America Über Alles

by Jack Fernley

‘George, it would go some way to alleviating the fears of both Congress and the people of Philly if the baron and his men were able to undertake this task. As he has stated, you have such superiority of forces that success should be within your grasp. I would request you agree to this suggestion.’

  Washington bowed his head. ‘I only seek to serve Congress and through it the people. The baron and his troops shall be stationed in Philadelphia for this period.’

  The dinner broke up, and as they prepared to leave, Adams sought out von Steuben.

  ‘Baron, how firm is your mind on this issue?’

  The German looked closely at the Congress leader, bent down to him and whispered in his ear: ‘I have never been more sure of anything. Howe will enter through Chesapeake and up the Elk. But I shall stop him before he comes close to Philadelphia. The capital will not fall.’

  He stepped back.

  ‘Thank you. We must maintain a closer relationship.’

  ‘We shall, Mister Adams, we shall.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  In the darkness, they lay along the banks of the Elk, watching and waiting.

  Howe’s flotilla had slowly made its way through Chesapeake Bay and up the Elk river. The river itself was shallow and muddy, far from ideal for the seagoing frigates and ships-of-the-line that carried his men, horses and supplies. Several had already become stuck in mudbanks, creating a logjam along the relatively narrow river, a logjam that was several miles long and contained 254 boats of various sizes.

  General Howe was in the fleet’s flagship the Eagle. Further along the river, on the frigate HMS Roebuck, his brother, Vice-Admiral Richard Howe, oversaw the movement of the forward ships and the landing of the troops. Landing though was slow. The ground was rocky, with no obvious moorings. However, the real issue was the state of the men.

  They had been at sea for five weeks all told. The Howe brothers had envisaged a much shorter voyage, but prevailing winds had extended the journey. Conditions on board all of the ships were terrible. Supplies had run low, so that the men were on short rations and the water was putrid. Over three hundred horses had died, which would severely weaken General Howe’s cavalry and ability to move artillery quickly. And as the men left the boats for firm ground, the effects of the weeks of seafaring were all too clear, as they staggered around.

  Patiently, the Stormtroopers and Riflemen watched all this unfold. Von Steuben’s plan was simple: allow only enough of the men to be unloaded that he could be certain his forces could take. And when that number was close, unveil his direct attack on the rest of the fleet, before a direct assault on those on the riverbanks.

  And that moment had come.

  Out among the bull reeds and mudbanks of the Elk, a keen observer might have witnessed some slow movements in the darkness as the tide started to come in. Small barges and rafts were easing themselves out of cover along the far bank. At first a pilot guided each, but then they slipped away and into the river, confident that the tide would carry the raft or barge to its intended target. These were fire rafts. Full of dry timber, doused in oil. Before slipping off, each pilot lit the fuse on their vessel, so that suddenly in the darkness hundreds of small lights suddenly appeared, like fireflies on a summer’s evening.

  But those tiny sparks quickly became larger and larger fires. Now there was consternation aboard the fleet. They were under attack from these unmanned craft.

  In the shallow water of the Elk, the sheer numbers made it difficult for any boats to evade the fire rafts as they drifted towards them. Frigates bumped into the ships-of-the-line, sloops into rowing galleys, and then as one of the rafts slowly ran into the hull of a frigate, the full potential of the damage to the fleet became clear. Flames immediately encased the frigate, running like a fiery sprite up the hull, over the deck, up the mast, with smoke and flames entwining to create a catastrophic red mist. On board, men urgently sought to dampen the fire, hauling water up from the muddy Elk to disperse the flames. Then from the top of the frigate’s mast, sparks leaped over and across to an eight-gun sloop. Within moments, that too had sparked into life. Now, further down the line, a schooner was alight.

  Satisfied that the fire rafts were doing their work, von Steuben gave the command for the start of the land assault.

  At the landing stage, the battalions of Jaegers, light infantry and grenadiers who had been put on shore, watched in astonishment, as the fleet appeared to be going up in flames. They had set up a temporary perimeter to secure the area, but had been confident that there was little resistance on the ground. That changed when the first fusillade of round shot appeared from the cannon on the Elk’s banks.

  Von Steuben had brought two pieces of artillery from Philadelphia which he placed on higher ground and these now signalled the attack on the ground forces. While the round shot peppered the unprepared British and German troops, from the surrounding creeks and marshes the Stormtroopers and Riflemen arose and started their assault.

  In three lines of attack, they moved in on the perimeter, which was quickly overwhelmed. There was some minor skirmishing, before bayonets affixed, the Stormtroopers, led by Conze, moved in for the kill. The British light infantry had quickly formed two lines and prepared to fire, but Conze stopped his men and got off the first round. And so the advantage of Schmeisser’s modified Brown Besses became clear. The joint brigade of Stormtroopers and Riflemen were firing rounds more than twice as quickly than the British. For ten minutes, a fierce firefight ensued. The burning fleet providing a backdrop of demonic lighting, the red and yellow haze allowing both sides to find their targets. Casualties fell on both sides, but mostly on the British.

