“I have experienced a most terrible fear, numbing and swallowing my mind. I was thirteen years old when I was sold to Reverend Penrose. The screams of my mother when we were separated remain in my ears to this day. I knew not where I was going. I did not know if my new master would abuse me or how he would use me. I knew nothing,” she said angrily expelling the words like buckshot. “Knowing nothing creates the most overwhelming, horrifying fear.”
They were almost to the small market near the creek. “Adam. What I treasure most now is certainty. It enables me to cope with the loss of my mother and the awful memories I have of her life on that plantation. Our master, who is my father, used her again and again in that manner. I have two sisters and one little brother. That I know of,” she added vehemently. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “How many times must my poor mother give birth to children who are torn from her and sold like animals.” She wiped her nose on the linen cloth. “To return to Reverend Penrose and his house, and the kindness I experienced there, is something I know. I do not have the courage or strength Adam, to overcome the fear of existing as a runaway.”
“Sarah. Please let me. . .”
“I would not respect you if you deserted,” she continued hurriedly. “Many slaves are being freed upon joining your army. You must continue to support the cause.”
“Slaves may be freed for the expediency of replenishing our depleted ranks,” Adam replied angrily. “Remember the General whose meals you cook is a slaveholder and a Virginia planter.”
She removed her hand from his arm. “Yes, and the same General who signed the order authorizing the recruitment of slaves who will become freed men. As you are, Adam.” 2
“I was born a freeman,” Adam reminded her sternly, “and, as such, voluntarily joined my regiment. It is an important difference.” He became uncomfortable as the silence between them lengthened. “I will not desert and I will continue to make the most of being able to meet you on your errands. That is,” he bowed, “if the lady will permit it.”
She was smiling when he raised his head. “This lady would find that most acceptable.”
Part Two The Army Awakens
Chapter 6- Drills and Dinner
At the end of March, Private Henry Gillet, thinner and still feeling poorly, returned from the hospital at Princeton to Valley Forge. Once his fever had broken he had no tolerance for being bled further. When he had thought his days at the hospital would be his last on this earth, he wished himself back at camp among his fellow Rhode Islanders who at least would comfort him and see to a proper burial.
During his feverish haze, it seemed the only one who cared whether he lived or died was the Negro Private, the friend of Lieutenant Stoner. No, he recalled. That was not true. There was a woman, felicitously named Mercy, who came by frequently to make sure he was warm. At times, when his chills and fever were at their worst, he thought she was his wife Judith and called out to her not to leave him and wondered why she did. She said there were others to attend to. She was his wife. Why should she take care of others?
It was the colored Private who fed him when he was too weak to lift spoon to mouth and ensured no one stole his redcoat cavalry jacket given him by the Lieutenant. Gillet suspected Adam Cooper fed him some of his own rations to increase his complement of food. Pieces of bread for the soup, once a morsel of meat, a small portion of rum added to the tepid tea. And then his black, gruff countenance was gone. With no one to guarantee a marked grave for his wife Judith to find, Gillet decided to live.
The rows of the wooden huts for the Second Rhode Islanders still stood but some seemed woefully in need of repairs. Several had gaps in their roofs where a strong wind had shorn off the evergreen boughs or snow had caved in the rough shingles. Wisps of smoke blew toward the southeast from only half of the rock chimneys. The others pointed like rough grey fingers toward the clear blue sky, some still straight, others off kilter, accusing their makers of shoddy work. Gillet paused and pushed his shoulder against the plank door of the hut he had suffered and starved in for much of December and January. He smiled at the sight of his friend, Private Oliver Whipple, huddled at the rear against the glow of a smouldering fire. Whipple was reading a letter and did not look up until Henry called his name.
“We had given you up for dead,” Oliver said, stuffing the letter into his shirt before grabbing Gillet by the arm and standing back to look at him.
“You are barely skin and bones but seem fit enough.” “Where are the others?” Henry asked.
