents Immigrants All
Spies and Deserters
A Peace Corps Writers Book. An Imprint of Peace Corps Worldwide
Copyright © 2017 by Martin R. Ganzglass All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America by Peace Corps Writers of Oakland, California. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations contained in critical articles or reviews.
For more information, contact www.peacecorpsworldwide.com Peace Corps Writers and the Peace Corps Writers colophon are trademarks of PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org This novel is a work of fiction. The historical figures and actual events described are used fictitiously. All other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-935925-87-3 Library of Congress Control Number 2017938254
First Peace Corps Writers Edition, April 2017. “We saw a number of the graves of those who fell in that battle. Some of the bodies had been so slightly buried that the dogs or hogs, or both, had dug them out of the ground. Here were Hessian skulls as thick as a bombshell. Poor fellows! But they should have kept at home . . . But, the reader will say, they were forced to come and be killed here, forced by their rulers who have absolute power of life and death over their subjects. Well then, reader, bless a kind Providence that has made such a distinction between your condition and theirs. And be careful, too, that you do not allow yourself ever to be brought to such an abject, servile and debased condition.”
Private Joseph Martin, White Plains, NY 1780
Part One The Winter of Despair and Merriment
Chapter 1 - Starving Together at Valley Forge
Captain Chatsworth led the detachment of dragoons down the narrow road, their horses’ hooves clattering on the frozen ground. Patches of ice glinted in the moonlight. Twenty paces ahead, at a slight bend in the way, their local Tory guide stopped and raised his hand, listening and looking off to his left into the dark gloom of the woods. The twenty-eight troopers waited, their horses snuffling and emitting puffs of warm breath.
It could be an ambush, Chatsworth thought. Perhaps the militia had been forewarned. Or their guide, who knew the back roads and was supposedly the Colonel’s neighbor, was playing a double game and betraying the 16th Dragoons instead. His Quaker-like outer coat with no pockets had initially aroused Chatsworth’s suspicion. He unstrapped his fuzee, the short-barreled musket the troopers carried, and held it loosely across his saddle. Nothing for it but to wait, he thought.
Suddenly, there was a crashing noise in the dense bushes. The guide let out a yelp and fled, his plow horse clumsily clearing a low stonewall as he disappeared into the darkness. “I hope he breaks his neck,” Chatsworth muttered. He signaled with his hand for his men to remain where they were, then waved four of them forward. The scouting party vanished around the bend in the road followed by silence as the steady clop of their horses’ hooves was swallowed up by the enveloping blackness. Clouds passed across the three quarter moon. Chatsworth sat motionless in the saddle, sweating under his brass helmet despite the cold and felt a chill on the back of his neck. They were almost thirty miles west of Philadelphia seeking to kidnap the Colonel of the Chester County Militia from his home near Downingtown.
After several minutes the scouts reappeared.
“We saw some stray cattle. Nothing more,” the Sergeant said, shrugging as if he had suspected all along there were no Rebel militia hiding in the forest.
Chatsworth led the troopers forward until he could perceive a widening in the road where it was joined by another. According to their guide, the Colonel’s house was the closest of the two after the Downingtown crossroads. He could make out a few buildings. If the terrified Tory had not run off, Chatsworth would have asked if there was a way to avoid going through town and approaching the Colonel’s house from behind. He weighed the risk of arousing the town by riding on against leaving the horses tethered and proceeding stealthily on foot. Better to remain mounted, he concluded. They could fight their way out on horseback if necessary.
At his signal, they formed into lines of three across and galloped through the crossroads, past several low wooden buildings and the tavern that served as the center of town, and surrounded a large two story stone house just off the road. A horse from the barn whinnied in alarm, but Chatsworth had already leaped down and was pounding on the door with the butt of his fuzee.
“Open up in the name of the Crown. Resist and you will be shot,” he shouted. A light appeared in an upper window, the shutters were thrown open and a grey haired woman in her nightcap peered out.
“Who are you to disturb our sleep?” she screeched in outrage at the black shadows of the riders below.
“We are the Queen’s 16th Dragoons and have come to arrest Colonel Hannum,” Chatsworth replied. “Open this door immediately.”
The woman held the lantern out the window, the light reflecting on the troopers’ helmets with their red dyed horse hair crests. “He is not here,” she responded, her voice betraying fear as she quickly withdrew leaving the shutters ajar. Chatsworth stood back and motioned for the troopers to break the door down. As it splintered, there was a scream of surprise from outside.
“We have bagged him, Captain,” came a triumphant cry from the rear of the house. The Rebel Colonel, shivering and hatless and looking undignified in his nightshirt and boots, was brought around to the porch by two troopers firmly holding his arms.
“He attempted to escape through a back window.”
Chatsworth looked at the man, his hair unkempt, his thin naked legs sticking out the bottom of his white night shirt like a plucked chicken.
