Prelude to Glory, Vol. 6 by Ron Carter

Author:Ron Carter [Carter, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2002-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

Savannah, Georgia

Early February 1780

CHAPTER XVI

* * *

The Savannah River was a faint ribbon to the north, with the lights of Savannah town on its banks winking on in the late dusk. From the bogs and marshes and swamps bordering the great river, the fetid stink of stagnant water and decaying things reached the seventy-four American prisoners laboring half a mile south of the river, marching in step in single file, bound together at four-foot intervals by a one-inch hawser attached to their left ankles.

These were only a few of those who had joined the October attack to retake Savannah from the British. The fighting had been face-to-face, hot, brutal, with victory hanging in the balance when French Admiral d’Estaing suddenly withdrew his three thousand five hundred infantry and his ships with their ninety cannon and sailed for the West Indies. Abandoned, the outnumbered Americans scattered, disorganized, hiding in swamps and bogs and in fields and the thick forests surrounding the city. British patrols brought them in singly, and in twos and threes, some Americans, some French, some Polish, and some Africans, who had taken up arms to fight for freedom.

The British brigadier general assigned to prisoners set up his headquarters in a great mansion located a half mile south of the river and the city, set on a rolling hill, overlooking a two-thousand-acre plantation. He called in his staff.

“Every building on the estate will be used to hold American prisoners. Examine each of them and report the number of men each will accommodate.”

At ten o’clock the following morning the staff reconvened and reviewed the list of eleven buildings. The barn built to stable horses was number three.

“How many men will the horse barn accommodate?”

“Eighty, sir, if they sleep crowded on the floor, and we remove the stalls.”

“Have the Americans tear them out.”

“Should we trust them with the tools, sir? Axes and sledges?”

“Absolutely not. They think themselves quite clever with their hands. Let them use their hands.”

The hard-packed dirt floor of the barn reeked with the stench of horse droppings and urine and the rot and mold that had accumulated over two decades in the unrelenting humidity. In the twenty days the American prisoners worked in the sweltering, stifling heat of the Savannah fall, none were allowed out of the tattered clothing they wore, nor were they allowed to bathe or shave. They did not know they would live thus throughout the winter. Six died of dysentery and gangrenous wounds, and the British loaded their bodies into a freight wagon and hauled them to the swamp.

Tearing out the horse stalls, the prisoners uncovered four horseshoes in the packed dirt of the barn floor—two large ones, calked heel and toe for draft horses, and two smaller flat-plates for thoroughbred saddle mounts. There were eight bent, rusted horseshoe nails in each shoe. Patiently they used one shoe to pound the nails in another straight, then drew them out, and used them to dig out the spikes the British had driven into the wooden window frames to seal them shut.

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