A story for Christmas
I know it’s been two or three weeks since I posted anything
here but I do have a good excuse. I have promised two or three new books for
the New Year and I intend to honor that but I thought I’d surprise you and get
one done for Christmas. It’s been a long task but it’s now done and ‘Hessians’,
a tale of adventure in the Revolutionary War was published on Amazon, Kindle
and in major bookstores today.
but, rather than me
waffling on about it, here is the prologue, I hope you enjoy it and want to
read more. A very Merry Christmas to you all.
PROLOGUE
The silence was the strange thing. A line of a thousand men
would normally be humming with talk but it seemed not one of them had the
energy to speak as the ragged column straggled along the muddy road. They were
dirty, wet, tired beyond reason, out of step and dispirited. Their heads were
bowed against the wind-driven rain, their weary footsteps were slow and their
clothes provided little protection against the harsh winter weather.
Some still wore semblances of what
had once been uniforms, weather-faded blue serge coats with facings of red or
buff. Most were dressed in homespun or linen that had long-since been worn into
tatters. Some still had boots; others the remnants of shoes, one or two wrapped
their feet in stained and bloody rags. For the main part they were bareheaded
in the wet, the hat is the first thing to go when a soldier breaks and runs.
They came in ones and twos, in
single file or small bunches. There was little sign of cohesive units. No
companies or platoons. No one looked as if he were leading them. Each man just
numbly followed in the footsteps of the one in front of him. Their weapons, a
mixture of muskets, rifles, sporting guns or just poles with knives lashed to
them, were carried a thousand different ways; anything to ease the burden on
war-weary muscles.
Here and there a man led a gaunt
horse but the animals were as tired as their masters and their heads drooped in
exhaustion. These were the cavalry, the once proud eyes of the army, now
reduced to the beaten weariness of their infantry brethren. Then came a lone
gun. A six-pounder brass field piece, its muzzle still blackened with the burnt
powder residue of overuse.
The gunners, as dirty and tired as
the rest, led, cajoled and cursed the three underfed mules pulling the piece.
Every few yards the weight of the barrel drove the wheels of the weapon deep
into the glutinous mud already churned by a thousand feet. When it did so the
mules shuddered to a halt, their heads down and their eyes dull. There was only
one way to move on. The gunners got down into the mud and pushed at wheel
spokes until slowly the animals and their load eased forward again. The men
looked as bone-weary as the mules but they stubbornly stuck to their task and
the column snaked on.
Lieutenant James Holte, sheltering
as best he could under the winter-bared boughs of a spreading maple tree,
watched the defeated army go past, his eyes narrowed and his face grim. He sensed
rather than saw someone move up alongside him but did not immediately turn to
see who it was.
‘A rabble, aren’t they?’ a voice
said after a moment. Holte nodded slowly and glanced at the newcomer. Unlike
the men passing before the two of them Captain Simon Howard still wore the blue
and buff of Washington’s
headquarters’ staff and the horse he held by its reins was sleeker, more alert
and better fed than the others.
‘They’ve come a long way since Long Island,’ Holte said carefully. ‘They’ve seen a lot
of fighting and have been beaten once too often.’
‘Can they take another beating?’
Holte looked back at the road. One
of the men who were passing slipped, dropped his broken musket and fell to his
knees in the mud. He was hardly more than a boy yet his sunken-cheeked face
bore the experience of a lifetime. For a moment he just knelt there, mouth open
and eyes closed, then two other soldiers stopped. They each took an arm and
hauled the boy to his feet before slipping his arms around their shoulders.
Together they half-dragged him on, leaving the broken musket lying in the mud.
Holte shook his head.
‘No,’ he said, ‘not now.’ He paused
and looked at Howard again. ‘Are they going to get beaten again?’ he asked.
‘Because if they are you aren’t going to have any army left.’
Howard grimaced.
‘Who knows? If Lord Howe has any
sense at all, he will have his light troops snapping at our heels and his main
column just behind. Fortunately for us though, no one has ever accused his
Lordship of having much sense. He could have taken us at Long Island and again
at New York
or he could have caught us as we crossed the rivers on the way down here, but
he didn’t.’ He shook his head, ‘No, my guess is that he’ll go into winter
quarters and will leave the weather and starvation to finish us off.’
‘They will,’ Holte said, ‘unless we
can rest and get supplies soon.’
