Jimmy Battles and I were often lumped together because of our “age,” and we became a bit of a pair, much like Jeremiah and I once were. I told the general that Jimmy didn’t complain, he always encouraged, and he was never afraid, not even at the end. It will be a blessing to his mother to know that he died quietly and quickly, with very little suffering. It is a comfort to me as well.
Since Tarrytown, I have dreamed about Jeremiah almost every night, and I fear something has happened to him too, and he has come to tell me goodbye. Or perhaps I simply can’t separate the Thomas boys from my downed comrades, and in sleep they are one and the same. They all feel like brothers to me.
We have no new recruits. No one has taken the berths of the fallen, and since they were my bunkmates, I have considerably more room, but it is not welcome space.
Autumn is here. Like a pinprick, a drop of bloodred appeared on the hillside, and then another, and another, followed by a bit of gold and a sprinkling of orange. Now the entire valley is aflame. I thought the Point glorious in spring, but the fall is beyond description. I suspect even winter will take my breath away with its beauty, but I can hardly sleep for the fear in my chest. So many things will be more difficult when the cold hits. —RS
13
ALL MEN
I saw men die at Tarrytown. I watched them fall around me, and the blood and waste was beyond description, yet somehow my mind still attempted to quantify the horror, if only to consider what I might still endure.
General orders were issued for the army to prepare for movement at a moment’s notice, and many of us thought an attack on New York was imminent. The capture of New York, occupied by the best troops in the British arsenal and fortified by both land and water, would be a fatal, war-ending blow to England, and the discussion in the huts abounded as to when and how it would be accomplished.
In mid-September, General Paterson’s entire brigade was sent marching toward New York. We crossed the Hudson at King’s Bridge, and proceeded down the river, marching to the drum and fife, making a show of our numbers and our strength, and met up with a division of French in full regalia, their uniforms white and trimmed in green. We proceeded all the way to the enemy’s post at Morrisania without challenge, but it appeared to be abandoned.
“They have retreated to New York in preparation for our attack,” Captain Webb told us, and when the morning came, we were on the move again, breaking away from the bulk of the army on a foraging expedition and camping in woods near the enemy’s lines, hoping to draw them out, but all was quiet. The next day we were moving again, passing through points hitherto held by the British, unimpeded.
We marched through Princeton, moving past the huge stone edifice that had once been filled with students, not soldiers. The many windows watched our progress with weary disinterest, and the weather vane atop the cupola was perfectly still. The grounds were littered with the detritus of battle, and the buildings were blackened, marked by the years of occupation by both armies. I counted the windows and longed to explore, even as we moved past and continued on to Trenton.
By the time we reached Philadelphia, it was apparent we’d been part of a grand scheme. We moved through the streets at the front of a two-mile-long parade of liveried officers, marching soldiers, mounted guns, ammunition carriages, and wagons piled with tents and provisions. The procession kicked up a cloud of dust so great I couldn’t see the crowds that came to cheer us on, but I could hear them, and the French flags draped from the highest windows and waving along the route told the story.
Thirty-six French vessels had arrived in Chesapeake Bay. Count de Grasse, the French admiral, had blockaded Yorktown, which was occupied by the British. In anticipation of his arrival, Washington had been slowly moving his armies southward while engaging in tactics of deception designed to make the British believe New York was the true target.
The deception had proved successful.
Emboldened by de Grasse’s fleet and seizing the opportunity to surround the enemy, General Washington ordered a rapid march of all his forces to Virginia.
We crossed rivers—sometimes aboard boats and sometimes on bridges—and saw flourishing villages and shuttered towns. We gave one such place a wide berth after hearing that disease had ravaged the population.
None of us fell ill from smallpox, but many of us became sick aboard the boat that carried us down the Elk River, so great was the tossing and lurching of the vessel loaded down with soldiers.
I had always enjoyed a hearty constitution; Phineas claimed it was my temper.
“No ailment would dare,” he said. But though I’d never suffered from sickness of any sort, I succumbed to the tossing of the boat, as did most of my comrades.