After he left, Henry stepped up, then Greenlaw, and one by one, the rest joined in.
CHAPTER XVII
Monday, December 22, 1777
WE HAVE ONE DULL AX TO BUILD A LOGG HUTT. WHEN IT WILL BE DONE KNOWS NOT.
—SEVENTH CONNECTICUT REGIMENT SURGEON’S MATE JONATHAN TODD, LETTER TO HIS FATHER FROM VALLEY FORGE
AFTER WE ATE (IF CHEWING ON BURNT firecake can properly be called eating), the sergeant led us up the long slope to the Outer Line, a mile-long ridge cluttered with thousands of soldiers trying to make a camp out of logs, mud, and air.
“Philadelphia lies eighteen miles that way.” The sergeant pointed south. “Now turn around.”
We stood with our backs to the distant enemy, looking down the hill we’d just climbed. As far as the eye could see along the slope, and across the level ground at the bottom, soldiers were dragging tree trunks, chopping logs, stripping bark, and trying to form up walls of the wood. It made me think of a swarm of ants hurry-scurrying to build a nest before a storm hits.
“I’ll explain the features of the camp, so you don’t get lost. This ridge is the long side of a triangle.” He stuck his arms out, elbows crooked, fingertips touching. “My left arm is the west border. A few generals have occupied farmhouses at about my elbow. The first hill is Mount Joy. The larger one behind it is called Mount Misery. The creek runs where my hands are. It’s a long walk, so you best not waste any water.”
He paused while four men harnessed together like horses dragged a massive tree trunk past us.
“My right arm is the Schuylkill River,” he continued. “You can get water there, too, but it’s a bit farther. The river also protects the house taken over for headquarters, which is”—he studied his arms—“below my right wrist. The Life Guard will camp there to protect His Excellency. Artisan shops are being set up there too.”
He dropped his arms with a sigh. “If you get lost, ask for help.”
“How many soldiers are here, Uncle?” Ebenezer asked.
“The ensign said ten thousand, the major said twelve thousand. But all that I care about are those of you in my company.” He paced out a four-sided figure in the snow. “General Washington’s orders are detailed,” he said as he walked. “The hut you will build must be sixteen feet on the long sides and fourteen feet on the short. The door must face south, toward the enemy. Put the chimney at the north end.”
Greenlaw raised his hand to interrupt. “How deep down do you want us to dig?”
“No digging. Huts are to be aboveground. No windows, either; we need to keep out the cold air, not invite it in. The builders of the first completed hut will win a twelve-dollar reward.”
“Twelve dollars!” Burns exclaimed.
“Why can’t we dig down, sir?” I asked.
“Because His Excellency General George Washington does not want us to. Greenlaw, you were a joiner before the army, correct?”
“Built cabinets mostly,” the big fellow said, “but wood is wood.”
“Then you’re in charge of building.” He pointed to the axe and three shovels lying at his feet. “These are your tools.”
“Surely not, sir,” Greenlaw said. “We need half a dozen axes, plus adzes and froes, and a small cask of nails.”
“Ah.” The sergeant took off his cap, a bad portent. “More tools are coming, but orders are to build without nails, for there are none to be had, and the blacksmiths cannot be spared from repairing wagons and guns. You are to groove the logs down the middle and notch the ends to keep them joined.”
The enormity of our task hit home. We had to chop down trees and build our own shelter with little equipment and less training. In the snow. Whilst hungry.
“Beg pardon, sir,” I said. “We’re better armed with shovels than axes. Shouldn’t we try to dig the floor down into the earth? That way, we won’t have to cut and haul as many trees.”
“He’s right,” Greenlaw said.
The sergeant looked around, worried, perhaps, that other officers would overhear his privates arguing with him. “It’s forbidden,” he said. “No digging—the orders were clear. You’ll only have to fill it back in if caught.”
A shout went up at the hut site neighboring ours. A half dozen fellows lifted a sixteen-foot log, their arms shaking, and struggled to place it atop the wall that stood as high as their shoulders. The notches cut in the ends did not fit together and the log could not settle into place. They shouted a second time and leapt back as the log rolled off the wall and near crushed their feet.
