Free Being George Washington by Glenn Beck Page B

ropes skyward and to hammer iron stakes into the rocky ground. Orderlies rustled to set up Washington’s folding wooden camp table and low stools.
    “Roll out that map of the area, Colonel Hamilton, if you would,” Washington said matter-of-factly. “Now, look, there,” he continued, drawing imaginary lines on the document before him. “We will erect roads, here, here—and there. Here will be a line of barracks. As well as here—and here. General Knox’s artillery brigade will be here. A guardhouse there. And the outer defenses, trenches and forts, will form lines there—and there. Our parade ground shall be in the center.” Again there was a sharp jabbing of his index finger to indicate the location of his plans. “And let us not forgot hospitals. Two hospitals for each brigade.”
    Some of the junior officers marveled at how Washington had so quickly absorbed the lay of the land to reach such logical conclusions. But Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s brilliant young chief of staff, knew better. He knew that his commander had unrolled his maps before ever arriving at Valley Forge. He knew that he had consulted with his officers and sought advice from the locals as he rode to this destination. George Washington’s genius, Hamilton knew, rested not only on good judgment, but on good listening and detailed preparation.
    But Hamilton also knew something else: they would all need a lot more than listening and preparation to survive a winter in Valley Forge.
    • • •
    A cart that seemed to be from hell itself rolled and lurched down the heavily rutted mud-and rock-strewn path that passed for a road, leading south out of the portion of Valley Forge that sheltered the Marquis de Lafayette’s encampment.
    Instead of being piled high with provisions or armaments, it was stocked with corpses—rotting, vermin-infested, stinking corpses. Some with their eyes wide open, staring heavenward, others with their mouths agape, their gums blackened from sickness and malnutrition. This cart—and the one that closely followed it—reeked of death. Not of heroic battlefield death, but rather of the stench of death from gnawing, ever-present hunger and horrible sickness.
    A shoeless body, dressed in blue rags, tumbled from the cart down into the mud. With this sorry remainder of what had once been a farmer, a husband, a father—a soldier—came a rat. And when both corpse and rat landed upon the winter’s ground, the rat, as ravenous as Washington’s surviving troops, flew right back toward the dead man—Private Joseph Hawthorn of the First Massachusetts Infantry—and sunk his teeth once more into what had recently been the deceased’s right hand.
    December 31, 1777
    Philadelphia
    “Another glass of claret, my dear?” asked General William Howe, the fifth Viscount Howe.
    “No, thank you, Your Excellency,” coyly replied the woman before him. Her name was Betsy Loring and she was the beautiful, blond wife of the stocky Loyalist commissary of prisoners, Joshua Loring. Even without another glass of claret, however, the twenty-five-year-old Mrs. Elizabeth Loring was really enjoying this wonderful masked ball. Gossips whispered—and they were probably for once correct—that this splendid affair had cost at least three thousand guineas.
    If it did, Mrs. Loring thought, it was well worth it.
    A chamber orchestra played the latest music from England—no rustic colonial tunes would annoy the patience of this crowd. Officers in silks and ladies in satins and high white wigs curtsied and danced. The finestfoods and liquors were served. If this was what occupations were like, then the current occupation of Philadelphia was going very well indeed for the half-German General Howe and his three thousand redcoats.
    For his part, General Howe was enjoying not only Philadelphia, but Mrs. Loring, as well. After all, Betsy had been his mistress—and rather openly so—since his occupation of Boston. The genial but