Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory (58 page)

Peter had not expected his men to fire in much of a disciplined manner, but they had made the best of it, able to deliver one good, scathing volley every minute or so. There had been a final, surging attempt by a British regiment to close and force them back, the ghostlike figures in the thick, cloying smoke, not more than a few dozen yards off, moving toward them. Their volley had hit his line hard, a couple of dozen men dropping, but the return volley, when the British had assumed the Americans would break, had shattered the British spirit, broken their morale, and sent them reeling.

The colonel of his regiment was played out from the heat, and from far too much fat on his body, and had already fainted away. To Peter’s astonishment, the men of what he now called his regiment were actually responding directly to his commands. They had begun to surge forward and then he heard von Steuben shouting.

“Nein, nein
! Volley
jaja!”

Peter did as ordered and the wraithlike British line disappeared from view when his men fired. As the smoke ever so slowly lifted, they were gone.

They fired a half-dozen more times into the mist, and then there was a strange silence, except for the booming of the cannons to their right up on Combs Hill. There was no return fire.

No one spoke for a moment as his men loaded, Peter shouting a command for them to cease fire with their muskets poised.

There was no fire in response except for the occasional cannonball winging overhead or kicking up a cloud of dust and dirt in front of the line, the ball then bounding high overhead and far into the rear.

Still nothing. A hoarse cheer started to their right, from the artillery position, and it was picked up and chorused down the entire length of the line. Thousands of men cheered, at least those who still had the strength and voice to do so.

They had stood against the finest infantry in the world, fought them toe-to-toe in this furnace of hell, and now held the field, victorious.

Men began to slap each other on the back, some boasting already about how many of the lobsterbacks they had dropped. Others were lifting their eyes to heaven in prayers of thanks, some weeping. More than a few, the excitement and terror of the moment passing at last, slowly fell to their knees and lay down, pushed beyond all limits of their endurance.

“
Nein! Nein!
Not finished! Now, forward!”

Peter heard the command, caught a glimpse of von Steuben as the smoke was slowly lifting, and then saw Lafayette galloping down the length of the battle line, his horse lathered and near to collapse.

“Forward, brave men. Now drive them. Drive them!”

Some looked at him pass, incredulous, for had they not done all that was humanly possible this day?

Peter turned and faced the regiment.

“You heard him.” His voice cracked.

“Charge bayonets!”

Men in the front ranks lowered their weapons, those in the back ranks held their muskets high.

Peter, armed with his musket, held it high like a sword and pointed it forward.

“At marching pace. Forward!”

There was no drummer boy; the lad had fainted away hours ago. He stepped off, counting out the cadence, looking back to see if any would follow, and his heart swelled. Nearly half did. The others were far too spent and simply collapsed, or remained where they were. Of two hundred with the regiment at dawn, fifty at most were still with him, stringing out into a single line and trying to keep formation as they swept down the hill. After fifty or so paces they crossed over the farthest advance of their foes. The ground was littered with bodies, some of them dead, most of them wounded or down with the heat. He saw a man raise his musket up, ready to club a fallen British soldier. Turning, he leveled his musket straight at the man.

“Damn your soul, I’ll shoot you if you strike him!” Peter cried. “For God’s sake, we’re Americans, and we take prisoners!”

The man looked at him as if stricken, lowered his musket, and pressed on, Peter turning to lead the way, his heart struck by the cry of the wounded British soldier, speaking with a heavy Irish brogue, crying a blessing on him.

The smoke was beginning to lift, the air thick with humidity but almost breathable. He could sense that the air was slightly cooler here as they pushed to the edge of marshy ground, thickets ahead marking where a creek traversed the muddy ground.

And then a scattered volley swept out to them, several of his men collapsing, screaming.

Their damn light infantry!

“Volley fire on my command!” Peter cried as he backed up into the ranks of his men. Earlier in the day the surprise would have broken them, but not now.

“Take aim!”

Men brought their muskets down.

