The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [91]
On April 27, an express rider handed Colonel Vose orders to proceed with as much speed as possible to Bedford, New York; the British army was supposed to be camped near the town. The Redcoats had just raided Danbury, Connecticut, and destroyed a large quantity of supplies. After a forced march, the army discovered, as it often did, that the reported British arrival in Bedford was yet another rumor. It was in Bedford that Wild became seriously ill. He wrote, “I felt so sick that I was obliged to stop and lodged in a barn about three miles to the rear of the party.” His condition did not improve the next day and he had great difficulty trying to keep up with the regiment. He remarked, “I traveled as fast as I could, but was obliged to stop every little ways.”
He never revealed his ailment in his journal, but Wild fell so sick that he remained in the care of the Tomkins family in the Bedford area for nine weeks as the regiment remained in Westchester County. He rejoined the army on July 24 to find that arrangements had been made to put all of the troops in his company on a sloop so that they could sail up the Hudson and save some time in their journey to Saratoga. The ship was overcrowded—the soldiers filling every room and the cargo hold below the decks—so Wild was told to sleep on the open deck of the vessel, exposed to the night wind on the waters of the Hudson, a blessing in the heat.
Finally, on July 29, the First Massachusetts disembarked and began a long march north up the western shoreline of the Hudson toward Saratoga. Wild was struck by the beauty of the Hudson River valley, the creeks that flowed into it, the gently rolling hills that ran parallel to the waterway, the thick green forests of trees, deep valleys, ravines, jagged rock formations, and wide ponds.
The majestic beauty of America touched the hearts of all the soldiers. In hundreds of journals and letters, that love of the land is described frequently. The war sometimes carried them into hell, but it also brought the soldiers through the gorgeous bounty of the United States. The vistas they saw, often for the first time in their lives—Lake Champlain, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the Hudson River valley, the waterfalls of Maine, the low country of South Carolina—reminded them of the extraordinary country for which they fought.
Some admired the cities as well as the tiny villages through which they passed. Pennsylvanian McMichael remembered both in July of 1776, when he marched off to war following his commission. The troops paraded through Philadelphia—the largest city in the colonies, with thirty-four thousand residents—on the Fourth of July, and McMichael was awed by it. “This city for uniformity and a beautiful situation is equal to any I have ever seen,” he wrote. Four days later, his company reached New Brunswick, in the center of New Jersey. He was as impressed by the small river town as he was by the large city in Pennsylvania, calling New Brunswick “a pretty little town situated in a valley on the western bank of the Raritan River.”
Many soldiers were so struck with the beauty of the countryside that they asked for and obtained permission from their officers to climb to the tops of nearby mountains so they could have a view of the plain or forest through which they were marching.
Lieutenant Walter Finney guarded prisoners on a march through Orange County, New York, near the Hudson, and was enchanted by the serene ponds he passed