  From the rear, a second group of Stormtroopers, led by Kluggman, had got in among the Jaegers. There was no gunshot here. Just knife, sword and axe work, brutish, nasty, bloody, the screams of men falling as loud as the crackling tinder of the fleet.

  The artillery changed their range, firing upon the boats at the head of the flotilla, stopping any possible reinforcement on the land. Aboard HMS Roebuck, with its forty-four guns, the younger Howe grasped the severity of their position. On land, his men were under direct assault. To the rear, the fire rafts were doing terrible damage to his fleet. The troop landing had been slow and painful due to the unstable land. Under artillery fire it was almost impossible without great casualties. He had the Roebuck train its guns on the Colonists’ artillery.

  Within minutes, after the Roebuck’s right side opened fire, the hillside above the banks was scorched by its shot. The American artillery fell quiet. A further fusillade from the Roebuck pounded the higher ground. A terrible explosion tore the air as one of the cannons received a direct hit, and exploded, sending hot metal and burnt flesh high into the air.

  On the ground, the fight was almost over. The Stormtroopers had the combined British battalions encircled and Conze had his men hold their fire. Shouting out, he offered a simple choice to the British and Germans penned in between the Elk and his men: ‘The day is done. Throw down your weapons! We offer you safe passage. Surrender yourselves now.’

  In the stuttering early morning dawn, the sound came of 3,000 men throwing down their muskets.

  Aboard the Roebuck, Howe spied the scene through his eyeglass and turned to his aide-de-camp: ‘The game is up here. Signal to the Eagle and the General. We turn back down this damned river.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  The bells of Philadelphia had been ringing for hours.

  Once Howe and his armada had retreated, von Steuben sent riders ahead to the city with two messages. The first was for John Hancock and Congress, stating: ‘Howe’s navy defeated. British have turned back. Three thousand men under captivity. Von Steuben.’ The second was for Hanna Reitsch and read: ‘Howe defeated. We return immediately. Prepare for victory parade. We will enter at noon on 28 August.’

  Now it was noon on 28 August 1777 and down Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street came the Stormtroopers and Riflemen. At their head rode von Steuben, on a splendid white charger, w
hich had been landed by the British, and was presumed to be the mount intended for Howe to enter the captured city. Behind him, the bedraggled British and German prisoners, followed by the smart, victorious Stormtroopers and Riflemen. The streets were full, many in the crowd holding paper swastika flags given to them by the League of American Girls, victors cheering them as they made their way to the State House.

  Arriving there, von Steuben halted his mare, looked up and said to himself, ‘Good, very good, Hanna.’

  Before him, stood the imposing red-brick building, perhaps the finest building yet built in the colonies. In front of it, a platform of dignitaries, the Congress leaders, and above them, from the bell tower hung a huge banner, red, the black swastika in a white circle at the centre. A group of trumpeters to the left of the platform let forth a triumphal din.

  He dismounted from his horse, walked to the leader of the prisoners and theatrically took from him a folded British flag. He held it aloft to cheers from the crowd and then slowly walked up to the platform, bowing before John Hancock and presenting it to him. Von Steuben then stood upright, turned to the crowd and bellowed:

  ‘I present to the Congress of the Thirteen Colonies this symbol of the defeat of the British forces under General Howe. Three days past, our Stormtroopers and Riflemen surprised the British forces who believed they were close to capturing the capital of this our rebellion. If we had failed, then the war may have been lost. But by our own energies, we have defeated Howe. It is but one step on the road to victory, but by each day, by each action we take, that victory becomes yet more certain. The events at the Elk will reverberate past Philadelphia, past New York, across the Atlantic and on to London, where they will assail the ears of King George! This is a victory that will echo down through the decades, through the generations, one that will echo through all eternity!’

  A large roar went up from the crowd gathered before him.

  He looked around, savouring every moment. He sensed this was an opportunity for something bigger. And he knew what he wanted to say.

  ‘Friends, Colonists, Americans. This war is far from over. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it may be the end of the beginning. I and my men, the Stormtroopers, have been here in America for less than a year. But in that time, we have been overwhelmed by the way you have taken us to your bosom. It is true that I can say, with modesty I hope, we have helped overturn the defeats of the past and bring you victories. Great victories.’

  Von Steuben was drowned out at that point, cheers of ‘Hurrah!’ and then ‘Von Steuben!’ for the first time. The baron started to talk again, but the noise was gaining, the cheers now becoming a chant of ‘Von Steuben! Von Steuben!’ echoing around the square, from man to woman and from adult to child. He rode the wave for a while and then raised both hands, quieting down the crowd until there was near silence.

  ‘Friends, I came here to be your servant and I wish to remain your servant. I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and suffering. You may ask me: what is your policy, what are your aims?

  ‘I will say it is this: to wage war on the foreign tyranny by sea and land with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. This is our policy. You may ask, what is your aim? I can answer in one word: victory. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.

  ‘So I ask this of you. Are you with us or against us? Will you join me and my Stormtroopers and accept this challenge? Will you be with us until we have won victory and created a new America?’