“Aim low, boys. Low straight into the thicket!”

“Fire!”

Their muskets rattled off. In the silence of the seconds afterward, he could hear screams from the other side. To either flank, though he couldn’t see them, he heard more volleys.

“Reload!”

There was another scattering of fire, but not as intense as before. A man next to Peter silently dropping, head split wide-open by the impact of a .72 round ball fired at close range.

“Poise your muskets!”

Men raised their weapons up.

“When you fire, then charge bayonets!”

It wasn’t a proper command, but, then again, these were not properly trained infantry of the line.

“Fire!”

Another volley rang out and then he leapt forward.

“Charge!”

Those around him, enraged by the surprise strike when they thought the battle over, broke into a run straight at the thicket. Several shots rang out and another man dropped, but this only served to further enrage them. In the shadows they could see men clambering up on the other side of the thicket and creek.

Light infantry!

“On them with the bayonet!” one of the sergeants near Peter cried. “On them!”

The charge surged forward into the thicket and a mad tangle ensued. Some of the British, pushed beyond exhaustion and unable to run, tried to hold their ground, men trading feeble blows with clubbed muskets and bayonets.

Peter, using the butt and muzzle of his musket, knocked brush aside and slid down, nearly falling into the creek, and then stood up.

He looked up straight into the gaping muzzle of a pistol, not a dozen feet away, aimed straight at him.

He flinched, braced himself for the killing blow, unable to raise his own musket in defense.

“Merciful God in heaven. Peter Wellsley!”

His gaze lifted from the muzzle to the man behind it. It was Allen van Dorn.

There was a slow, drawn-out frozen moment. Peter started to raise his own musket in defense, finger on trigger, but he felt wooden, slow, as if trapped in a nightmare sea of mud.

“Peter. My God.”

He stood, unable to think. This was Allen. This was the older brother of his dearest comrade. This was his childhood friend and hero, dressed now in the uniform of the detested British light infantry, the muzzle of his pistol aimed straight at his eyes, trembling finger on trigger.

The moment stretched into eternity.

“Run, Allen, run,” he gasped, “for Christ’s sake, run!”

He could see Allen’s eyes contract and he winced, as if Allen would indeed pull the trigger.

He raised the pistol up, fired it nearly straight up, and then turned and did as Peter begged. He ran.

A man slammed into Peter, knocking him to his knees. It was the soldier who had nearly clubbed the wounded man but a moment before.

“Down, sir!” the man cried, and even as he knocked Peter over he raised his musket, and drew careful aim on Allen’s back.

Horrified, Peter saw the man’s finger curl around the trigger.

“No!”

He swung his own musket up, striking the barrel, knocking the weapon high just as it discharged.

Terrified, Peter raised himself to look through the coiling smoke from the discharge.

The man had missed.

Peter looked up at his would-be protector, who gazed down at him angrily.

“Now just why in hell did you do that, damn it!” the man cried.

Peter could not speak, fearing his voice would break.

“Why?”

“He’s my brother,” Peter whispered in reply.

The man gazed down at him in surprise, and then turned and without comment knelt down in the muddy creek, splashing water on his face.

Peter looked to his left and right. The men were played out, the retreating enemy staggering through the marshy ground as they tried to run, here and there a man going down, collapsing, as those still with any fight in them continued to fire at their retreating foes.

He followed Allen with his gaze as he staggered off, until at last he disappeared into the smoke that blanketed the field.

The sound of gunfire drifted off. A command came from the right, from whom he did not know. For the line to hold, that Greene’s men would now pursue.

The order was greeted with silence. No cheers now. Most of the men were sitting down in the mud, scooping up handfuls to plaster their faces to ward off the swarming insects, or swishing the sluggish stream with their canteens, trying to fill them.

“Sir?”

He looked up. It was the man who had tried to shoot Allen minutes before.