Watching this, Sergeant Woodruff winced, then sighed heavily and handed me a shovel. “All right then, dig out the floor. But if I am reprimanded, you’ll share the pain of my punishment.” He gave the other two shovels to the Janack twins. “You two dig us a privy trench behind the hut. Make it long enough that more than one can use it at a time.”
Greenlaw picked up the axe. “Does it matter which trees we take?”
The sergeant pointed to the closest hill. “We’ve been assigned to cut from the woods at the top of Mount Joy. Take Eben with you; one can rest while the other chops. The rest of you need to gather us a goodly store of firewood. Make up a fire for some heat and get the tents properly raised. And, Burns, run to the regiment headquarters where those flags are and inquire about the use of a grindstone.”
John Burns grinned and touched his fingers to the brim of his cap. “Right away, sir.”
“Uncle, if I may,” Eben said as the sergeant turned to leave.
“What now, Ebenezer?”
“How can we work without food?”
“I don’t know, lad.” The sergeant’s voice went tight, and he paused to clear his throat. “We must try our best.”
I figgered it would take a day or so to dig the floor down as deep as my hips. I was wrong. By midday I’d only managed to carve a line in the earth that was the length of one wall, the width of the blade of my shovel, and as deep as my ankle. My thoughts switched back and forth as I dug, planning one moment to secure a position in a forge and the next thinking I ought make myself useful near the officers’ tents so one would hire me for the winter and I could live in comfort.
Our midday dinner was more firecake and all the water we could drink.
Greenlaw suggested we try our hands at chopping down a tree, so he could reckon if any of us had a natural inclination for the task. The Janacks were uncommonly strong but had little skill. The rest of the fellows looked more like maids beating a dirty rug than woodsmen felling a tree.
When it came my turn, I stepped up to the trunk with supreme confidence. I was a lad of many talents. I could shoot a musket and drive an oxcart. I could heat up a blacksmith’s forge to soften iron and even manufacture nails if given enough time and plenty enough iron to make my share of mistakes. I could shave a gentleman’s face, clean his clothes, polish his silver, serve dinner to his guests, and tidy up after a party that lasted until dawn. And I was a better thief than most.
I swung the axe with all of my strength. The blade created a small nick in the thick bark. Eben took the axe from me without a word, swung it, and took a mighty bite out of the trunk.
I reacquainted myself with the shovel after that.
By nightfall the Janacks had finished the privy trench (called a “vault” by some for reasons I never understood) and promised to help with the floor on the morrow. I needed it. I’d only managed to dig a third of the floor to the depth of one hand. The cold had seeped through the soles of my boots and my sweat-soaked shirt froze against my skin.
Supper was again firecake and water.
We ate crowded around a fire that was more smoke than flame and talked about food: platters of roasted chicken, venison stew, bread spread with butter and topped with cheese, flapjacks, puddings, pears, pickles, and pies erupting with berries, swimming in cream. Each description renewed the pangs in our bellies, but we could not stop.
Silvenus did not contribute to the listing of our favorite victuals. He was trying to sew u
p the rip in Faulkner’s shirt with threads he pulled from his blanket, but they were too frayed to hold the stitches together. He finally gave up and announced that we ought sleep.
In the course of the day, we’d taken the time to set up our tents properly and lay pine boughs on the floor of them to help keep out the damp and cold. Edwards had asked to move into our tent and take the place of Peter Brown, who had not come back from the hospital tent. Edwards said he couldn’t stand to listen to the witless jabbering of Burns and the foul Barry brothers. We all understood his reasoning.
Silvenus thought it foolish to squeeze the six of us into the small space. He suggested that Eben move out and take Edwards’s place in the company’s other tent.
“Them Barrys are more your kin than we are,” he said.
Eben refused. “Cousin Aaron snores and their tent leaks. I’m staying.”
(Our tent leaked rain and starlight and every fellow in it snored. I did not mention this.)
After we lay down, rolled over, lay down again, cussed at one another for taking up too much room, cussed out the King and all his redcoats, and after Edwards said a prayer, the tent fell quiet.
For a moment.
“I’m too hungry to sleep,” said Greenlaw.
