Opening of the book
A BATTLE PIECE
By Ernest Haycox
Author of “With Grape and Bayonet,”
“A Cup of Sugar,” etc.
It was late on the night of August 26, 1776. The sun had set blood red beyond the Jersey palisades, touching, as it dipped, the British ships in New York harbor. The nine thousand Continentals camped on
Brooklyn Heights, with their backs to the East River and their gun muzzles pointed toward the rugged hills which masked Flatbush, wondered where Howe kept himself and wished for the actual presence of Washington.
“Old Uncle Putnam!” grumbled the spruce Marylanders. “Galloping around here in his shirt sleeves and a dirty leather jacket. A —— New
England farmer. A very fine appearing gentleman, indeed. Why doesn’t Washington put a military man in command of the Long
Island troops?”
In this impatient mood they scanned the line of hill and timber before them. Through that dark mass were scattered their outposts and beyond it somewhere Howe moved his twenty thousand troops— of which number a great many were veterans of the continent—and waited for a chance to fling them against the rebellious Americans in the first open and pitched battle of the revolution.
“Why won’t he come and fight it now?” fretted the Marylanders.
“Why won’t Washington force him? Why don’t we fight?”
High-strung men, these sons of planters and Baltimore shopkeepers; proud but green troops who did not yet know what iron discipline or patient waiting meant.
“Howe’s afraid,” said the New Englanders posted in the distant timbered defiles. “He’s remembering Bunker Hill and he wants to take his time. But why don’t they bring up reinforcements? We can’t hold these passes against the whole British army. Where is Washington?”
If they thought the commander-in-chief slept and forgot them they were mistaken. Washington stood in New York town and stared across the black tide of the East River; watching anxiously, knowing that the odds were heavy against the untenable position over there; knowing, too, that his general had not fully comprehended the spirit of his orders.
His last injunction to Putnam had been, “Keep an eye on the
Jamaica road. I fear your main trouble will be from that quarter.” He
Keep listening free
Readnara