He was holding a canteen, offering it. The man gazed at him intently. He looked up. The man above him was no longer a soldier. He was simply a man old enough to be his father offering him a drink. He appeared to be nearly his father’s age, unshaved for a week or more, beard gray, hairline receding, shirt and trousers plastered to him with sweat and mud.

Peter took the canteen and nodded his thanks, gulping down a long drink of the foul-tasting water, which at this moment tasted almost like nectar.

“Was he really your brother, sir?”

Peter thought of Jonathan and his frozen grave. And of—long before that, so many years before that—the lazy summers of a joyful youth…Allen acting the role of being annoyed when his young brother and friends pestered him and followed him, but then smiling, teaching them how to fish, to track game, shoot and clean it, to play like Indians in the woods. And when a lesson was too hard, Allen had always been ready to help them with their studies and readings.

“Yes,” Peter sighed, and then lowered his head and broke into tears. “Yes, he was my brother.”

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re a damn good sergeant, sir, even if your brother is a bloody lobsterback. And I’d follow you to the gates of hell itself if you ordered us too. God bless you.”

He paused.

“And God bless you for stopping me from the sin of murdering that wounded man. My blood was up.”

Peter looked up at the man. He was perhaps nearly three times his age.

“My son died at Long Island,” the old man whispered.

“I’m sorry.”

“Damn this war,” the old man sighed.

“Yes,” Peter whispered. “Damn this war.”

5:00 PM

“General von Steuben!”

Roused from his exhausted state, Friedrich von Steuben, sitting under the shade of a willow tree bordering the road from Monmouth, stirred. General Washington was approaching.

Von Steuben, every muscle, bone, and joint of his body protesting, slowly came to his feet.

“God bless you, sir, this day shall be remembered, and your name will be spoken of forever, if history does you justice,” Washington smiled down on him.

Lafayette translated and von Steuben flushed with pride as he bowed, groaning inwardly from the effort.

“Do you think we can still drive them?” Washington asked, and then he paused.

“I mean, sir, I plan to still drive them.”

The first was a question. The second, an order—and he offered from within a silent prayer of thanks, for Frederick himself would only have phrased it the second way,

“Your orders, sir,” von Steuben replied, voice barely heard, his throat and lungs so parched and strained by the heat and action of this day.

“Rally what men you can. Push them forward. We have won a victory, yes. But not the victory I had prayed for. If we drive them we still might gain their supply train and thus finish them here and win this war.”

“As you command, General,” von Steuben replied.

Washington returned his salute and rode off, his own horse barely able to manage much beyond a walk.

Du Ponceau, Vogel, and Walker had somehow found him on this field. They wearily struggled to their feet. As ordered, poor old Azor had been left behind, locked up in the house where they had briefly quartered, and he could well imagine that his old friend would have no complaints about being left out of this final exhausting advance. Chances were he was happily chewing on a bone and enjoying the cool brick floor of the kitchen.

Once this last work was done, he would go back to fetch him, but not now, for his general had ordered him to press the attack.

“Come on, you stinking dogs,” he announced, and then trailed off, nodding to Du Ponceau to continue to think up some appropriate words in proper American.

Not one man in five had the strength to regain their feet, but those who could did so, and pressed forward across the smoke-covered fields and marshy lowlands, most of those following sticking to the road rather than trying to struggle through the marsh.

They slowly advanced more than a mile, shadows lengthening, twilight beginning to descend. Well past Monmouth CourtHouse, a mile beyond the ground where the battle had been triggered by Lee’s less than halfhearted attack, a well-prepared fallback position presented itself: a rough barricade of logs, branches, and upended wagons.

Some of the men around him began to advance. Lafayette, the ever-exuberant Lafayette, rode up to join them, and though his horse could barely walk, with sword raised he pointed the way forward.

“
Mein General
,” von Steuben cried, voice cracking.

Lafayette turned and looked back to him.

Von Steuben pointed to the west and the lowering sun.

“The battle of this day is finished. They have had time to prepare a defense and our men are beyond anything mere mortals can do.”