Jockey Hollow

War can kill you. It can also maim you for life, chop off an arm or a leg or both, so you have to hobble home and aren’t much good when you do get there. War can even shoot your eyes out, so you won’t ever see that home again. I know. I’ve been witness to all that and more. But I know something else. I know that war, most of all and most of the time, can be just plain downright, low-life, nasty mean.

I didn’t always realize that. It came to me all in a rush. I had thought I was pretty grand. After all, I had had vast experience as a soldier – all of two months. In October of 1776, on the very day of my sixteenth birthday, I had presented myself to Colonel Jacob Ford to be enrolled in the militia of Morris County, New Jersey. After drilling six times once a week on the Morristown Green I had just returned from my first militia expedition, so of course I now knew everything there was to know in the military line.

The first surprise came when I returned was to find the placid village of Morristown transformed. In normal times, we of the Jerseys are among the most peaceful of folk. Morristown lies surrounded by quiet fields and lush orchards, nestled among what we call mountains but most would see as just low hills. It surely is among the most prosperous villages in the province. The whole town may boast but sixty homes, most arrayed neatly about our well kept square, called the Green, and our church and taverns.

Now, of a sudden, all had changed. The place thronged with strangers. These were soldiers, but they were nothing like the soldiers I had known. These were not our straggling militiamen, come to town for a day of parade and play, willing to act like troops for an hour or two before repairing to the bar at Arnold’s Tavern. You could tell at a glance these new men were the real thing. Some even wore uniforms, long blue coats over buff britches crowned with cocked hats. Others had a simpler outfit that somehow seemed even more military – linen hunting shirts atop the rugged leggings of a woodsman. All the clothes were a far cry from the dusty smocks of our local farmers-turned-militiamen. Moreover, these warriors walked with their own particular swagger. Unmistakably, they were veterans. They carried their muskets with practiced ease, not in the self-conscious way of a citizen-soldier more used to a hayfork than a gun. The weapons seemed a very part of them. Most were fitted with bayonets, scary-looking blades attached to the muzzles of the muskets. You knew without asking that these fighting men meant business.

I spotted my fellow militiaman, Ezra Cobb, lounging near the Green, pretending to whittle a block of wood but in reality staring with wonder and admiration at the strangers. "Ezra, what’s happened? Where did all these come from?"

Ezra turned a laconic gaze in my direction. "Why, if it ain’t young Jabez Coventry, back from the foreign wars. I heard you got special orders to carry Colonel Ford’s messages while the rest of us had to plod home. Now you’re back. Well, it’s a new world now. We in the Morris County militia ain’t of much count any more. These here are real soldiers. Continentals. They’ve marched down from the Hudson Highlands. Some say they’re going on to join General Washington in South Jersey. They’re General Lee’s troops, and Colonel Vose is commanding this batch. There must be five hundred of them. Mostly Massachusetts men, I’m told."

Ezra stopped to spit. "Never thought much of Massachusetts folk," he went on. "But these here act like real soldiers. They’re the ones that stayed outside Boston and made General Billy Howe skedaddle with all his British troops clear up to Halifax in Nova Scotia. Guess some of them must have fought at Breed’s Hill, maybe on Long Island and at White Plains."

He took another admiring look at the troops crowded on the Green. "You can tell they’re real fighting men, just waiting for the next battle."

As we spoke, a cloud swept across the sun, and the gentle breeze abruptly gusted into a full wind out of the north. "They may have a long wait for the next battle," I said. "This is December, and there isn’t likely to be much fighting in the cold weather. Maybe they’ve come to winter in Morristown."

"They got fight left, and they’ll show it before the snow falls," Ezra opined.

I wasn’t so sure. The new soldiers looked war-like, but they also seemed tired, some almost worn out. And hungry. Their uniforms, at first so soldier-like, on closer look were ragged. Worse for a marching army, almost to a man, their boots and shoes were in ruins. Fighters? Perhaps, but they looked like men interested most of all in filling their bellies and finding a place to rest out of the cold. They were restless. I noticed guards had been posted outside Arnold’s Tavern, and I was certain they were there for a good reason.

But I couldn’t linger. I had finished my tour of militia duty and I had to get back home. I bid Ezra goodbye, shouldered my pack and set out on the eight-mile walk west to our farm in Mendham. My mother would have missed me, and Pa would be waiting with a welter of chores.