We were caught in a gale that pushed us forward and didn’t relent until we reached the harbor near Jamestown, Virginia, where we disembarked and camped. We had traveled over four hundred miles, most of it on foot at a punishing speed, but I would have rather marched it all again than be tossed about in that vessel. I could not stand without the world tipping and my legs trembling, and nothing remained in my stomach for a full day. But the worst was yet to come.
Lines were drawn, impassioned speeches given by every officer to his men, and we pushed forward about two miles outside Yorktown where we were joined by the three thousand French ground troops delivered by de Grasse. The digging of trenches and forming of batteries commenced, all while under an unrelenting British barrage.
My well of miseries continued to accumulate, my list of horrors, my assortment of unimaginables, but I am convinced, after living through them all, that hell could not be worse than weeks under constant cannonade.
It was not a skirmish or a glancing attack by a handful of dragoons. It was not even like the terrible night in Tarrytown. It was the culmination of six years of war.
That such horror can be beautiful is hard to imagine, but it was. Light and sound collided against the firmament like shooting stars and swooping dragons with flaming breath and fiery tails. Perhaps it was the quaking of both earth and sky and the contrast of being more alive and nearer to death than I had ever been. I was living the Book of Revelation, and I could not avert my eyes.
Great sheets of screaming fire rained down and boiled up in columns of smoke and dust coating the air and fraying our nerves until I grew numb and deaf to the boom and crackle and worked in a mindless stupor. We slept with fascines and entrenching tools in our hands and muskets strapped to our backs, catching naps propped against our earthen walls. Food—often no more than biscuits and dried salt pork—was delivered twice a day along with handcarts laden with water jugs to refill our canteens.
I used the temporary latrines maybe once a day, and always in the darkest hours of the night, but nobody bathed and nobody slept and nobody paid me any mind, except the general, who rode back and forth on the line, encouraging the men. I’d seen him from afar, riding his horse, which I had learned was called Lenox, and conferring with Kosciuszko, who was supervising the batteries being built. It was not until the early hours of October 10, when we had completed our first parallel and began a cannonade of our own, that he approached and called my name. We were all indistinguishable from each other, our faces and regimentals coated in the paste of sweat and soil, and I didn’t know how he recognized me.
I tried to salute, but was unable to uncurl my fingers from the shovel. A rush of blood and water pooled in my palm as I managed to pry the handle free. General Paterson climbed from his horse and crouched by the entrenchment, beckoning me forward.
“You have been here every day since we arrived. I assume your arm is healed.”
“Yes, sir. Long healed. Thanks to you. And I prefer to stay busy, General, sir.”
“Show me your hands, lad.”
“I am fine, sir.”
He frowned at me, and I frowned back, but I did not show him my hands. It would mean a trip to the hospital tent, and if I stopped working, I didn’t trust that I would be able to start again. Action was my only antidote to fear.
“You do have a fearsome gaze, Shurtliff.”
I grinned at that. He remembered.
He studied me for a moment, as though there was more he wanted to say. “Godspeed, Private.”
“Godspeed, General.”
He rose, climbed back on his horse, and continued on, and I stopped for a moment to watch him go. I did not see him again until I was called up for a different kind of duty.
It was determined that a pair of enemy redoubts about three hundred yards in front of the main works would have to be taken in order for our artillery to move within range. Two advance columns of light infantry, French on the right, Americans on the left, were assigned to storm the defenses. My unit was among them.
My hands were so blistered I could not straighten my fingers or make a fist, and I cut a strip off the bottom of my shirt, wrapped my hands, and spent the hours leading up to the advance making peace with my maker, convinced that I could not possibly survive such a mission. I’d been lucky once. I did not expect to be so fortunate again.
General Paterson addressed the men along with General Lafayette, who had been tasked with planning the strike.
“I have no talent for pretty words,” Paterson said, though I would disagree. “But we stand on the precipice of a glorious ending. Let’s finish it. And let’s go home.”