The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [69]
The freezing officer opened his copy of The American Crisis pamphlet, which had been distributed throughout the colonies and had met with much praise from military personnel and civilians. “These are the times that try men’s souls,” the officer began and Greenwood listened intently. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in times of crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
Following the reading, and some encouraging words from their superiors, the men began to board the small flotilla of the sixty-six-foot-long, eight-foot-wide, three-foot-deep flat-bottomed Durham boats, named after a nearby iron furnace that used the craft to transport iron ore and freight to Philadelphia, northern New Jersey, and Pennsylvania river towns. Washington believed that the Durhams could carry men just as easily.
Greenwood’s regiment was one of the first to cross. The young soldier carefully walked across the wide wooden slats of McKonkey’s ferry dock, making certain that he did not slip on the already icy structure. He moved into his assigned boat with the others, unsmiling, shivering, and sat down. When all of the men were in the Durham, the boatman poled the boat away from the dock and headed out into the darkness of the river. As their boat cut silently into the water and the ice, Greenwood looked back and watched the twenty-four hundred or so remaining men awaiting their turn to cross. All heard the booming voice of Henry Knox shouting at the men loading the cannon into their separate boats to hurry along and secure the field pieces carefully.
The journey across the river was perilous. Wide, flat sheets of ice slammed into the sides of the Durhams and the boatman struggled. “The force of the current, the sharpness of the frost, the darkness of the night, the ice, and a high wind tendered the passage of the river extremely difficult,” said Major James Wilkinson of the crossing later. A light wind slashed into the faces of Greenwood and the others as the boat made the agonizingly slow trip across the water. Then, just after 11 p.m., the predicted snow began to fall. It soon began to accumulate—one, two, three, four inches—and kept falling. On the other side of the Delaware, Washington, with his dark blue cloak wrapped tightly around his chest and neck, watched Greenwood and the others complete the treacherous passage. Greenwood and the soldiers in his regiment were freezing. “The storm was increasing rapidly,” wrote Greenwood. “It rained, hailed, snowed, and froze and at the same time blew a perfect hurricane.”
“It was as severe a night as I ever saw,” agreed Captain Thomas Rodney, of Delaware, whose men shivered along with Greenwood and his Massachusetts comrades. “The frost was sharp, the current difficult to stem, the ice increasing, and the wind high. It was only with the greatest care and labor that the horses and the artillery could be ferried over.”7
To ward off the snow and cold, Washington ordered the Fifteenth Massachusetts, Greenwood’s regiment, to scour the surrounding area for downed trees and fence posts in order to make a series of bonfires. Greenwood said that the wind was at full force and that “in a moment” it cut in half the wood he tossed onto the fire. The fierce wind made it impossible for him to turn in any direction for warmth. “When I turned my face toward the fire, my back would be freezing. However, as my usual acuteness had not forsaken me, by turning round and round I kept myself from perishing before a large bonfire.” The men were in good spirits, despite the deplorable weather conditions. “The cheerfulness of my fellow comrades encouraged me beyond expectation and, big coward as I acknowledge myself to be, I felt great pleasure,” Greenwood said.
He and others waited on the eastern banks of the river until just before 4