“Out gathering firewood or digging new latrines,” he said
shrugging. “I was engaged at the barn this morning,” he offered by way of explaining his absence from the work detail. Henry looked around the hut. Only five of the twelve beds seemed occupied. Oliver followed his gaze.
“If you mean them, they are dead,” he said wearily. “Phillips, Luther, Bright, Noice and Foster. All succumbed to typhus or the bloody flux. Batten and Vicker died of deep racking coughs. Cole froze to death one night, passing out from a gill and more of whiskey, not twenty yards from this hut.”
His hands dropped helplessly to his side. “If they died in the morning, we buried them in the afternoon. When they died at night, we buried them in the morning. That is, if it did not snow or blizzard or sleet or hail or the devil himself blow a nor’easter to this Godforsaken camp.”
Oliver gestured to somewhere outside where the burial grounds were.
“Are their graves marked?” Henry asked anxiously, worried his sickness could come upon him again and he would join those already gone.
“Do you think we have become heathens, Henry? They all were buried quite proper-like, with the Regimental Chaplain reading the appropriate Psalm, and the men all standing with tri-corns off, respectful and somber as the dirt was thrown on the coffin.”
“I had best report to Lieutenant Tew,” Henry said.
Oliver cackled, his arms flapping like a chicken. “You will have to fly to Providence to find him.” Whipple’s eyes raced around the room taking in the low ceiling beams, the chinks in the logs, leaping from bed to bed, back to the door and finally returning to Henry without fixing on his face. “The Major, Captains Olney and Hughes, and Lieutenants Tew and Curtis, all were given leave to return home to raise a Negro regiment. The General himself authorized it.” 1
“I would like to believe they will return,” he said, more to himself. “Yes. They should return.” He patted his shirt. “I wish I could see my dear wife and my little ones before the spring campaign is upon us.” He lowered himself to a stool and removed the sheets of paper from beneath his shirt. “This is all I have. One letter in three months. She wrote it in early December. One of my daughters had a bad cough. There was little money and my brother is out privateering and has his own wife and young ones to feed. That is if he is not captured or killed.”
Oliver’s worries were interrupted by the door swinging open. Henry recognized the three privates from his company, although they had not shared a hut before he left for the hospital. They greeted him nonchalantly and then shambled close to the fire for warmth.
“You could have put more logs in the hearth, Oliver,” snarled the one Henry recalled as Abraham Fish. He tossed his tri-corn on a bed and unknotted his frayed brown scarf. “I guess fixing the ladies’ carriages is hard work. Not like digging in frozen soil to fill in latrines overflowing with shit.”
Oliver stood up from his bunk bed. “My trade is carriage maker. The Colonel asked for volunteers to repair the carriage of General Greene’s wife. 2 If I can be of some use I will. It does not take an apprenticeship to learn to throw dirt on shit.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” Fish said, turning to confront Whipple.
Henry stepped between them. “After Fort Mercer this past October, we have been through hell together. Both of you let this pass.” 3
The soldier finished untying his scarf and threw it carelessly on a bunk bed. “Will you be staying in this hut?” he asked Henry.
Gillet nodded. “I was here before being sent to the hospital at Princeton,” he said by way of explanation.
“You will see, much has changed.”
“Wait until we begin drilling,” one of the others said. “From morning until night.” Gillet looked puzzled. “Sergeant Billings says our company is next. We are to learn a new marching step,” the third man added, sitting himself wearily down on a bunk bed. “To get us to the battlefield sooner so we can get ourselves killed faster. We are to be the first of our regiment to be trained. I have seen with my own eyes the others marching to and fro, this way and that. It seems to me a waste of time and strength.” He bent over and rubbed one dirt encrusted ankle. “Not to mention wearing my already thin soled shoes down to my skin.”
“You mean you want more time to play cards and gamble,” Fish said, turning his back to the fire.
