The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [14]
For many, the deaths they witnessed from bedsides in camp were the first they had ever seen. The experience unnerved a twenty-one-year-old chaplain, who described it in his journal in a shaky hand: “His breath was short. Sweat. And all of a sudden he contracted his body and it [distorted] the features of his face in a single, violent manner. He grinded with his teeth and his face turned black so fast, as if I could feel it. He vomited a large quantity of black water. Strangled. Nature Trembled. And he soon gave up the ghost at 6 p.m. I closed his eyes.”8 All of the men had to be wary of a new smallpox outbreak in Boston that took the lives of many citizens.
The enlisted men were called out by regiment and were sometimes joined by other regiments to witness a flogging of another enlisted man. Floggings, standard military punishment for a variety of crimes, occurred so frequently that men in the Boston camp attended them at least once a week, sometimes more often. Men were flogged for desertion, insubordination, falling asleep on guard duty, petty theft, and a variety of other charges. They were tied to wooden stakes or trees and beaten repeatedly with a heavy lash. Punishment ranged from a few dozen lashes to over one hundred.
The enlisted men sometimes had to witness the execution, by firing squad or hanging, of a multiple deserter or a man charged with other serious crimes, such as forgery, robbery, or spying for the enemy. The executions, which continued throughout the war, were not only designed to punish an offender, but to serve as preventative discipline for the entire army.
These events shook the men, but few of them believed that they would spend years of their lives witnessing them. Most were convinced that the American Revolution would be a very short war, perhaps just one large battle there in Boston, and then everyone, victorious, could go home. Virginia’s Leven Powell told his wife to inform his business clients that he would be back soon. In a letter, he wrote, “It can be no great inconvenience for the people to wait for my return, which I expect is not far off.”9
The men in the regiments of Greenwood and others sometimes annoyed each other, as men in any group forced to live and work together for long periods of time always do. Fistfights broke out between soldiers engaged in arguments and from time to time duels were threatened or actually fought by officers. Some men would steal clothing from others. Worse, men would steal the rifles of men in their own regiment. One man fumed when he heard that not only had someone stolen his rifle, but had sold it for five dollars in order to obtain money to gamble—and then lost the five dollars in a card game.
The men complained bitterly about their food. By order of Congress, each man’s weekly food ration was supposed to consist of one pound of bread, one half pound of beef, one half pound of pork, or one and one quarter pound of beef if pork could not be had. Once each month the men were to be given one and one half pounds of fish instead of beef. For drinks, the allotment was one pint of milk and one pint of malt beer. Each man was also given six ounces of butter and one sixth of a pound of soap per week. The rations varied during the war and later molasses, cider, vegetables, rice, and Indian meal were added to the diet. Greenwood and others scoffed at what they were supposed to get whenever they looked down at the plates filled with the small, barely edible servings of the day.
The soldiers and officers in the militia units outside Boston, with no training or discipline, may have been long on bravado but they were not reliable. Washington was especially