The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [116]
McMichael and the others were provided with some sports and entertainment to keep their mind off the dreadful conditions in camp. It was discovered that several officers had been amateur actors before the war. They formed a theatre troupe and staged plays in one of the bakehouses; the bakery was filled to capacity for the performances. Part of a meadow was cleared for athletic events. The men played lacrosse, an Indian game, and a type of croquet called wicket. George Washington even participated in some of the wicket contests.
There were fast days to seek God’s protection for the army (the men joked that with food supplies low, they fasted every day). Washington’s February 22 birthday was celebrated. The first of May, May Day, was celebrated by brigades of men with white blossoms tucked into the bands of their hats. They marched back and forth on the parade grounds in front of wooden poles gaily decorated with ribbons for each brigade. Thirteen men carried bows and thirteen arrows for each state and thirteen drummers and thirteen fifers serenaded the army. All of the privates were drawn up into thirteen platoons of thirteen men each.22
McMichael made it through the tough winter, he told his new bride again and again, by reading the many letters she sent him and through the poems he forwarded to her. On March 4, their first anniversary, he composed a short poem that captured both the love of a young couple and the loneliness of the soldier:
At Lancaster, this was the day I first got my consent
For to embrace fair hymen, for which I then was bent
I secondly got the consent of her that’s now my wife
That in cohabitation with me she would spend her life
We then into the arms of each other sweetly clung
And soon removed that solitude which on our minds then hung
We spent some happy time, before that we did part
But Mars soon us both parted, which grieved us to the heart
Yet in a short time after, we hoped for to meet
And for some few days of pleasure that unto us were sweet
Revolved whilst we together, were all possessed of joy
But fortune very suddenly did our bliss destroy
By calling me unto the camp to please great thundering Mars
There to remain exposed to the alarm of wars
Those alarms would be sounded again in the spring when General Henry Clinton, who replaced Howe, decided what he was going to do with the army of some twelve thousand men he had stationed in Philadelphia. The men at Valley Forge wondered whether he would attack them or whether he would strike at other Pennsylvania towns, or communities in New Jersey. Would Washington assault Philadelphia?
The American commander knew that he had an army that had fought well, despite losing, at Brandywine and Germantown. But he was in charge of a fourteen-thousand-man army weakened and demoralized by the harsh winter. In order to turn his army into a better fighting force he welcomed Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a Prussian army officer and drill master who presented him with a mostly fabricated biography. Von Steuben assured Washington that he could teach the Americans classic European battlefield maneuvers that would enable them to defeat the British in any direct confrontation. Washington needed that assurance. His army had been beaten in most classic, open-field confrontations and registered its victories only in sneak attacks such as Trenton. He might be able to convince Britain to quit the war if they realized the Americans could beat them in direct battle.
At first, most soldiers thought little of the stocky Prussian who barely spoke any English; no one believed the men, so weary from the winter, would have any interest in arduous daily training. They were wrong. Von Steuben was smart enough to turn the drills into contests between regiments, and the men, sometimes as angry with each other as they were