The Glorious Cause - Jeff Shaara [63]
The small boat reached the shore, and he stepped out, looked up toward the rocks of Fort Lee, began the slow awkward climb. The crippling stiffness in his leg was an embarrassment, though almost no one noticed it anymore. He had already experienced the prejudice, that a soldier must be sound in body, and he had expected teasing about his limp from the first day he drilled with his Rhode Island regiment. The ridicule had come less from the men around him than from his own mind, that voice that even now pushed him up the hill. No one on his staff would ever ask to assist him, whether he was stepping up through sharp rocks or climbing into the saddle of his horse. He did not have to tell them to stay back, the grim determination on his face all the instruction they would need.
He reached the top of the hill, held himself still for a long moment, recovering from the climb, his chest rolling with hard breaths. He looked away, disguising the exertion, would not have his aides or worse, his troops see him in any discomfort. He scanned the face of the cliff, could see all along the edge of the sharp drop-off, where cannon had been placed in low places in the rocks, their crews milling around them, the boring routine. The lookouts slouched in their towers above him, and the only sounds were low voices, quiet conversations, and, back in the wooden huts, the work of the cooks, the rattle of tin plates already piling up for the evening meal.
He moved out to the edge of the largest rock face, his particular perch, stared across to Fort Washington. There was routine over there as well, but not the same boredom. The men would still be working in shifts, shovels and axes trading hands, hard veterans growing harder by their good work.
The troops under his command were a mix, mostly from the mid-Atlantic states, Maryland and Delaware men, along with Magaw’s Pennsylvanians, and Virginia riflemen. The New England men had mostly gone north with Lee, protecting the roads into their own states. Washington had been logical about how the army had been divided, and Greene could find no fault with the overall strategy. The one fault he did find was the burst of good cheer that had welcomed the return of Charles Lee.
He had never taken to the man, knew he was the exception, and so, he had kept quiet at the meetings. So many of Washington’s commanders were quick to point to the man’s vast experience, showed Lee a respect bordering on worship that had always annoyed Greene like the sting of a bee trapped inside his shirt. He pictured the man now, slovenly in dress, Lee’s thin skeletal face punctuated by a long hooklike nose. Greene himself was no fanatic about personal cleanliness, and no one in the camps expected a soldier, even a senior officer, to bathe more than once a week. But Greene had endured Lee’s personal aroma in more than one meeting, a cloud of odor that only a dog could ignore. Lee was surrounded always by his dogs, bragged of their prowess on the hunt, though Greene never knew anyone who had seen Lee hunting anything. To Greene, the dogs were yapping mongrels whose loyalty to their master was nearly equaled by the loyalty of the troops under him. Greene had often quizzed himself about his own dislike of the man, thought, I really have nothing against dogs. And it is not the man’s personal habits, the hygiene. No one wins a war based on his habits of toiletry. It is much more about his demeanor, his indiscretion, the man’s willingness to harp about his superiors,