“Me too,” added Faulkner. “And cold.”
“Just wait until you’re old,” said Silvenus. “Then the cold eats away your bones. I wager I won’t be able to stand in the morning.”
Edwards gave Eben a little shove. “You’re flattening me.”
I chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Greenlaw asked.
“There is one good thing about not eating,” I said.
“What would that be?” Greenlaw asked.
“We’ve got nothing to fart with.”
Anyone walking past our tent must have wondered if we’d all lost our wits, for we laughed so hard, the tent near collapsed.
CHAPTER XVIII
Tuesday, December 23–Wednesday, December 24, 1777
THE ARMY WAS NOT ONLY STARVED BUT NAKED. THE GREATEST PART WERE NOT ONLY SHIRTLESS AND BAREFOOT, BUT DESTITUTE OF ALL OTHER CLOTHING, ESPECIALLY BLANKETS. . . [SHOELESS SOLDIERS] MIGHT BE TRACKED BY THEIR BLOOD ALONG THE ROUGH FROZEN GROUND.
—JOURNAL OF JOSEPH PLUMB MARTIN, SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD PRIVATE IN THE FIFTEENTH MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT, VALLEY FORGE
TUESDAY’S SUN SHONE BRIGHT AND cold. Breakfast was firecake and water.
Dinner was firecake and water.
The Janack brothers and me shoveled out the entire floor of our future hut halfway to our knees. My weary arms could barely lift my cup of hot water to my mouth.
After the sun dropped, supper was firecake and water.
I did not have anything amusing to say that night.
The snow was crusted with ice next morning, but it was as nice as the finest day in July, for the sergeant received another cloth bag at the roll. We stood around the fire like vultures as he cooked up the rice it contained. Sergeant Woodruff carefully portioned out the feast. We each received one handful, seasoned with vinegar to keep away the scurvy. I thought it likely we would starve or freeze to death before expiring of scurvy, but it tasted better than firecake, so I kept the notion to myself.
“Where’s Burns?” he demanded when the rest of us had received our share.
“Squatted over a privy trench, sir,” Aaron said. “Farther on down the brigade. His bowels are giving him fits. Didn’t want us to see his troubles.”
“Fetch him.”
For once I did not care a whit about the location or condition of John Burns. I tried to force myself to eat the rice slow. One grain at a time. Three grains at a time. Too slow. A pinch, a slurp. Not fast enough.
I could not hold back. I shoveled the rest of the rice in my mouth fast as I could, not caring that it burned all the way down.
Aaron returned as we were all licking our fingers.
“Couldn’t find him, sir. No one down there has seen him. Can I eat now?”
The sergeant handed a scoop of rice on a piece of bark to Aaron.
“Can we share Burns’s portion, sir?” I asked.
“No.” The sergeant scraped the last of the rice from the pot. “Half of this goes to Greenlaw, the other half to Ebenezer. Wood-chopping is vastly harder work than shoveling or hauling firewood.”
Just because he was right didn’t fill up my belly. I drew some comfort, however, when Burns straggled back into camp spouting stories about his afflictions, and then outrage, for he appeared in time to watch the two biggest lads of our company swallow the last of his rice.
That was most satisfying.
That afternoon the Janacks were ordered to help lay the roof beams on the officers’ hut, so Benjamin Edwards (who had asked us to call him Benny) and Hugh Faulkner helped me dig the floor. The shovel weighed twice as much as it had the day before. The mud fought against being moved. My hands were too cold and stiff to close around the handle properly and my boots were determined to trip me up.
To distract us from our hunger and fatigue, Benny told us stories about strange creatures: a fifty-headed dog; a horse with wings; and a monster that had the front legs of a lion, the back legs of a goat, and the tail of a serpent.
He leaned against his shovel. “And then there’s the one about the fellow who plowed a field of dragon’s teeth.”
“Where’d you hear of such fantastical things?” I asked.
“In books,” he said. “I am a prodigious reader.”
“If your family can afford books, why did you sign up to be a private?” Faulkner asked. “Surely your father could have gotten you a commission as an officer or an aide.”