“Take him inside, let him get dressed but watch him closely,” he ordered. “Seize all of the horses in the barn and a wagon if there is one. The rest of you, anything you can easily carry is fair to take from this Rebel scum.” Chatsworth wiped his muddy boots on the rug in the center of the parlor, while his troopers ransacked the house with Mrs. Hannum following and haranguing them as godless heathens. Her venom increased as her husband’s hands were tied behind his back, despite his promise as a gentleman not to try and escape.
“You mean not to try again,” Chatsworth said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Your word is of no worth to me.” The Colonel was led outside and helped onto one of his own horses with a trooper pushing him hard against the pommel and sitting comfortably in the saddle behind him.
“Captain,” one of the troopers called. “Behind the barn. Look at this.”
Chatsworth followed him. The light from his lantern shone on a shrouded, bare footed corpse, stiff and frozen, laid out on a rough plank. The Captain bent down and pulled the rigid cloth away from the bod
y’s face. In the candlelight, Chatsworth saw evidence of a slashing wound on the side of the neck. The eye nearest to the gash was closed as if the man knew it was fatal and had no need to see it. His other eye was open, as was his mouth that formed a grimace, revealing several missing teeth. The remaining ones were stained black by gunpowder. Probably one of the Colonel’s militia, he thought, dead for some time, and awaiting a proper burial when the ground was no longer frozen hard as stone.
“Load him in the wagon. He may be useful to us,” Chatsworth ordered.
They left the Colonel’s home to the shrieks of his wife that they were no better than savages. Whether it was because one of his men had taken her gold watch or the corpse in the wagon, Chatsworth had no idea and did not care. 1 None of the homes showed any lights. Good, he thought. They had time to leave a calling card.
Their local guide had mentioned the house on the far side of the tavern was occupied by a Rebel sympathizer, a loud mouth he said, who bullied his Tory neighbors. They deposited the corpse of the Rebel militiaman, standing propped up against the bully’s front door, facing in. When the sympathizer opened it, he would be greeted by a one-eyed dead man, who would fall into his arms - a warning to be careful which side he chose.
Chatsworth sent two scouts ahead of the column. This county swarmed with Pennsylvania Militia and patrols of Continental Dragoons who sallied forth from their army’s base at Valley Forge. He would breathe easier when they reached the burned out homes surrounding Philadelphia. On orders from General Howe, the British dragoons had torched several mansions, used as observation posts by the Rebels or staging areas for attacks on British sentries manning the Philadelphia redoubts.
John Stoner, who had ridden with the dragoons and now was Superintendent Galloway’s aide, had told Chatsworth in confidence of the resentment at what some Philadelphians called the shocking massive conflagration. Chatsworth had dismissed the good citizens’ disapproval. Shock was what these people needed to keep them in line. 2 His dragoons could live with the bitter looks and the whispered words as long as people remained docile and obedient.
Obsequious “Ramrod John,” Chatsworth thought. The only man in the entire British Army to have killed a Rebel with his fuzee’s ramrod. Speared him like a wild Indian, having forgotten to reset it before firing. The man was a contemptible coward and obnoxious as a fawning hanger-on. Always reminding Chatsworth that he had saved his life as if it was a debt to be collected. It was difficult to tolerate the man. Trying so hard to be the gentleman he was not. Not surprising, Chatsworth thought. After all, he was only a farmer’s son.
Still, he recognized John could be useful to the dragoons in his position as aide to Superintendent Galloway. His network of spies and sympathizers knew where the Rebel leaders were hiding. There was talk of even venturing forth into New Jersey to capture them. Chatsworth wanted those long distance forays for the 16th. They might bag a few members of Congress. Or a Rebel General like Charles Lee, who had been captured the previous year at White’s Tavern in a daring action led by Tarleton. 3 There was glory to be gained in such raids.
Adam Cooper let the slack rope slip from his hands and stepped back from the A frame hoist as the twelve-pounder settled into the wagon. He turned away from the strong wind, his tri-corn held snugly on his head by a linen strip knotted under his chin over a neck stock Will Stoner had given him. He had two, Will said, both given him by Elisabeth. A worn nut-brown scarf covered the neck stock and wound around Adam’s collar to keep the blowing snow from going down the back of his dark blue short jacket. The stout canvas breeches were better than wool, but his toes were frozen in his thin black shoes. He wiggled them, feeling the rags inside his stockings and hoped the blisters caused by frostbite would not break.
A few of the men in the work party were barefoot, constantly shifting from one cracked bloody foot to the other, leaving dark crimson spots in the snow. Others, wore a patchwork of threadbare coats, woolen blankets and jackets, their calves covered by thin stockings with more holes than fabric, arms wrapped around their shoulders for warmth. Unwashed, infested with lice, constantly scratching and illkempt with scraggly hair and unshaven faces, Adam thought this work crew more resembled the destitute denizens of the wharves of Boston than soldiers.
Now it was the turn of the carpenters to repair the splintered oak supports of the gun carriage and its axle. Adam looked up at the grey sky and the light snow obscuring Mount Joy. Most inappropriately named, he thought, almost snorting to himself. He stared off to the left at the more aptly named Mount Misery. Nothing more than a steep hill, barely visible through the falling snow, the smoke rising on the plateau below from the rows of the cramped fetid oak log huts housing the army.
