The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [67]
The late afternoon chill made Greenwood even more uncomfortable than he had been for days. Like many others who had marched south from Fort Ticonderoga to Albany, and then to the Delaware, the sixteenyear-old soldier was suffering from scabies, or “the itch,” the chronic soldiers’ affliction that caused itching, scabs, and irritation. The teenager obtained some ointment from a doctor which he rubbed over the irritated areas of his thighs. The salve had helped, but he still ground his legs against each other as he walked, trying to make the itch go away. He had no idea where the army was headed this day as he looked out on the bleak, white countryside with its forests of barren trees broken by a few clusters of evergreens.
“None but the first officers knew where we were going or what we were going about,” he wrote in his diary. “For it was a secret expedition and we, the bulk of the men coming from Canada, knew not the disposition of the army we were then in, nor anything about the country. This was not unusual, however, as I never heard soldiers say anything, nor ever saw them trouble themselves, as to where they were or where they were led. It was enough for them to know that wherever the officers commanded they must go, be it through fire and water, for it was all the same owing to the impossibility of being in a worse condition than their present one and, therefore, the men always liked to be kept moving in expectation of bettering themselves.”
Greenwood had truly become a soldier by the winter of 1776 and no longer only played the fife for his regiment, except to amuse himself and his friends in camp. Today he bore his heavy musket, sixty rounds of ammunition stuffed into his pockets, and three days of cooked rations. Like the others, he was ready for battle, wherever and whenever it came.
From where many of the men stood they could see large, thick, flat sheets of ice float down the river in the distance, just as they had for the past week in sub-freezing temperatures. Tree branches full of ice hung over in wide arcs, some touching the ground. The land was still covered with one or two inches of snow that had fallen in small storms during the previous weeks. Freezing temperatures had prevented it from melting.1 He and the other men in the regiment, standing amid their brigades, rubbed their hands together and stomped their feet on the frozen ground in a feeble attempt to stay warm.
The soldiers had reached the site after varying journeys. Some, such as Sgt. Joseph White of Massachusetts, who had become famous with the men for his comical encounter with the commander in chief in Boston, and Lieutenant James McMichael from Pennsylvania, had crossed the Delaware earlier in the month with Washington following the disheartening losses in New York and Long Island; others had arrived later with General Sullivan. Sgt. Thomas McCarty had marched all the way from Virginia.
Some Pennsylvanians, such as John Smith, had marched into camp with General Thomas Mifflin just a few days before. Smith told others that they had been repeatedly refused food and cider by Pennsylvania men and women whose farms they passed on their way to camp and had been forced to steal some to feed themselves.2
Sgt. White told soldiers he met that he had the same experience. General Israel Putnam ordered him to buy food for the men at a tavern at nearby Newton, but the proprietor refused to take Continental scrip (paper money), claiming that it was “rebel money” and worthless. White told him that he had orders. “I placed two men at the cellar door, as sentries; let nobody whatever go down,” he