  At which point the entire crowd, which was perhaps the whole population of Philadelphia crammed into the green before the State House and the narrow streets around, let forth an almighty cry that one could imagine might have been heard as far away as the court of King George, awaking the monarch as he slept in his bed at Windsor: ‘Victory! Victory!’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  One man felt uneasy, queasy even, as he watched the victory parade unfurl and with it all the antics of the crowd.

  He walked on his own, his clothes shabby and torn, his body thin, face gaunt and with barely healed cuts, his hair closely cropped. If a fellow spectator had looked carefully, they would have seen that his right shoulder drooped a little. He appeared to be one of those phantoms who have inhabited every city on the earth since cities were first founded, those who appear to have given up the ghost of life itself, hoping that they will eventually disappear into the ether, leaving no trace of a life behind. They might have heard of him, because once in this city he had been celebrated, but those who knew him now would see his name as that of a traitor who had put others before his own people. His name was Edward Hand.

  At Queen Esther’s Town, Hand had taken a shot clean through his right shoulder, throwing him back into the crowd of women and children. As he fell, he cracked his head on the rocky shore, and was unconscious, as other victims of the firing squad collapsed around him. When Kluggman came to him, he mistook Hand’s lifeless, bloodied body for a dead man and threw him into the river with the others.

  The river was icy, but fast-flowing, shallow and full of bracken and branches. Hand’s body was not the only one to be caught up in timber moving down the river, not the only one to come to a stop on top of a rocky outcrop but a few lengths downstream. Not all the villagers had perished in the onslaught: some women, who had been out foraging for firewood, had witnessed the events from hideouts in the woods, had seen with their own eyes the murder of their families and the American who had tried to protect them and apparently paid for it with his life.

  They found him that afternoon on his back on the rocks, his face lacerated by the sharp rocks of eddies he had slalomed down. He was barely alive, but they took him away, cleaned the shot out and dressed his wounds with poultices of spikenard bark and roots, gave him daily emetics of boiled spring-blown branches and when they moved off, to the protection of the Iroquois further north, they took Hand with them.

  He found friendship with these people. He learnt their ways, their desire to live in harmony with the earth. He stayed, his body slowly recovering, but for all their kindness, he knew he was an outsider. Three months after Queen Esther’s Town, a French fur-trapper came into the camp, with his Iroquois wife and four children. David Fortier lived between the two worlds of the natives and the colonists. He was taking racoon, beaver and doe skins down to Philadelphia, leaving his wife with her family. He offered to take Hand with him, he knew the tracks through the wilderness and he would welcome the company. That was how Hand had come to be in Philadelphia.

  He had been there for three weeks, living among the underclass, among the illiterate criminals and strays that had washed up at the far reaches of the British Empire. For food and drink, he offered his services as a doctor to anyone who needed it: the victims of knife fights, the whores who had got unlucky, the rotten-toothed drunks who needed quick relief. He could survive for now like this. The nights were long and warm, he could huddle deep in the recesses of the shanty buildings, the waters of the Delaware never too far from him.

  But he was also watching, learning, biding his time, planning. Planning what he wasn’t sure of, until the victory at the Elk River and the days in which Philadelphia embraced the Stormtroopers.

  When news came into the city of Howe’s fleet landing at the Elk, the city was thrown into panic. Members of Congress, rich merchants, society ladies, propertied men, all suddenly had reason to leave for Boston in the north, or to go south to Baltimore. For a day, the streets were churned up by the wheels of their carriages, heavy with their chattels and treasures; fear had a sound and it was the rumbling of wheels, the shouts of drivers and the neighing of the horses. But that was the rich elite. The rest of the ci
ty shrugged its shoulders and prepared for the worst. When the Stormtroopers and Riflemen marched out of the city on 25 August, they stood in line to cheer them off, but there were few who believed they would see them again.

  So when word arrived of the victory, the city went mad.

  The Riflemen and their German allies had saved them and they were going to give them the greatest homecoming since the Roman emperors had celebrated their triumphs. When the League of American Girls went around asking for help to decorate the city, they found a new army of willing volunteers. Among the destitute in the filth and grime of the port, the enthusiasm was as great as in the market streets and the grand houses uptown, great houses that were once again opening their shutters to the August heat and their doors to those suddenly returning.

  So on this day, there was no one who did not want to venture the few blocks up town and see at first hand the victors of Elk River. And as the bars and workshops, the pier buildings and the dock offices, emptied, so Hand went along, finding anonymity in the crowds who pressed and screamed their allegiance to von Steuben.

  Von Steuben’s speech had been followed by a parade of the victorious Stormtroopers and Riflemen, but it was difficult to tell the two apart now, so closely aligned were they, so closely had the Riflemen adopted the clothing of the Germans. Hand looked at familiar faces, faces he had looked after, faces he had nurtured, faces he had suffered with, but those faces were different now. Harder perhaps, even in the midst of victory. And chief among them, clad in a black jacket and matching trousers, was his former friend Pat O’Leary.

  The crowd was as frenzied with the parade of the victors as they had been throughout von Steuben’s speech.

  After the parade, the crowd started to disperse, Hand with them. Making his way slowly back towards the river, he fell in with two men. One was slow to move on account of a wooden leg. Both had the grizzled appearance of war veterans.