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.

It’s available at: http://www.amazon.com/Hessians-Derek-Coleman/dp/1505550696/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418867432&sr=8-1&keywords=derek+coleman&pebp=1418867447338

 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.’