The Proud and the Free by Howard Fast

1st and 2nd Regiments when the baggage train appeared, led by an ox-drawn freight wagon, with the Gary brothers riding astride the lead oxen. The freight wagon was filled with the youngest children, and women and older children were perched all over the baggage carts. I recall that moment well, for it was then that the magazine was broken into. I heard the flurry of musketry and wondered whether we were already engaged in a fratricidal combat with troops who held back, but the shooting stopped as suddenly as it began, and I learned later that we had taken the magazine easily enough and that only one young lieutenant had been hurt with a bayonet wound in the thigh. But the children in the big wagon began to weep in fright, and Arnold Gary had to shout at the top of his lungs to make himself heard, as he called:
    Well, here we are, Jamie, and where in hell do you want us to put these brats and sluts?
    Olive Lutz climbed down from the wagon and ran up to him, crying, You big oaf, sitting there so one cannot tell which is ox and which is man – there’s children behind you and keep your tongue decent. We’re not in this to take from you what we take from the gentry!
    She’s right and this is no rig, said Angus. So shut your dirty mouth, Arnold Gary.
    Where the baggage train was to go I had not been told by the Committee, but it seemed obvious that the best place for them would be somewhere in the middle of the column; and acting on that, Angus and I led them along between the huts and the parading men. The men cheered as the women rode by, and the older children watched everything open-mouthed, this being such excitement as they had not experienced before.
    Now, for the first time, I ran into Billy Bowzar and Jack Maloney, and they seized me and pulled me outside the line of men.
    How is it, Jamie? asked Bowzar.
    There are still men in the huts, but each one needs a great argument and persuasion, and I would say, To hell with them.
    I am with Jamie, agreed Maloney. We want to march.
    While we spoke, other committeemen ran up and down the files, trimming them into order and dressing them up. Never before in the history of the Continentals had a permanent camp been broken thus swiftly and with such dispatch, and there was a new air about the men, a smartness in the way they addressed their lines and ordered their arms.
    By now, the musicians had arranged themselves into one compact group, and the two dozen or so little drummer lads were stiff and proud as peacocks, not wholly understanding what had come about, but knowing well enough that they would no longer be sport for any officer who wanted to exercise his cane. Chester Rosenbank started the music, leading the men so that they would all play together, and the first song they struck up was that sweet Pennsylvania air, Oh lovely hills of Fincastle, for thee my sad heart yearns. Afterwards I asked Chester why he had chosen that air instead of marching music, and he answered that marching songs were only partly ours, but this song of the buckskin men something all ours and calculated to take the hot bitterness out of the men, yet leave them their resolution. The fifes played sweetly if somewhat raggedly, and the drummer boys tapped their sticks lightly.
    The shouting had lessened and now with the music it halted entirely. At least fifteen hundred men were on parade now, and Sean O’Toole had finally arranged his cannon to flank the column head. Angus was laying out the baggage carts alongside the center of the line; and there, but outside the men and facing the expanse of the parade, I stood with Bowzar and Maloney. We were joined by the Jew Levy and Danny Connell and the Nayger Holt; and it was then that we saw a body of mounted men sweep up the road from Morristown and drum across the parade toward us.
    So here are our officers, said Danny Connell.
    We stood side by side, waiting, and the Line dressed like grenadiers. The music finished, and there was no other