Benny picked up the shovel and drove it into the mud. “I was supposed to go to Harvard College this winter, to study law, although I believe my true calling is to be a philosopher. My father changed his mind and was preparing to send me to London instead. He believes the rebellion is a grievous mistake.”
“Your father’s a Tory?” I asked.
Benny frowned and awkwardly tossed the heavy mud to the side. “If it were up to him, the entire Continental army and Congress would be lined up and shot. He threw me out after an argument about the Declaration of Independence. That’s when I enlisted.”
His words sounded brave, but his voice cracked with the weight of his feelings and he looked younger than ever, like a boy who should have been in a schoolroom instead of a soldier trying to build a hovel in the snow.
He pushed his hair out of his face and thrust the shovel into the ground overly hard. The shovel skidded on a stone, and Benny stumbled, tripped, then landed on the blade. Faulkner and I hurried over to help him to his feet.
“You hurt bad?” I asked.
“No.” He stood slowly and examined the wreckage of his breeches, ripped from just above the knee ties clear up his backside. His skin was cut too, tho’ not deep.
“Perdition!” he shouted. “Oh, foul, poxy Devil! By the blasted, sorry dickens!”
I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. The lad’s attempts at cussing like a soldier made him sound instead like a mild-mouthed granny.
“You’ll be cursing a frozen backside tonight,” said Faulkner, pointing to the way Benny’s breeches flapped in the wind.
“’Tis a badge of honor,” I said quickly. “It makes you look most soldierly. You should say those breeches are veterans of a fierce encounter at Saratoga or the Brandywine.”
“Really?” Benny asked.
“Won’t help him none if his hindquarters get frostbit,” Faulkner said. “Doctors might have to amputate, leaving you rumpless.”
“They wouldn’t!” Benny covered his bum. “Would they?”
CHAPTER XIX
Thursday, December 25, 1777
TO SEE MEN WITHOUT CLOATHES TO COVER THEIR NAKEDNESS, WITHOUT BLANKETS TO LAY ON, WITHOUT SHOES, BY WHICH THEIR MARCHES MIGHT BE TRACED BY THE BLOOD FROM THEIR FEET . . . AND AT CHRISTMAS TAKING UP THEIR WINTER QUARTERS WITHIN A DAY’S MARCH OF THE ENEMY, W
ITHOUT A HOUSE OR HUTT TO COVER THEM TILL THEY COULD BE BUILT. . ., IS A MARK OF PATIENCE AND OBEDIENCE WHICH IN MY OPINION CAN SCARCE BE PARALLEL’D.
—GEORGE WASHINGTON, LETTER TO JOHN BANISTER
WE WOKE CHRISTMAS MORNING TO snow as high as my knees, with more falling from the sky. After walking two steps from the tent, what was left of Silvenus’s shoes fell apart completely.
“Now what am I supposed to do?” he asked as he fished out the leather scraps.
Before anyone could answer, a rattletrap wagon came along the road, pulled by a horse that was more bone than flesh. The driver climbed down.
“You fellas are the last of the New Hampshire, right?”
“Aye,” said Sergeant Woodruff.
“Then this is yours and I can head back to the barn.” The driver took two axes and a small cask from his wagon and handed them to Sergeant Woodruff. “Can yer lads give the wagon a push?” he asked. “My horse could use the help.”
The sergeant called to us, and we pushed while the poor creature leaned into the harness until finally the wheels moved. We pushed it all the way to the spot where the road sloped downhill, and the driver called out his thanks.
We walked slowly back to our hut site, passing a score of half-built cabins belonging to the Pennsylvania regiment. The others studied the walls and remarked on the few framed chimney stacks. My thoughts were centered on that small cask, wondering what treasures lay inside it. Any addition to our tools would help.
The sergeant was sitting on a stump, prying open the lid of the cask as we arrived.
“Please tell me that’s filled with nails, sir,” Greenlaw said.
“I hate to disappoint you, lad.” The sergeant shook his head woefully. “It’s only food.”
Our huzzahs shook the snow.
We feasted that morning. We each ate a fist-size piece of pork and enjoyed a soup of dried peas cooked in heavily peppered water. Best of all was the piece of chewy pigskin we had to gnaw on. I knew I could make mine last a full day, at least.