The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [70]
The eight-mile march took place amid a ferocious sleet storm. Greenwood and others could barely see in front of them as the snow fell heavily and the wind blinded them. Newspapers later recorded the storm, which first struck in Virginia and quickly moved its way up the Atlantic seaboard, as one of the worst in years. Two feet of snow fell on Virginia and snowfalls between a foot and six inches were recorded in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York as the storm moved north by northeast. About four inches fell on the Delaware River basin.9
The officers walked and rode next to the men, moving them along. Every half hour or so Washington himself passed Greenwood and his regiment and quietly, but firmly, urged the soldiers to speed up the pace. “Keep up with your officers,” he said in a deep voice. He warned them not to stop because they might freeze to death, as two men had done just after they crossed the river.10 Greenwood had not been surprised at that news when he learned it later. He wrote that the men “were nearly half dead from cold for the want of clothing . . . many of our soldiers had not a shoe to their feet and their clothes were ragged as those of a beggar.”
And Greenwood might have died, too, if it was not for the sharp eyes of Sergeant Madden. “At one time when we were halted on the road, I sat down on the stump of a tree and was so benumbed with cold that I wanted to go to sleep. Had I been passed unnoticed, I should have frozen to death without knowing it. But as good luck always attended me, Sergeant Madden came and, rousing me up, made me walk about. We then began to march again, just in the old slow way.”
As men who saw him wrote later, Washington, more determined than ever, realized that while he might lose the early darkness for his attack, he would be able to approach Trenton unseen, because his entire army was cloaked in a blanket of snow. The gale would also drive the snow into the face of the Hessian soldiers. They would face northwest, right into the wind, as they fought.
Greenwood and the army trudged southward on Bear Tavern Road for four long hours, their feet getting colder and their faces nearly numb from the wind and snow. The army was divided along the way, with Washington taking half of the men down on Princeton Road and John Sullivan taking Greenwood’s regiment and the rest southward on River Road. The men grumbled about the slow pace of the march. “We began a circuitous march, not advancing faster than a child ten years old could walk, and stopping frequently, though for what purpose I know not,” Greenwood complained.
Just before 8 a.m., the American forces approached the outskirts of Trenton. Every man was ready for the battle, despite the sleepless night, snowstorm, and wearying eight-mile march.
The men told each other that the general had been right. No one was waiting for them. Colonel Rall had not sent out night patrols because of the storm and the early morning sentries who normally walked down the roads north of town remained inside their quarters, unwilling to emerge into the teeth of a bad snowstorm. The first single shot of the engagement was fired just north of town when