by Jack Fernley
‘The atomic bomb? My dear Generalfeldmarschall, there is no atomic bomb. So the Führer did not sketch out your mission? Yes, we were experimenting here with Heisenberg and his team to harness the atom, but so far we have had no success. It was Doktor Bewilogua here, while researching the area of low-temperature physics – you’ll have to excuse my layman’s ignorance, I am afraid I may understand the passions that motivate an entire nation, but for the life of me I cannot fathom the science of this project – who, I hope this does not insult you, Doktor, stumbled?’
Bewilogua nodded his head, ‘I will accept the initial discovery was a stumble. So much of science begins with a stumble. The skill is knowing whether the stumble leads us to a dead end or a new vista.’
‘Ha, indeed, and what a vista you opened up for mankind, my dear Doktor! You were looking for divine power and instead you found an even greater power, and we are about to unleash it.’
Von Greim opened his hands, a silent question playing across his face.
Goebbels read the expression and asked: ‘Generalfeldmarschall, why are we losing this war for civilisation? The barbaric Slavic hordes from the East may have greater numbers, but sacrifice on the scale they endure is unsustainable. They are barely civilised, nothing they create will survive. Given time we would easily outwit them. The British, perfidious Albion? Untrustworthy, weak, immoral, they have thrown away the greatest empire the world has seen, grown soft, too easily seduced by those they rule. The French, the French we can easily disregard. No, the reason we are losing this war is because of the Americans.
‘Their Lebensraum is far too great for us. A land of almost unlimited resources. Imagine if that was our land, populated by our people. Free of all the limitations of the past, free of the Jew, the Slav, the Gypsy, the scum that has weakened all of Europe. Imagine a German America. Imagine an America infused with the same principles, beliefs, spirit that our Führer has given us. Imagine how history would have been written! How different mankind’s story would have been if the first free Americans had been fired by the ideology that has made us so strong! By now our people would be living with the fruits of our manifold destiny. That is your mission, Generalfeldmarschall. That will be your lasting achievement.’
PART 2
BUCKINGHAM TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA
20 December 1776
FOUR
It was the worst winter anyone could remember. The snow and ice had come early in December and showed no sign of retreating – rivers frozen for weeks, blizzards blocking roadways, bitter winds sucking up all hope. It was the worst winter at the end of the worst year. The war seemed lost. Freedom seemed lost.
Washington’s army had suffered defeat after defeat, retreating from New York, through New Jersey to Pennsylvania; only the Delaware River kept away the British and final destruction. The Continental Army, they called it, but it defied such a description. It was made up of all kinds of the new America: the urban elites, the country folk, the freed slave, the slave owner, the mechanic, the labourer. This was no proud army; the main body of the army was little more than a ragbag of bootless, homesick civilians, all looking for an excuse to get back to their families. Within days the annual enlistment would be up and Washington feared the worst. He would lose the majority of his men just as Lord Cornwallis’s army was being supplied with fresh German mercenaries, Hessian troops heavily experienced from war in Europe. Even Washington’s closest confidants talked openly of suing for peace. Congress had fled from Philadelphia, two of its members had crossed to the British and scores of citizens were signing the British Proclamation of 30 November, pledging loyalty to the crown. The Revolutionary War was all but over. This harsh winter would finish it.
And the year had been harder on no man more than Edward Hand.
In the glorious summer of 1775, no one symbolised more the hope of the coming struggle than Hand. A first-generation immigrant, from Clyduff, Ireland, he had joined the British Army as a surgeon’s mate, which in turn had brought him to the colonies. America offered Edward Hand a dream of advancement that even he, a fully trained surgeon from Trinity College, Dublin, could not see in a pauperised Ireland in hock to Britain’s imperial interests. Once in America, he soon resigned his commission and set himself up in Pennsylvania as a doctor, practising in and around the Irish settlements of Lancaster County. There he had fallen in love with Catherine Ewing, a second-generation Scot from Philadelphia. They were both enthusiastic supporters of the rights of the colonies, and when war had broken out, he had assumed a role as a lieutenant colonel in the 1st Pennsylvania Riflemen. He was just thirty that summer, of moderate height, strong cheekbones, his high forehead showing the first suggestions of a fading hairline, a handsome man with a taste for glory. In that year, Hand had been one of the heroes of both the siege of Boston and the battle of Bunker Hill, coming to be noticed and highly regarded by Washington. At the end of that most tumultuous of years, Catherine announced she was with child, a child due in August 1776.
