“I can do this. I have done this. It is done,” I chanted silently, my hands shaking. I had been wearing breeches for two weeks; I would not despair now. I slipped my arms into the white waistcoat, which was essentially a fitted vest, and immediately felt more secure. I wound the neckcloth round my neck and that too reassured me. My neck was long and slim, with no bulging Adam’s apple. Better to hide it altogether.
The uniform fit me well enough. The blue coat was a little broad in the shoulders and the breeches a bit tight in all the wrong places, though I could grab a handful at the seat.
“Ya got worms, lad?” a whiskered man jeered at my actions. “Yer arse itchin’?”
I ignored him and knotted the strings at the top of the breeches to keep them from slipping down, determined to alter them when I had the chance. I didn’t need to be worrying about them endlessly. Even without a corset winnowing my waist, I wasn’t as straight in the middle as the men.
I yanked the stockings to my knees and secured them with the ties to keep them in place, then pulled the gaiters over them. The day was warm and the layers unwelcome, but the gaiters would protect our legs and preserve our stockings.
When I put the tricorn hat on my head, I had to bite back my grin as the green plume caressed my cheek. I’d never worn anything so jaunty or fine. In the earlier days of the war, the rebels had had no uniform. I suppose that was an advantage to arriving late to the conflict; I adored it.
I rolled the clothes I’d removed into my blanket and secured it on both ends with rope, making a little sling with which to carry it beneath my knapsack. I set about putting the rest of the gear in order—cartridge box, powder horn, canteen, musket, hatchet, knife—everything strung across my chest with yet another strap or hanging round my waist.
They’d issued me a bayonet as well, along with a sheath to store it when it wasn’t attached to the end of my musket. Of all the accoutrements of war, I was least comfortable with the bayonet. If I ever had to use it, I doubted I would come out the victor.
I had my cup, bowl, and knife in my knapsack, along with a kit for sewing. My journal, my traveling inkstand, and my flint and tinderbox too. A comb, a candle, a slab of soap wrapped in oiled leather, and rags that could be used when I began to bleed, which would be a few weeks yet, thank Providence. I’d dealt with the flow on my journey from Middleborough. I’d managed well enough, but I’d been alone. It would be harder going forward.
A few hard biscuits and a small sack of dried peas would give me something to nibble on if my hunger got too great. I had an extra shirt, two pairs of stockings, and the other modified corset, just in case the one I now wore was damaged or wet and I needed to change. Anything more and I would have had too much gear.
“The less you take, the less you’ll have to carry,” Captain Webb shouted, echoing my thoughts, and we were hustled out into the bright midday, tugging at our uniforms and righting ourselves as we were taken through our drills.
I excelled at the drills. I’d made sure I would. A few times Captain Webb shouted out, “That’s it, lad! Eyes on the boy there, men. That’s the way it’s done.” I couldn’t control the heat in my cheeks, but my back was ramrod straight and my eyes didn’t slide or scurry. I just kept at it and prayed that the captain would not see fit to call attention to me again. The men liked to tease.
“Where did you learn to dance like that, Private?” Captain Webb asked me, slapping my back. I flinched but didn’t shy away.
“I used to watch the men drill on the green . . . when I was young. I practiced with my . . . brothers. I like drills. They help me relax.” I’d only hesitated over the bits I didn’t want to explain. The Thomas boys weren’t my brothers, but they might as well have been.
“And your name?”
“Robert Shurtliff, sir.”
He nodded. “Can you shoot as well as you drill?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, that’s good then. Wait until the redcoats are marching across the field of battle,” he muttered. “All those drills will go straight out of your head. Good thing too. A drill never killed anyone. You ever kill anyone?”
“No, sir.”
“You will.”
I did not fear death, oddly enough. I almost expected it. But I did not want to kill. And for the first time, it occurred to me that killing was what I’d signed up to do.
Very little is how we imagine it will be, but I’m certain that nothing, not all the running and jumping and hiding and sneaking I’d done in my twenty-one years, could have prepared me for the grueling march that followed. Each day I made it through something so unpleasant that I began to store up a well of miseries. I would tell myself, “This isn’t so bad as that, and you didn’t quit yesterday.” One day it was the mire, the next day the flies. An unseasonable heat or an unrelenting downpour.