Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [522]
“We pay our men poorly, and then we deduct their uniforms, their utensils, everything imaginable from their pay. They know no one cares for their welfare. And no chaplains care for their souls,” he complained to his colonel. “Only the Wesleyans we so despise seem to take an interest in the poor soldier.”
“The rebels are worse supplied. Even the Americans begrudge them food, because they pay for it with their own worthless paper money,” the colonel countered.
But in his heart Adam was thinking:
“They can lose a dozen campaigns; but if they don’t want us here, then one day they’ll win the war.”
He wrote to his father:
We have left Fort St George in splendid order, in a force under Burgoyne of about 8,000 men: Major Harnage has brought his wife and the general is encumbered with no less than six members, of Parliament. The men march well; and each company is allowed three women.
We have, so far, been successful against the enemy in every encounter; though we lost 200 men in the swamps around Ticonderoga, which we took, most of them falling to the sharpshooters who take a constant toll of our staunch parade ground fellows. There seems little we can do about it.
Our supplies are beginning to run somewhat low.
And now it was October. Tomorrow they would fight again at Stillwater.
It was two and a half weeks since their first battle at Stillwater and they had remained in the camp at Freeman’s Farm ever since. It had been a victory for the British, of course. They took the farm in a hard day’s fighting, attacking the place in three columns and in classic style. There was only one problem: the 62nd in the centre column had been almost destroyed.
Four times they had charged the Americans, with bayonets fixed, and forced them to retreat into the woods; and four times they had run into the sharpshooters who lurked there, not only concealed on the ground, but up in the trees as well. It was a dastardly way of fighting: and highly effective. Major Harnage was carried from the field badly wounded; the adjutant, a lieutenant and four ensigns were killed. By sunset, only sixty men of the 62nd were fit for further duty.
The red coats had won, but at a cost they could not afford.
And still the supplies had not come.
On the night of October 6,1777, Captain Shockley slept badly. Where was General Howe with his great force? Where was Clinton with his much needed supplies and reinforcements? Nowhere, it seemed. He got up in the morning feeling despondent.
For much of the battle known as Saratoga, Adam Shockley was a spectator; for the 62nd, being so reduced in numbers, was left to guard the camp when, at about noon on October 7, General Burgoyne ordered the advance.
At first it seemed the British might prevail. Until, that was, the American second in command, Arnold, having been confined to camp by General Gates after a quarrel, disobeyed orders, leaped on his horse, placed himself at the head of three regiments he knew well and, without so much as a by-your-leave, smashed clean through the British centre and stormed the British redoubt.
From the camp above, Shockley watched in horror.
Darkness gave them the chance to abandon the camp for a piece of high ground by the river. The next day the Americans covered their right flank and they withdrew to Saratoga, leaving their wounded to the rebels. The day after that, the Americans came round behind them. It poured with rain. There were sharpshooters everywhere.
It was on this day, October 9, that Captain Adam Shockley, while inspecting a barricade that a party of his men were erecting, felt a sudden blow in the shoulder followed,