The Continental

by Tony Roberts

  Finally he selected a new commander – General Nathaniel Greene. And better still, he gave permission to Casca to join his force being gathered in New York state to go down south, verbally confirming his orders to seek out Sir Richard Eley on the battlefield and kill him.

  Casca thumped the table top gently in delight. About damned time.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Being with the army in the south was one thing; coming to battle with them was another matter. By the time they’d got to North Carolina it was winter and the fighting had died down. The state of the soldiers there was pitiable and Greene would have the devil’s own job in getting them back into an effective fighting force. The core of his army were a few units of regulars with a large number of militiamen supplementing them. Not a force to challenge the battle-hardened British, Casca surmised critically.

  Of his New Jerseymen, only a few had been permitted to come with him. Captain Soderling had remained behind and been promoted Major, while the eager Lieutenant Connors had volunteered to go with Casca and was now a captain, much to his surprise.

  The winter was spent trying to get the army up to a fighting standard. Morale had been badly hit, by both the defeat at Camden, and the fact that Cornwallis and his army had been marching at will through the Carolinas. Some good news had come from a victory at King’s Mountain where a British-led Loyalist force had been destroyed, but the main British army under Cornwallis had to be stopped somehow.

  Casca, Connors and the few men that had come with them had been attached to the 1st Maryland Regiment and they spent the long winter days training with them. Casca soon struck up a friendship with the commander of the regiment, Colonel Gunby. Gunby recognized the professionalism of his new major and gave him free rein to train the men under him to his satisfaction. They looked smart in their dark blue jackets but Casca had them mud spattered on more than one occasion, marching them through thick undergrowth and marshy terrain. When anyone complained Casca pointed out that they would most likely be fighting in such conditions so training in them was the most sensible move.

  Nobody argued the case, particularly when Casca plowed through the worst of the undergrowth himself, leading the panting, red-cheeked men. Roaring at them to keep up, Casca had them running, standing, forming from column into line, forming two ranks, three ranks, then retreating by line, covering each other.

  “The British use the bayonet very well,” he told them one day, standing before the neat line of men. “If they close I don’t want you turning tail and running, because in war the most casualties come when one side flees.” He had a flash of a particularly nasty battle he’d once partaken in, back in England three hundred years before. It had been a cold, snowy day when two armies had clashed on a bleak, wide Yorkshire field close to the village of Towton. Casca had been on the losing side that day and remembered the dreadful moment when the entire thirty thousand strong army had broken and fled for safety, only to be cut down in heaps by their exultant enemy.

  The deeply sided watercourse at the rear of the field had run red for days as men had been felled down the slopes and across the water, called Cock Beck; and those coming behind could cross without getting wet. Casca had managed to struggle free, but the insane slaughter that day had given him nightmares for weeks afterwards. They said twenty thousand had perished in that one awful day, all because one side had turned and run. A rout was infectious; it took well trained men to stand and fight when others around them were running.

  “You must learn to stand and fight it out. You will learn how to use the bayonet properly, how to turn your enemy’s bayonet aside and then to render him incapable of fighting – or better still, to kill him.”

  He showed the men how to block and then to counter. The stance was important, one foot planted behind the other. Standing with both feet alongside one another was not the way – it left one vulnerable to being shoved off-balance. “So you stand like this,” he showed them, “and brace. It’s very much like men like you used to stand in the days of Gustavus Adolphus when they used to fight with the pike.”

  “Who, sir?” one of the men piped up, leaning on his musket.

  “Swedish king, led his army in the Thirty Years’ War in Europe just over a century and a half back.”

  “You study history, sir?”

  Casca grinned. “Sort of. Close study of battlefield tactics, you might say. So – the bayonet. Deadly weapon once you get in close. Stab like this,” he lunged, “pull hard – the damned blade could get caught in clothing or in between ribs. If the victim falls at your feet, then put one foot on him and pull hard.”

  “Like what, sir?”