In his first two days since his return, Henry did sense a difference. Mount Misery actually looked pleasant with its beginning tinge of green. The ground was no longer frozen solid. His toes did not freeze within the hour of being outside. The warming temperatures brought with them a vile stench, a combined noxious stew of decaying dead horses and human waste. Many of the soldiers had used their huts for latrines instead of struggling through the frigid snows to relieve themselves in the pits. Now their living quarters smelled like cesspools.4
The rations were better too. Real bread and beef, cabbages and potatoes. Nothing like the fire cakes in the camp or the watery soup they had fed him at the hospital.
On the third day, in the early darkness of dawn, Sergeant Billings rousted the men from their huts and by 6:15 the company was assembled on the Grand Parade Ground. Colonel Angell waited on his horse facing the men with Captain Ward mounted next to him
When they were lined up, the Colonel urged his horse slowly forward. “Soldiers of Rhode Island,” he said in a loud strong voice, surveying the irregular lines of ragged clothed men in front of him. “Captain Ward’s company has been selected to be the first from our Regiment to train in the new drilling and marching. You will be competing with companies from Massachusetts, Connecticut and Virginia.” His horse snorted as if to emphasize it too was concerned about the honor of the Regiment. “Others have been at it longer. But we are stalwart sons of Rhode Island. If you apply yourselves with diligence I am certain you will be cited first among all others. Captain Ward! Take command.” 5
There were seventy-eight men, standing loosely in seven files of ten and one shorter line of eight at the front. Instead of marching as they had before in straggling lines, they were told to keep the files close together. Sergeant Billings and another, accompanied by the beat from a drummer boy, shouted out the four-step cadence. Starting out on the left foot, they trudged back and forth on a small segment of the parade ground, ignoring as best they could the bellowed commands, drum beats and orders for other units. It was a natural pace and they grasped it quickly.
Turning as a company was another matter. Their files became mixed up, the men bumped into each other and became more frustrated the harder they tried. As tempers flared, Captain Ward intervened and halted their clumsy attempts to wheel as an entire unit. They broke the maneuver down by twenty man platoons, two files each, practicing right and left face and oblique steps and then upon the command, “Form Company,” reuniting again. By the end of the morning, while they could not yet wheel as an entire company, they could perform as smaller parts with some precision.
“When did Sergeant Billings become such a drill master?” Henry inquired as his platoon rested at the edge of the parade ground. He remembered the sergeant, a tanner from Providence, as a gruff sort of fellow but quick to forgive and overlook slackness as long as a work detail accomplished its tasks.
“Shortly after the old Prussian arrived in late February,” Whipple said, offering Gillet his canteen. “Our Sergeant was one of those selected to be drilled by von Steuben himself. That was hard service, drilling in the snow and rain from dawn to dusk.”
“It put an edge on Billings,” one of the others added.
“You should have been here,” Fish said.
“I did not leave by choice,” Henry reminded him peevishly.
“We loitered on the edge of the parade ground, warming ourselves by the fire, watching, while he drilled a selected group from morning until night,” Fish continued.
“Do not forget about the hound,” someone prompted.
“I was getting to that part,” Fish replied, unhappy with the interruption. “He has a dog, long thick coated, tall with thin legs and face- just the hound for us here- no fat on him,” he continued, caught up by his own account. “And then his master, this big trunk of a man, gold buttons on the calves of his boots, a long wool cape, a riding crop in his hand. He strode up and down the lines, shouting all the time like an enraged Hessian.”
“He was able to count to four in English, I will give him that,” another chimed in.
“Yes,” Whipple said. “And he would curse the men in different languages. Sergeant Billings, one of the original soldiers the Prussian trained, returned to the our Company like a man who had been taught the gospel from on high and was on a mission to convert us heathens to the true faith without a moment to lose.” 6
“So what were the changes this Prussian brought about?” Gillet asked.