Will had been right. Adam, Captain Holmes and Titus had arrived just in time to starve together at Valley Forge. Fire cakes and water was all they had eaten for the past four days. Barely enough to keep body and soul alive, Adam thought gloomily. An inauspicious beginning to the first week of the new year.
The three of them were assigned to Colonel Sargent’s company of the Massachusetts Artillery Regiment. Captain Holmes moved in with two other officers. The huts of the rest of the Company were filled with their complement of twelve men and there was no room to spare inside. When Adam and Titus had found a hut among the Continentals with several empty bunks, the men unanimously objected to sharing quarters with Negroes. On their first night at Valley Forge, the two black Marblehead Mariners slept in a tent. Adam was incensed and vowed not to spend one more day under canvas. Captain Holmes intervened and they were placed in a cabin with only five other men, all from a New Jersey regiment. Of the rest of that hut’s twelve man complement, two had died a week ago in their sleep, three others with camp fever and the chills of ague were in a barn that served as their Regiment’s wretched hospital, and the remaining two were so covered with sores from “the itch” that they were confined to the scabies isolation huts. 4
The first day in the hut, Adam and Titus scoured the bed frames with boiling water and took the dirty straw bedding outside and covered them with snow to kill any remaining lice and fleas. Their attention to cleanliness won the grudging approval of the five white Privates although Adam sensed their unease at sharing quarters and cooking pots with Negroes.
Not that there was anything to cook. There were daily rumors of large supplies coming from New England, the soldiers imagining the provisions the wagons were carrying - beef, good flour for baking bread, whiskey, soap to scrub and get rid of the infernal lice, vinegar to prevent dysentery, blankets, breeches, shirts and warm coats, and most importantly for those who were now barefoot, calfskins to make boots and shoes. Yet nothing arrived and their only meal of the day was the fire cakes and water from the valley creek, and a mug of bark coffee.
At night, the huts were freezing. Despite the fireplace and clay caulking of the walls, the roof made of branches and sod leaked prodigious amounts of cold air. It rained one night and by morning the water on the dirt floor was ankle deep. One advantage to there being only seven men in the hut was they could all sleep at one end near the fireplace and cluster near the hearth to keep warm during the day.
Because so many horses had died of starvation and disease, the men yoked themselves to sleds and carts and hauled the firewood from the surrounding forest to the encampment. Adam thought his feet would freeze solid to the ground. The regimental doctor had issued instructions for the men not to walk on frostbitten toes, to heat them gradually with warm water, and remove blisters containing clear or milky fluid and coat the skin with lard. It was good advice but impractical because there was no lard and he had to trudge out in the cold to get firewood to keep the rest of his body warm and heat the water.
Adam found Valley Forge a far cry from the easy acceptance and camaraderie of the Marblehead Mariners’ barracks. He remembered when Will and Big Red first joined them at Cambridge in the spring of 1776. Big Red, now standing patiently in his traces, was not the same horse he had first seen
in Massachusetts or in the long retreat through New Jersey. Or even at Trenton, dragging a cannon through the storm to attack the Hessians. His shaggy coat barely concealed his ribs. The horse’s large hip bones protruded from his flanks like door knobs. Yellow mucus oozed from his nostrils as his head drooped toward the ground.
Adam walked over to where Will stood, gently rubbing his horse’s lower jaw.
“He is not right. His stomach feels tight.”
“So does mine,” Adam answered. “And it is the same cause. Lack of food.”
Will shook his head. “No. It is more than that.” He bent down and put his ear next to Big Red’s stomach. “There are no noises. Nothing is moving through.” He straightened up with a worried expression on his face.
Adam shrugged. He knew little about horses, rode them poorly and cared about them even less. He watched as Will undid the traces and walked Big Red a few steps away from the wagon. The horse lowered his head and stood with his lank haunches against the wind. Slowly, he nuzzled a small pine tree and began nibbling at the bark.
“Soon that bark will look like strips of beef to us and taste as good,” Adam said, putting his arm around Will’s shoulders. Will looked at the remaining artillery, placed at the triangle formed where the lane from the outer line of defenses joined Gulph Road leading back to camp. The carpenters had dismantled the broken gun carriages and were loading them on to the wagon.
“Sergeant. Get that horse hitched back before we freeze to death,” one of the men shouted. Will led Big Red back to the wagon. Adam heard one of the men curse as the wind changed direction and blew toward them. It always seemed the case. No matter which direction they went, the wind blew in their faces.
Adam trudged with Titus and the rest of the work crew along the ice-rutted road. Will and Captain Holmes, bent forward into the strong wind, walked slowly besides Big Red. As they came to the rows of snow covered huts of the regiments encamped closest to Gulph Road they heard shouting in unison- “No Meat! No Meat!” followed by hoots of soldiers imitating owls and the high raucous cawing of crows. The shouting and bird sounds seemed to have started at the huts nearest to them and seemed spread throughout the encampment. 5
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