  “What’s your name, soldier?”

  “Jim Richards, sir.”

  “Well, Jim Richards,” Casca smiled wickedly, “lie down at my feet.”

  The others cheered and Richards scowled at them, then slowly got on the ground. “It’s cold, sir.”

  “Get one of the camp ladies to kiss you better then, Richards,” Casca grinned. The men laughed and made lewd comments about one of the camp women who apparently had taken a shine to Richards. Richards colored and lay there under sufferance. Casca placed one of his feet on his chest. “See, like so, and then you pull like hell on the musket. Twist it if it don’t come free at once. Don’t take too long though in trying to get it out, because you’ll only have a few seconds before some ugly great grenadier comes stamping at you wanting to defile your cute ass.”

  The men laughed again, even Richards who was helped up by Casca. The soldier brushed himself down. “What then, if it don’t come free, sir?”

  “Head butt, kick, punch, bite, anything. Grab the other guy’s gun, for Christ’s sake.” Casca knew all too well that in a hand-to-hand situation there was no place for rules or regulations. It was kill or be killed, and the nastier you were the better the chances in getting out of it alive. Better that than listen to laws made by people who’d never seen a battle sat in their comfortable offices somewhere like London or Paris. Piss on them.

  The men nodded in agreement. After all, it was their lives on the line and anyone who helped in giving them advice, training or the equipment needed to survive the war was a friend. Soldiers needed to trust their leaders and officers in battle, and one like this scarred, rough looking major sounded as though he was a man to follow into hell. You’d have a chance with a man like that.

  “One piece of advice,” Casca said, “don’t step over a fallen enemy unless he’s dead or nearly so. It’s been known for men to get stabbed in the back or even worse, up from below after they made the mistake of passing on from a wounded foe.”

  The soldiers grimaced. Getting stabbed in that certain place was one of their worst nightmares. Casca remembered all too well being equipped by the English army with what was commonly called a balloch knife when he’d fought for Henry V on the Agincourt campaign. A long-bladed knife, pointed, about a foot in length, it had been designed precisely to reach the opponent’s family jewels with a stab under the metal skirts worn by men-at-arms in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It had been well named.

  Casca himself quailed at the thought of being wounded down there. So far he’d been lucky in escaping such wounds, but what would happen as an immortal if he were cut there? Would he grow new ones if they were cut off? He hastily tried to think of something else. He wondered where that bastard Sir Richard was.

  * * *

  The British army was marching through North Carolina. Sir Richard was not pleased. Lord Cornwallis was sending them all over the blasted place to no good effect, and his feet simply ached. With the demise of Bradbury he now had no personal valet to tend his needs, so he’d press-ganged the surly Corporal McGinnes into doubling as his batman. McGinnes would do, but he lacked the finesse of Bradbury. When they returned to civilized surroundings he’d ensure that he got a proper valet.

  He was sat on his three-legged stool, his feet being soothed in a bowl of heated water. McGinnes had used the camp-fires to boil
the water and had mixed it with the correct volume of cold to the right temperature. Sir Richard was sure he had blisters or some foot ailment. Perhaps he’d be excused parade on the morrow. The fact he’d ridden most of the distance was irrelevant. He needed the camp surgeon to examine his awful injuries. Maybe he was bad enough to be shipped back to New York where he would take over the negotiations to get his son back. That whining Whig Jacquard had foolishly allowed the rebels to arrange for a so-called ‘independent’ party to interview his wife and allow her to fabricate all sorts of outrageous stories of his inappropriate behavior.

  Now filthy lawyers had gotten their fingers into the case who knows where it would end? No doubt they’d see an opportunity to suck him dry and leave him destitute. He was only just beginning to arrange payments to his creditors in England, and he certainly did not want a fresh set of leeches and sharks devouring his newly found wealth. He needed to find a cheap and useful lawyer. Who, he didn’t know, but by heavens he’d need one. The rebels had written to Jacquard with their lawyers stating because of Sir Richard’s violence towards Lady Eley it was inadvisable to allow her to return, and since she was looking after the young Cass – Sir Richard virtually frothed at the name – it was deemed proper to allow her to continue to look after the boy until the ending of hostilities when the matter would be re-appraised as to the suitability of who would look after the boy.

