The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles (41 page)

The last flames flickered out on the hearth. Philip listened to Breen’s snores and Royal’s wheezy breathing. The wind had picked up. It howled around the chimney and blew fireplace ash back into the cramped, fetid room. Thoughts about the German were replaced by thoughts of Anne—and the familiar worry:

Why hadn’t she written? Was she safe in Cambridge? Did the silence spell illness? Or something worse—?

Under a violent gusting of the wind, the hut door flew open. Shivering, Philip leaped up to close it. He stared a moment into the snowy dark.

Annie, for God’s sake write me. Else I can’t go on here. I just can’t go on.

Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben set the Valley Forge camp to buzzing when he arrived in February. He was accompanied by a trio of aides and a lean Italian greyhound called Azor. The dog trotted after the new inspector-general of the army wherever he went.

Philip first saw von Steuben two days after he reached the plateau. He didn’t quite know what to make of the officer.

The man rode well, looking huge and formidable in the saddle despite his middle age and a bandy-legged body. Some who had seen von Steuben hurrying through the camp on foot guffawed and said he waddled. They also said he could speak no English except the word “goddamn,” which he apparently used quite often. He and his suite had reached the New Hampshire coast the preceding December, presenting themselves to the Congress as available for service to General Washington.

Encountering Gil one February twilight near the sutler’s, Philip discovered that the Marquis de Lafayette was not impressed:

“That red uniform with the blue facings he sports? I have it on excellent authority that he disigned it himself. And that medal—faugh!”

Gil’s mouth pursed to emphasize his contempt. Studying his friend, Philip thought he detected more than a trace of jealousy.

“Have you seen it?” Gil asked.

“Yes. It is fairly large—”

“Large?
It’s gigantic! A sunburst big as a soup dish—disgraceful ostentation, disgraceful! The Star of the Order of Fidelity of Baden-Durlach, he calls it. Well, my good friend, I am not certain he ever fought for Baden-Durlach—let alone under Frederick the Great whom he’s claiming as his ‘close associate.’ I am convinced his estate in Swabia is a fiction, just like the ‘von’ in his name—he probably added that himself, to enhance his credentials. He keeps prattling in that wretched French of his about having surrendered various ‘places and posts of honor in Germany’ in order to come here. But one can’t pin him down as to precisely what places or posts! If he was ever more than a subaltern, I am King Louis! And yesterday—
yesterday
he had the effrontery to tell
mon ami
General Washington that the officers in camp have too many servants! That the soldiers must not be kept so busy shining boots and laying fires in our huts, but must learn soldiering instead! Can you conceive of such advice coming from him? A rascal, a pretender, a windbag equally as mercenary as Howe’s Hessians? I understand his salary is incredible—
another
swindle of the Congress! Learn soldiering from a man like that? The very idea is an insult to the rest of us who have volunteered!”

“Well,” Philip said when the tirade sputtered to its end, “I heard one of his suggestions, and it seemed to make sense.”

“Pooh, that clock business?”

“Yes. I wonder why it never occurred to anyone else?”

Gil waved. “Because it’s unimportant.”

Von Steuben had reportedly made a scene when he discovered that not a single timepiece in all of Valley Forge was coordinated with any other. He had insisted that all clocks be synchronized with the one at Washington’s headquarters. In Philip’s view, Gil’s too-curt dismissal of the idea was evidence that he wished he’d thought of it.

“I repeat—you’ll learn nothing from a man who is patently an adventurer and a fraud,” was Gil’s final opinion before he and his friend parted. Philip hid his amusement at Gil’s professional hostility, deciding he’d wait and see.

The wait wasn’t long:

“Rothman, Kent, Breen,” Captain Webb said when he showed up at the hut a few evenings later. “Turn out on the parade field tomorrow at six. With muskets.”

Breen scratched his genitals. “Six in the evening?”

“Six in the morning.”

“Jesus Christ, what for?”