And then the tide had turned and all Hand’s hopes and dreams were washed away.
First came the defeats of the army. The sudden and dramatic change of affairs that placed the impetus with the British and led to people disparaging the ability of the Colonists’ army and the incompetence of its leader, Washington. In August, Hand played a major role in ensuring the Colonists’ army’s successful retreat from Brooklyn Heights with no casualties. No sooner had his feet landed on Manhattan’s soil than came the letter that crushed him. A simple note: ‘Your wife’s confinement has ended early. She and your son both lost.’
Hand broke that night from camp with Washington’s blessing. He reached his home in Trenton, the candles burning dimly, a hearth barely heated, his sister Sarah waiting for him, Catherine and the baby Edward cleaned and dressed. He buried them the following day and entered a period of fog, of drinking, of simply getting through the days to hit the bottle at night. Anything to avoid the grief that threatened to swallow him whole.
He returned to the army, Sarah coming to the camp with him, to serve as a cook and a nurse. She and his best friend, Patrick O’Leary, proving himself to be more than the Irish oaf he pretended to be, provided comfort and support, trying to minimise the damage he was wont to do to himself. But the failures of the Colonists at Fort Washington, Fort Lee and elsewhere in the autumn only seemed to illustrate the hopelessness of everything. And yet, without the war, what did he have?
Tonight, as on so many recent nights, Hand sat in a nameless tavern with Sarah and Pat, arguing with anyone who cared.
‘I’ll say it one more time: what would be the point in going back to Lancaster now? We have nothing and we’ll have even less if the English win. Their revenge will be pitiless.’ They were debating whether now was the time to face the truth. Give the war up, Hand was adamant. After all, he had nothing else now, now Catherine was no longer there to return to. ‘They’ll dig out all us bogtrotters and any rights we might have will disappear. We’ll become like Cromwell’s people, slaves.’
Hand pointed to Oliver Cromwell, former slave, now a freeman fighting alongside them.
‘And that’ll be a true disaster,’ replied Patrick, shouting over to Cromwell. ‘Oliver, what’ll it be like for us poor Irish boys when the English put us to work alongside you Negroes down on those cotton farms?’
‘What? You think you redheaded boys with your puny white skin will last more than a few days wi’ that sun beating down on ya? “Oh, mister, please get me out of the sun, have you got me a parasol I can use while I pick this here cotton?”’
Cromwell gave a large belly roar, so much so that even Hand felt happy to join in.
‘I’m no redhead, that’s Pat you’re talking of. And you’re right, he wouldn’t last a day.’
‘I’d last longer than you, they’d end up putting you in the scullery, dressed up in a maid’s outfit, fella.’
‘There’s freshly laundered maid’s uniforms, fresh linens as well? I’ll have some of what tho
se Brits are offering!’ shouted Sarah to more laugher.
Cromwell left his group and walked over to the Irish. ‘You Irish, anyways, you be so beaten down, you’ll be slaves to us niggers by sundown on the first day! You’d be the lowest of the low! It’ll be a good day for the African man. At last we’ll have somebody to master!’
‘That’s my point: we’ll be slaves to these idiots, and our children will be slaves if we give up this fight.’
‘You might be right, Eddie Hand, you might be wrong, but I would say it’s not a question you would like to put to the challenge. In which case I would say that we shouldn’t much bother to find out, but keep to this struggle for as long as we can muster arms.’
The two men splashed their pewter tankards together, drowning another gulp of warm, foaming beer.
‘A happy Christmas to yer, Cromwell!’