  Damn them all to perdition. The flames of hell would be a preferable fate for them all when he got his hands on them.

  “Corporal McGinnes,” Sir Richard said suddenly.

  “Sah!” McGinnes shot to his feet, ramrod straight and snapped his heels together.

  Sir Richard liked that touch. The fat unlamented Purseman hadn’t been able to do that. “Fetch the surgeon. I require a professional assessment of my injuries. I’m simply worn out with pain and discomfort.”

  “Sah!”

  “And McGinnes,” Sir Richard waved in the direction of his portable camp cabinet. “While I’m waiting I think a nice port will assist in helping me relax.”

  “Sah!” McGinnes supplied the major with the necessary amount of the red liquid, sneaking a tot for himself as he poured it out first, then left to find the surgeon, smacking his lips in pleasure. There were advantages in being the personal aide to the regimental commander.

  As expected the surgeon found little wrong with Sir Richard, apart from a mild bout of gout, and advised him to stay off his feet as much as possible. It all made the baronet that much more irritable and he began writing copious letters to New York, demanding that action be taken to getting his son from his wife. He was no longer interested in Rose; she’d done her job in giving him a son. If she didn’t wish to stay with him then that was all the better. And after all, there were the camp women who would do anything for the right price. A man like him always had coin on him to buy even a few of the married women who inhabited the camp. In fact the thought appealed to him at that moment. There was this particularly buxom wench who was married to one of the privates under his command. He’d admired the rolling hips and swaying form of the woman and found out she was working as one of the camp washing women.

  Well damn it, she could provide a little extra service to him for a little coin on the side. The lower ranks and their families were always scratching around for money, and he had enough to persuade even a dedicated wife to offer herself. He chuckled to himself. Keep the lower classes poor and they were so easily controllable.

  He ordered McGinnes to summon the woman on the pretext there was washing to collect, and then to stand guard outside his tent and let nobody in. McGinnes and another soldier stood guard as the woman, Beth, stood before Sir Richard.

  “Now before you collect my things,” he waved at a pile of soiled garments, “I wish for you to perform an extra duty.” He held up two shillings. It was a small fortune to Beth.

  The woman caught her breath. It was clear what was being asked of her, but two shillings could get her a week’s food for her and her man. She hesitated, torn. She didn’t want to cheat on her doting husband but…….

  Sir Richard beckoned to her and gestured for her to kneel before him. Slowly she did, her eyes fixed on the coins. Sir Richard slowly pressed them into her cleavage, an abundant chasm bursting up from her corseted torso. The coins vanished into the acreage of flesh. The baronet smiled again.

  Beth slowly unfastened Sir Richard’s breeches and bent forward, closing her eyes and mind to what she was doing. Two shillings to pleasure a man for a few minutes? She could swallow her pride – and of course that wouldn’t be the only thing she would swallow that day.

  Sir Richard sighed and leaned back in his chair. Yes, camp life could be pleasurable after all, if one ignored the wind, rain, flies and dirt. Being in the money again could buy you so much. Now all that needed to be done was to get his son back, and life would be rosy all over again. That, and killing that damned Lonnergan man.

  * * *

  The armies marched all over North Carolina, back and forth, maneuvering for the best position to offer battle. Although the British army was about half the size of the force under Greene, they had some of the best units available to Cornwallis, and Greene didn’t want to get involved in a stand-up fight in the open. He wanted Cornwallis in a place where the terrain suited him.