‘We’ll rest tonight,’ Howard
replied, ‘but supplies are going to be harder to get. We abandoned a lot of
valuable stuff up north.’ He hesitated and then added, ‘That’s where you and
your scoundrels come in. I have a job for you. How many do you have left?’
Holte forgot the passing column and
turned to face Howard. War and attrition had shrunk his company just as it had
the rest of the army. Like the others they needed rest and a good feed but they
were in better shape than most. At least they were still a unit.
‘I’ve got twenty-eight,’ he said.
‘Where?’ Howard demanded, looking
around. Holte whistled shrilly and his men appeared, seeming to rise out of the
ground and stepping from behind trees and bushes. They were tough men, some
very young, some older. Several were bearded, the rest clean-shaven and, like
Holte himself, each wore a leather hunting shirt dyed green, gray or brown.
Every man carried a Pennsylvania
rifle, the locks carefully wrapped against the mud and damp.
‘Very well,’ Howard said. He
nodded, ‘Twenty-eight will have to do.’
Holte rested the butt plate of his
own rifle on the fallen leaves at his feet and crossed his arms over the
muzzle.
‘Do for what?’ he demanded.
‘To get supplies for the army.’
‘We’re not quartermasters.’
‘No, you’re fighting soldiers and
that’s what this job needs. These supplies are back in New Jersey.’
Holte grimaced,
‘And the enemy is holding New Jersey,’ he said.
Howard nodded, his eyes carefully weighing the other man’s reaction.
‘Just how much stuff do you think
twenty-eight men can sneak out from behind British lines?’ Holte said. ‘We’ll
only be able to carry enough to feed ourselves.’
‘There are wagons,’ Howard said. ‘A
dozen wagons and the teams to pull them.
Holte frowned. What Howard was
saying was ridiculous. Twenty- eight men could not take a dozen wagons back
across the Delaware,
load them with supplies and hope to get them out again. It was not possible.
‘There are ten-thousand redcoats
over there,’ he said. ‘They might object.’
‘Hopefully they won’t know,’ Howard
told him. ‘I’m told these supplies are hidden in the backwoods where the enemy
is unlikely to look for them or to even have a garrison.’
‘Where?’
‘A place called Wixford. It’s on a
tributary of the Delaware called the Arrow River,
about twenty miles from Trenton.’
Holte did some rapid thinking. If
his men rested and ate a hot meal or two they could cover twenty miles in a
night march. Wagons could not though; they would be lucky to make ten miles a
day in this weather. If they took back roads that were nothing more than muddy
tracks they might manage five miles a day at best. They also had to cross the Delaware under the noses
of enemy patrols. It could not be done.
He told Howard so.
‘You don’t have to take the wagons.
They’re already with the supplies,’ Howard told him. ‘All you have to do is to
get there and get them out.’
‘A day to get there, five days at
least to get back, and only twenty-eight men to watch over a dozen wagons? I
still think it can’t be done.’
Howard laughed.
‘You have the mind of a soldier,
Mr. Holte,’ he said. ‘War isn’t like that. It’s about politics.’
‘Politics?’
‘Yes, politics. These are New Jersey stores. They
were collected in New Jersey, by the people of
New Jersey for the sole use of New Jersey militia. They
wouldn’t let you have them even if you went for them. No, they have to be
collected by New Jersey
troops and I have a battalion of fresh militia from that colony ready to go.’
‘So why do you need us?’
‘I need you because, as I said,
these are fresh troops. They’ve never seen a musket fired in anger. They’re
green as the grass in summer and their colonel is greener.’
‘Colonel?’
‘Colonel Marcus Van Derijk of the
New York Van Derijk’s.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘His family owns a lot of land on Manhattan Island
but his place is in New Jersey.
Seems he owns about half the colony. He raised the militia himself and paid for
their equipment.’
‘He’s a soldier?’
‘He served as an ensign under
Braddock back in ’fifty-seven but never saw any fighting.’
‘So he knows nothing about
soldiering?’
Howard smiled ruefully and said,
‘Don’t tell him that. He has the
British army book of infantry maneuvers and thinks he knows it all.’
‘And I’m supposed to hold his hand
whilst he retrieves his stores?’
‘You’re supposed to pretend to be
under his command and to keep him out of trouble. We can’t afford to lose a
hundred militia as well as the stores.’