“The baron is organizing a special company. One hundred men from all units, to whom he’s going to teach musket drill and marching. The men will then teach other groups of a hundred. That damn Dutchman is trying to turn this army inside out! He rises at three in the morning to write a drill text—and I understand he’s also developing a manual of procedures for officers.” Webb clearly didn’t care for that.

“Well, I sure ain’t wakin’ up at six—” Breen began.

“You’ll wake up at five thirty,” Webb cut in.

“—to take lessons from some fat-ass German,” Breen finished, emphatically.

“Like it or not, I’m afraid you will. The order to form the company of a hundred is direct from the commander-in-chief. So you’ll be there or you’ll be flogged.”

“Son of a bitch.” Breen shook his head. “I guess I’ll be there.”

Royal Rothman actually looked pleased at the news. He reached up to the small black cap pinned to his hair, plucked out something, crushed it between his fingers, threw it away, then said:

“It might actually be worthwhile, don’t you think, Philip?”

“It’s bound to be more diverting than hunting lice or watching your feet bleed.”

“Jesus Christ and the Holy Sepulchre,” Breen grumbled as Webb bent to go out into the bitter February wind. “Six o’clock in the fucking morning.”

Philip shivered in the dawn wind, gritty-eyed and yawning. The Baron von Steuben, his dinner-plate medal bouncing against his red-uniformed stomach, struggled to control his prancing horse. The greyhound Azor nipped at the horse’s legs, causing the brown-haired, round-faced inspector-general to lash downward with his crop:

“Azor, goddamn—
nein!”

The dog temporarily at bay, von Steuben pointed his crop at the blushing captain from New York, Benjamin Walker, who was serving as his interpreter. The baron blistered a stream of French orders at Walker. The captain nodded feverishly every second or so until the harangue concluded. The French was mingled with German phrases, and Philip could follow it only with great difficulty.

Next to Philip, Breen used a few highly obscene words to characterize the peculiar man on horseback. Walker overheard but chose to overlook it. Von Steuben didn’t. If he failed to comprehend the specific words, he caught their general meaning. He fixed Breen with a glare that started the latter blinking rapidly.

Walker cleared his throat.

“Men, the general has instructed me to say that he is personally going to undertake your training. That he, ah—”

Walker licked his lips, hesitated, almost winced as von Steuben stared him down.

“He, ah, finds conditions in this camp—ah—appalling. He is equally shocked to discover there is, ah, no standardized set of procedures for marching and handling weapons.”

Walker glanced at the general for further instruction. Von Steuben let fly with more French.

“He says he has noticed a difference between American troops and those of Europe, in that European soldiers will follow orders without question but—ah—Americans seem to want to know
why
first. So he will try to explain the reason for each maneuver as we go along.”

Several surprised exclamations and even some applause greeted the announcement. Whatever his pretensions, Philip thought, the German had assessed the temperament of the soldiers correctly. Some of Philip’s reservations began to fade. He rather liked the hard, capable look of the middle-aged officer—ostentatious Order of Fidelity and all.

“Now the first thing the general wants to see you do is he drill for loading and firing your muskets. On the count of one—”

In haphazard fashion, Philip and the others went through the drill’s twenty steps, Captain Walker counting each one. By the time the young New Yorker had called
“Fifteen!”
von Steuben was scarlet. The conclusion of the drill, muskets at the shoulder in position to shoot, produced another torrent of French.

“The general wishes me to inform you that in his opinion, that is—ah—the most slovenly and time-consuming drill he has ever seen—”

Still more French.

“—in any part of the globe—”

And more.

“—in his entire life.”

Von Steuben uttered a few guttural barks just to make sure the point got across.

“The general is going to introduce you to a new drill for the same procedure. A drill which will shortly be available in written form for you to study. The general’s drill requires only ten counts—”

Suddenly there wasn’t a whisper in the ranks. Walker had caught their full, attention at last.

“—the idea being to save time so more shots may be discharged at the enemy in the same interval.”

Walker bent down to pick up the musket lying at his feet.

“I will now demonstrate the drill, following the general’s instructions.”

Walker’s face showed that he disliked the assignment intensely. Actually handling weapons during training was considered beneath the dignity of any officer.