‘And to you, Hand. And to a good year to come. You’ve suffered more than most this past year. We all know that.’
A little later that evening, just past the time when the songs had been sung and thoughts of drink were being overwhelmed by tiredness, the door of the tavern opened to a new group of men.
They were members of the Continental Army, but unlike many of the men who had joined the army, these four were gentlemen from the slave-owning lands of Virginia. Their fancy coats underlined their prosperity.
They came in, the four of them, more swanky than the northerners – not for them beer but rye and whiskey – different in taste and attitude. As they threw back the drams, their leader spied the now sleeping Oliver Cromwell.
‘What have we got here, a nigger in our camp? Boy, what are you doing here with these fine gentlemen?’
He kicked the sleeping Cromwell’s foot.
‘What? What you playing at?’ Cromwell awoke confused.
‘I’m asking what a nigger is doing drinking in this bar.’
‘My name is Oliver Cromwell and I’m a free farmer from New York and I have every right of a freeman to drink here, among my fellow soldiers.’
‘Not in my book, you ain’t. We don’t need any niggers to win this war. King George may be wanting slaves to run from their masters and take up arms, so why don’t you take your black arse over to Howe and beg for your freedom, boy. But first, take that nigger arse outside and find some drinking place more suited for ya, get cha now, boy!’
‘I ain’t going nowhere.’
‘You’ll go where I tell you to go.’
‘I was born a slave, but I won my freedom squarely and rightly, ain’t no man, white or coloured, going to tell me where I rest my head.’
‘Is there a problem here?’ Hand came to stand firmly by the side of the southerner. ‘Who are you?’
‘Sir, Lieutenant Harold Penny of the Virginian Rifles. I have a problem with your drinking companion. I don’t like to take my drink where there’s niggers.’
‘I see no such thing. I see one of the most loyal members of the 2nd New Jerseys. One of the best, most honest fighters in the Continental Army. A man I have been proud to fight alongside. A man free to drink wherever he pleases. If you don’t like that, well, you’re free to go find your drink somewhere else.’
‘I don’t intend taking my drink anywhere else but here, but I do intend to take this nigger and any nigger lover with him outside, so I can have my drink and not be contaminated. You understand, Paddy?’
‘I understand perfectly.’
‘Good.’
‘You better pay up and leave then.’
‘You Irish bogtrotter, you’re the one that’ll be leaving.’
Penny swung a fist, missing the Irishman who stepped sharply back, but then Hand moved forward and threw a punch to the southerner’s stomach. As Penny reeled back, his three friends joined in and so did Cromwell, O’Leary and a few other regulars from the Pennsylvanian Rifles. Now a proper fight had started. Penny came back at Hand, striking him a blow to the right temple and then pushing him over a table, scattering glasses and bottles to the floor. Hand fell to the floor, Penny’s boot striking him in the side. Rolling away, he tried to get to his feet, but the Virginian was on him, pinning him to the ground, punching him in the side and then the face. Dazed, Hand groped around him for anything that might serve as a weapon. He found the neck of a bottle, grabbed it and swung at Penny.
Only when the bottle sliced open the artery and blood began to spurt across them both, did Hand realise it was a jagged broken bottle.
FIVE
‘You know my rules, Hand. Discipline in an army is everything. Once discipline breaks down, you lose the army. This incident is especially ill-favoured. The Continental Army is a confederation, an alliance of different parties. If we are to win this war and gain our independence, I need to keep all the interests aligned. North and south, aligned together. God damn it, sir!’
General George Washington grimaced in agony. The constant pain from his teeth made him irritable at the best of times, but the events of the previous evening at the tavern had tried his patience beyond reason. It was symbolic of the near disaster he was facing: his army was falling apart. He sensed that on his daily walks around camp: he could hear it in the low murmurs that grew the second he passed; he saw it in the men who avoided eye contact where once they would have raised a ‘Hurrah!’; and he smelled it, that unique smell of defeatism, that was starting to pervade the camp and growing stronger each day.
