Free Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory by William R. Forstchen, Newt Gingrich, Albert S. Hanser Page A

attack were locked safely in his secured footlocker. The plan was obviously based upon the success at Trenton almost exactly a year ago to this day.
    What greeted him at Valley Forge was worse than Long Island, worse than the desperate days before Trenton, when at least he had a plan and a target to strike back at, but also a secured base on the west bank of the Delaware beyond British reach and with some trickle of supplies coming in.
    Congress assured him that the proper committee from the Pennsylvania delegation had been informed of his intent to make his winter camp at Valley Forge, which, for reasons of security, had to be kept secret. This committee would rouse the local militia to bring in supplies, heads of beef, barrels of flour, and tools for cutting and shaping trees into the hundreds of cabins that had to be built quickly. They would have proper fortifications along with theshelters. In the retreat after Germantown, his army had lost a fair part of their baggage train and, with it, the siege equipment of heavy picks, shovels, axes, ropes for dragging, and wheelbarrows—what Caesar and the Romans had called the “impedimenta” of the army, the baggage that slowed an army down but was needed for their survival.
    What greeted him at Valley Forge was nothing. Absolutely nothing.
    He stopped, unable to bear the sight. Listless, starving men hunkered down in the open around smoky fires, many of them too weak and sick to build shelters, even if proper tools could be found. They gazed at him sullenly; some showed their respect by standing and coming to attention, but many could not move.
    When he turned his mount to ride back, a cry rose up.
    “Meat, meat. We have no meat!”
    He could hear officers and sergeants yelling for the malcontents to fall silent, but the cry cut into his heart.
    Merciful God, what am I to do? Go back and lie? Go back and promise that by this time tomorrow herds of cattle and sheep and droves of hogs would be driven in? If only he could give them all just a single pound of meat for one meal. He needed at least twenty head of cattle a day, or three times as many hogs or sheep, and that meant not a single ounce wasted; everything—from innards and brains to boiled-out bone marrow—would have to be consumed. To give each of them but a pound of bread, he needed six tons of flour a day, and the bakehouses and cords of dried firewood to bake the loaves.
    He needed tons of corn, dried fruit, vinegar for the surgeons to clean the hospitals yet to be built, stout ale and broth to feed the sick, at least thirty pounds or more of good fodder per horse, at least fifty wagonloads a day for fodder, though he wondered if a single horse would still be alive in another few days. There were reports that artillery crews were killing off the weakest animals to eat them. Along the Guelph Road leading to this place, he had seen the frozen and butchered carcasses of more than one animal that had collapsed and within minutes had its flesh stripped clean from the bones by hungry troops. Even the bones had been scooped up to be boiled.
    It was worse than the nightmare retreat across New Jersey. The small cadre of men who had endured the campaign a year ago, and stayed on with the army, was now enduring another season of misery. Two winters in a row was asking too much of any man.
    And what am I asking of myself , he wondered, as he rode back toward his headquarters tent.
    “Meat, General! For God’s sake, where’s our food?”
    One of the men lay on his back and held his feet up in the air for him to see. His feet were black, swollen, and cracked; it was obvious that in a few more days the surgeon would take both of them off.
    “Is this my reward for standing with you since Long Island?” the man cried. His voice broke into sobs of anguish.
    Washington lowered his head so they would not see his own tears, and he rode back to the command tent, pitched in an open grove of chestnuts. Even nuts from the trees had