“There is no more questioning orders. All is discipline and precision. That a senior officer would drill the men, day in and day out, instead of sitting in some warm parlor planning maneuvers, writing dispatches or whatever else those generals do, is enough for me,” Whipple explained. “Although, I concede Sergeant Billings could do well to afford us more time to rest.”
“There will be no more for us now,” a soldier called. “Here he comes.”
In the afternoon, they practiced the new and simpler set of commands for loading and firing their muskets. Due to the shortage of powder, they dry- fired their weapons. At the end of the drill, the sound of their individual flints scraping metal was virtually simultaneous in each rank as they pretended to discharge their volleys. They ended the day, standing in ranks, the first rank mock-firing, the second rank moving smartly upon command about half a foot to the right so they were between the soldiers of the first rank, and then dry-firing.
The next morning, they practiced the same drills as before and then began instructions with the bayonet. They milled around, exchanging small talk as those with bayonets lent them to those preparing for the drill. Forming up in the front rank, Gillet held his piece horizontally and awaited further orders. The second rank held their muskets on an angle to clear the heads of those in the front. On command, “Charge Bayonet!” they advanced, with some behind stepping on the heels of those ahead. “Order in the ranks,” a sergeant shouted, as the left of the second line began arguing with each other.
Free from work detail, they drilled incessantly for the better part of two weeks. They learned to stand at attention instead of milling around waiting for orders, although there was much grumbling and questioning of why one had to stand still when there was nothing to do. They trained until they were loading, dry-firing and returning to shoulder firelock in twenty seconds, almost in unison. Although they still thought it silly, they went through the motions of right and left dress on command and could change from the regular marching step to the quick step, then the oblique step. They knew wheeling, countermarching and breaking off and reforming by platoon and company and they learned to respond to drum signals for commands as well as shouted orders, which had sounded strange to them when they first began their drills. 7
On the first Wednesday in April, it rained. It began as a steady drizzle which by mid-morning reduced itself to a fine mist. The Grand Parade Ground had long since been churned to mud by the drilling, marching feet of the various companies of soldiers. Gillet and Whipple stood at rest in the first file, waiting for the next drill to commence. Water dripped from Henry’s tri-corn down his back. He longed to take off
his hat and shake it out with his free hand, but resisted the temptation.
With Lieutenant Lodge in command, they went through the entire drilling sequences again, wheeling in formation, breaking up into platoons and then reforming as a company, breaking again and ending with a mock bayonet charge. It was only when they were drawn up and given the command to rest, that the company was aware they were being observed by a group of officers. Henry assumed the large caped figure with the long-coated dog lying quietly alongside his master’s horse was von Steuben. The General conversed with another officer who nodded and rode forward to speak to Colonel Angell. The Colonel smiled and trotted his horse slowly toward them, followed by Captain Ward.
“General von Steuben has asked me to convey his congratulations to Captain Ward’s Company. He has predicted if the Regiment performs as well as this company, we are capable of driving any British unit from the field. Well done, men. Well done, indeed.” 8 In a break with discipline, the men cheered the Prussian General and then their Colonel. Von Steuben doffed his hat in response.
That night, extra rations of rum and meat were issued. For the first time since learning how to employ their bayonets as weapons, the men were permitted to again use them as spits for the beef. Gillet and Whipple shared one of the skewers, carving slices off the roast with their knives into a pan and chewing slowly with pleasure, letting the grease drip down their chins. The misty rain had stopped earlier, the sky was now clear and the stars above the army’s cooking fires winked like beacons of heavenly approval.
“I do believe the General,” Henry said. “I am much more the soldier now for all that drilling than I was before.”
“We did well enough before,” Whipple replied. “We beat back the Hessians at Fort Mercer.”
“We were in a fort in defensive earthen works where no maneuvers were needed. Now, we are able to fight on a battlefield. Though we may be hard pressed I feel we will prevail in the coming campaign.”
Spies and Deserters Page 10
