Soldier's Secret by Sheila Solomon Klass

Author:Sheila Solomon Klass
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780805082005
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

Though this area of New York was supposedly neutral ground, it was really a no-man’s-land, with bands of Tory irregulars troubling the local farmers, stealing their livestock and their crops, and commandeering their provisions. Often, women and children—innocent victims, their men gone—were left to starve. Sometimes the Tories even set fire to the colonists’ homes. When we saw the night sky turn flaming red, we quickly mounted our horses and rode to the burning farmstead to find Patriots hanging like rag dolls from boughs or to see Loyalists in feathers and paint dashing off into the darkness.

DeLancey’s raiders were the worst. Westchester Tories led by James DeLancey, they were known as “cowboys” because of the cattle they stole. They were hardened fighters and merciless on their countrymen.

In this sheltered glen, Roger and I argued often about war. I believed war was necessary at times, but Roger felt there always had to be a better way. He was adamantly opposed to war and would go all the way back to the ancient Greeks to talk about Helen of Troy and foolish wars.

In October the first anniversary of the great battle of Yorktown occurred. I vividly recalled those days in Middleborough, when victory teetered between redcoat and Patriot. Then, I could not contain my excitement and followed the accounts carefully, reading every word I could find about the battle. I recounted my frenzy to Roger.

Then we won and the Patriots forced Cornwallis to surrender! In those days, I could think of nothing else. At my spinning wheel I envisioned the grandeur of the victory, the magnificent final scene: trumpets and swords, triumphant Patriots generous champions in victory.

At first, Roger teased me lightly. “Where did you get these romantic ideas?” he asked, and laughed. He kept up his comments and I began to mind. “Our side won,” I reminded him. “Aren’t you glad?”

“Of course. But that doesn’t change the brutality of it.”

Things got tense between us. Finally, he proposed a deal. “I’ll let you be. I won’t say another word about Yorktown,” he vowed, “if you’ll promise never to go on about the glorious victory.”

Oddly, that very promise he exacted proved to be a kind of shield for me because, to mark the anniversary, an anonymous broadside bitterly presented a candid look back. This document revealed that Yorktown hadn’t been so glorious at all. It argued forcefully as it presented these truths: It was the French, and not the Patriots, who had forced the surrender, because there weren’t many Patriots left ready to fight in Yorktown. Many were dead, many wounded, and the rest, starving, ragged, and unpaid, had simply picked up and gone home.

In fact, at Yorktown, while a military band played “The World Turn’d Upside Down,” seven thousand British troops slow-marched across the green to drop their arms, slamming the guns down intentionally hard so that they broke.

The great Cornwallis never appeared; he was taken conveniently ill, so General O’Hara of the Guards was sent to surrender in his place. O’Hara blundered and mistakenly tried to surrender to the French general on the field.

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