The evening’s conference with his generals Henry Knox, Hugh Mercer, Horatio Gates and Nathanael Greene had started badly when a messenger had brought news that Charles Lee, supposedly his most senior field officer, had been captured by the enemy in a tavern in Basking Ridge; the victim, it was said, of some contrivance involving the British and a local woman. He smelled a rat. He had endured enough disloyalty from Lee and his friend Gates. Their allegiance to himself was questionable at best. He could ill afford further bad news. And now he had this issue with Hand to deal with.
Washington had come to hold Hand in high regard; he was one of his most trusted men in the field. But now the general had the wrath of the Virginian officers to contend with. It had taken so much energy to bring them into the main body of his army in July. He had pushed his closest friend, Hugh Mercer, to breaking point almost in getting these troops integrated, to ensure the British could not claim the Continental Army was an army only of the northern towns and cities. It was the kind of problem he had foreseen when he had opposed free Negroes fighting in the army. Such conflict was inevitable.
‘Whatever moral impugnation we might share regarding the institution of slavery, has to be set aside against the greater good of maintaining our alliance. Your efforts in killing one of the most regarded southern officers just made that even more difficult to maintain. And if I do not act swiftly and be seen to act appropriately, there is a possibility that our great alliance may fall apart. The Lord knows it is struggling as it is.’
‘Sir, Lieutenant Penny wronged one of the best regarded northerners, someone who has proved himself many times over the last year. It was Penny who started the brawl. There are many who will bear witness to that. His death was an accident. One I obviously regret, but it was an accident, caused by his own reckless behaviour,’ countered Hand.
‘You, sir, were equally as reckless. My understanding is that you were drunk. You have ambitions, sir, to be a true leader of this army, yet you wallow with the lower ranks in the taverns. Drunkenness, the worst vice men can have. A vice no senior officer can partake of. Enough, you know the charge for the murder of a fellow officer?’
‘Murder? It was not murder, General, it was—’
‘Silence! It was murder in my book. You unnecessarily started a brawl with a fellow officer that ended only with his death. It’s murder and the penalty for such a crime is death itself. You’ll be up before court martial at first light.’
‘What?’
‘Sir, may I intercede?’ General Nathanael Greene stepped forward, putting his hand out towards Hand, hoping that would
stop the Irishman from saying anything further.
‘What Hand did was unacceptable, and I understand only too well the strains that it will put upon on us as we look to hold this fragile coalition of interests together, especially given the unfortunate events of these past months, yet—’ Washington now raised his hand in dispute, but Greene continued, ‘This is a man who you and I have come to respect and depend upon. We have few such characters around us at this moment in time. At Boston and Bunker Hill and on the retreat from New Jersey, this is a man who has fought with pride. This is also – and I freely admit to appealing to the sentimental aspects of your character – a man who lost his wife and unborn son just a few months past and yet is still within our camp. That is testament both to his loyalty to the cause and to the sacrifice he has endured.’
‘Greene, I know of this. You are the most humane of men. The individual pain of such circumstances is something that I would expect all of us to bear with heavy fortitude and deep sadness, yet it does not excuse his behaviour and the problem he has presented us with. We run the risk of our army being reduced still further to a rump. I cannot lose the southerners.’
‘And what a rump it will be if we keep the few southerners who would leave and lose the large numbers of northerners who would flee the camp if you follow through on this penalty,’ Mercer pointed out.
‘What do you mean?’
Mercer continued: ‘Our Colonel Hand here: do not underestimate his popularity, not just with the Pennsylvanians, but with the greater body of our men. They are itching for an excuse to leave the camp, to return to their farms, their families. There is but a week or so before most of them are free of the bond created by their annual enlistment. We need them to sign up again, not to flee the camp. Put Hand under court martial, even worse on the gibbet, and you may face an empty camp. Frankly, the northerners from our towns and cities are far more valuable to our cause that those from the plantations. It is those militia who remain loyal and firm. Do not give them cause to think otherwise.’