Von Steuben noticed Walker’s expression. He swore, cropped his horse to a standstill, leaped to the ground and waddled to his translator. He snatched the musket from the astonished captain’s hands.

Then von Steuben jerked at the strap of the cartridge box Walker had picked up, slung the strap over his own shoulder, settled the box on his hip and stalked out in front of the hundred men.

He presented the musket for viewing by the soldiers, shouted,
“Ein”
and immediately brought the firelock to half cock.

Philip saw jaws drop and eyes go wide. The demonstration was absolutely unbelievable. A high-ranking officer
off
his horse? Handling a musket
personally
—?

“Zwei!”

With thick but somehow swift fingers, von Steuben took out a cartridge, bit off the end of the paper and covered the opening with his thumb.

“Drei!”

He primed the pan.

When the entire ten counts were finished, von Steuben had armed the musket and brought it to his shoulder in half the time the normal drill required.

The stocky man stumped forward, eyes darting in search of a pupil. Bad luck brought Breen to his attention. Von Steuben literally jerked Breen out in front of the others, slammed the musket into his hands, flung the cartridge box strap over the confused victim’s head and bawled:

“Ein!”

Breen managed to remember the first step—half-cocking the piece—but when von Steuben shouted the count of two, he grew fuddled. Turning red again, the German thrust his face up near Breen’s and screamed,
“Zwei,
goddamn,
zwei!”

Breen lost his grip on the musket. It fell to the ground. Apoplectic, von Steuben shoved Breen back into line and pulled out another man, a Marylander. He managed to get to five before von Steuben dismissed him with an even more torrential outpouring of French and German profanities. Some of the former—anatomically colorful—Philip could translate, with considerable amusement.

The baron proceeded to go through the entire drill three more times before dragging another man forward. Fortunately, the Virginian completed the count with a minimum of error. The German beamed—and so did most of his trainees, letting the smiles drain away the built-up tension.

While the February wind grew stronger, bringing a few snowflakes down, the hundred soldiers repeated the drill together ten times. Then ten more. And ten more after that. Von Steuben waddled briskly up and down the ranks, correcting the slant of a muzzle here, the grip of a ramrod there, occasionally slapping a student on the back but more often cursing.

Finally, around ten o’clock, the baron remounted his horse. Walker ordered the hundred to prepare to repeat the drill one last time, while von Steuben called the count.

By then Philip had fairly well gotten the hang of it. He was amazed at how the drill did pare the time required for the vital operation. But the unison drill was still uncoordinated. By the time Walker had reached six, von Steuben was screaming and pointing at poor performers:

“Nein, nein!”
Another storm of profanity, concluding with a thunderous,
“Viens,
Valkair,
mon ami! Sacre!
Goddamn
die gaucheries
of dese
imbeciles! Je ne puis plus!”
Growing almost incoherent, he shrieked, “You curse dem, Valkair—
you!”

He wheeled his horse and went pounding away across the parade field, Azor streaking behind him through the slanting snow. Captain Walker once more cleared his throat.

“Ah—you men realize—I have orders—”

“Ah, go ahead and get it over with!” someone yelled. There was laughter at the captain’s expense.

Flushing, Walker cursed and condemned the soldiers in a monotonous voice for the better part of two minutes.

Relieved when it was over, he said, “All right, let’s resume the drill.
One
—
!
”

Philip observed von Steuben resting his horse at the far edge of the field. Before long the baron was lured back by his own interest in the proceedings. By noon, alternately swearing and complimenting in his strange pidgin mixture of French, German and very occasional English, he had the entire hundred going through the drill with reasonable precision.

Philip noticed something else as they ran through the final counts—
shoulder firelock; poise and cock firelock; take aim and fire.
The weariness and despair on the faces in the snow-covered ranks seemed to have been replaced by something else. Something he too was experiencing. It gave him the first glimmer of hope for this conglomeration of unruly men nominally called an army.

He saw shoulders a little straighter. Fatigued, reddened eyes a little more alert. Hands blue-tinged with cold moving with a little more speed and deftness—