  Finally he got his wish; tiring of being chased he turned and offered battle at a place called Guilford Courthouse.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It was, so Casca reckoned to himself, the perfect place to offer battle. A heavily wooded area broken in a couple of places by fields, bordered by fencing. The road they had marched to the place ran east-west and Greene had placed his army in three distinct lines along this. At the front were North Carolinian militiamen, defending the eastern edge of cornfields, positioned behind the thick wooden split-rail fencing that bordered it. Behind them stood the woods which would give them cover when they retreated. They had orders to fire two volleys before retreating.

  The second line straddled the road to Hillsborough and was comprised of Virginia militiamen. Casca wondered about their reliability, for he’d been told these men had fled at the Battle of Camden without firing a shot. Greene trusted they would stand this time, but one of his subordinates had positioned riflemen behind them with, so Casca had heard, orders to shoot the first man who turned to run.

  Casca and the continentals were in the third line, five hundred yards behind the Virginians, placed on the lip of a ridge that overlooked the second set of fields, so they had a clear space in front of them – a killing field. They had two men to every one redcoat, so the advantage would appear to be with Greene.

  Casca leaned on the fence and surveyed the terrain ahead. The Virginians were out of sight in the woodland on the other side of the two hundred yard wide clearing. Connors had joined him. The ground sloped down before them into a vale while off to the left the fields opened out past a small ravine. The road to the courthouse ran along the clearing and it would be along here that the British were expected to come, emerging from the woodland ahead of them, hopefully, so Casca thought, into a series of volleys delivered by the Marylanders and Virginians waiting quietly on the edge of the wooded ridge. There were a few cannon here, too, to add to the weight of shot.

  It was March, and winter was still clinging on in places stubbornly. The trees were not yet in bud but it wouldn’t be long before this place was full of leaf with insects and birds, doing their thing. Best to get man’s affairs over with here now before nature got going.

  Casca took his time looking around, his senses taking in the sights, sounds and smells of the environment. For a man so used to death and killing, it was times like this when all was quiet and he could appreciate the beauty of his surroundings that he liked the most. Death would not be long in arriving here, so now was the time for quiet reflection.

  “It’s the waiting that’s the worst, isn’t it, sir?” Connors said softly, a tremor in his voice.

  “It’
ll be fine once it starts, Connors. Just keep the men together firing. As long as we stand and fight we’ll be fine.” Casca sounded optimistic but doubts tugged at his mind. The militiamen were an unknown quantity; they had run the last time there’d been a fight, and the regulars had more than once made their feelings clear about the quality of these irregulars. At least the terrain here favored the Americans, even providing them with cover to retreat should the battle go badly. It was down to Cornwallis to attack and drive them off. Could he do it with an outnumbered force? Casca waved Connors to take up his position. The day was well advanced; it was past noon. Cornwallis had best start soon or night would come before the battle was decided. He’d spoken to Greene a few days previously, handing the general Washington’s orders that had been given to Casca before he’d come down south.

  Greene had looked at the orders with a slight look of distaste; he didn’t like the secrecy angle, neither did he like what was tantamount to allowing an officer under his command the freedom to carry out an assassination of an enemy officer. But orders were orders. He’d handed the orders back with a sigh and nodded his acceptance. Now he waited behind Casca and his unit for the arrival of the enemy, standing with his entourage of staff officers and messengers, ready to send orders to the various units, hoping they would acquit themselves well that day. He was staking a lot on the belief his men would stand and fight against the cream of the British army, Guards units included.

  Casca paced slowly along the rear of the two lines of men, sensing their tension too. They wanted to get even for Camden. They all looked up as the sound of shots from ahead came to them. The battle had started. Clapping Connors on the shoulder, Casca made his way back to his position on the extreme left of the regiment’s position, close to where the second Maryland regiment’s position began. Casca slid his saber free of its scabbard and looked at the edge. Clean. Just how it should be. Oiled. The edge free of nicks and uneven surfaces. The weapon was as good as it could be, having been supplied to him when he’d gotten back to his unit after his imprisonment. It had never been used in battle.