The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [46]
The Redcoats that Greenwood thought were behind him, however, were the real Redcoats and they were so close that they terrified him. He wrote, “We could plainly see the British on the opposite shore; so close were they upon us that if we had not retreated as we did, all would have been prisoners.”
Arnold had his boats destroyed after the men crossed to the southern side of the St. Lawrence to prevent the British from seizing them and the men had to march southward on foot. The soldiers in Greenwood’s regiment, in the rear, found themselves walking by the seriously wounded American soldiers and smallpox victims who had died on the way and had been left on the side of the road so as not to slow down the column. Their corpses made haunting mileposts.
Since he was a boy, no one asked Greenwood to do the same work that the men in the army performed. He did not have to carry heavy supplies, assist in the rowing of the boats or stand watch as a guard. He wanted to do his share to help the army, though, and so he did what he knew best—he played music. Each evening on the retreat from Montreal, Greenwood took out a new fife he had made in New York and entertained both officers and the enlisted men with tunes. He had a standard repertoire of songs that he performed and then played any personal favorites that the men requested. These included both rousing drinking tunes they had heard so often at taverns and slow romantic ballads that reminded many of loved ones at home. Then, risking his health, Greenwood walked over to the temporary camp hospitals to visit the sick, including the men afflicted with smallpox, and played songs for them on his fife. They were all grateful for some lively melodies on those terrible nights on the run.
Finally, the vast waters of Lake Champlain were in sight and the soldiers in Arnold’s army were loaded into a flotilla of large sailboats, all equipped with oars for rowing when there was no wind. They had a scorching sun above them and more than a hundred miles of open water in front of them—and the British army close behind them—before they would reach their destination, Fort Ticonderoga.
Champlain, named after the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, was a natural wonder. It was the largest lake in what was the United States then, except for the Great Lakes, whose shores were shared by the U.S. and Canada. Champlain was one hundred seven miles long and fourteen miles across at its widest and just one mile at its narrowest. At some junctures at its northern tip, where it flowed into the Richelieu River near some islands, the lake was just a few hundred yards wide. The lake, which formed part of the border between New York and Vermont, covered a total of 435 square miles. It was 399 feet deep in some places, but near the shorelines, and in some places near Valcour Island to the north, it was just a few yards deep and only shallow bottom vessels could sail there. Lake Champlain was nestled between the Adirondack Mountains to the west and the Green Mountains, in Vermont, to the east.
Most of Champlain was surrounded by low terrain, marshy at times, and at many points on any boat trip on its waters travelers could see the majestic mountain ranges in the distance. The Green Mountains hugged the coastline of the northeast sections of the lake. The mountains contrasted starkly with the lake, too, and some soldiers in the retreating American army, now under the command of John Sullivan, reported sweating in the boats as they peered up at the snow-covered Adirondack Mountains in the distance. The weather on the lake, and in the region surrounding it, changed frequently and sudden summer rainstorms were common. The winds shifted with little notice or died suddenly. The waters of the lake could be flat for days and then produce ocean-sized waves when high winds swept over and churned up the water. The uncertain weather made sailing on the waters of the lake difficult. The weather shifted quickly, too, in uneven patterns. Hot days in summer