The Winter Soldiers: Remember Valley Forge by Thomas B. Allen

"I think the game is pretty near up.

I am now convinced, beyond a doubt that unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place . . . this Army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these things. Starve, dissolve, or disperse in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can.... "

The words of General George Washington in December of 1776 were frank, devoid of the spin required of the modern military. Despite all that has been written and spoken about life in the winter quarters of Valley Forge, it seems that for those on the ground it was worse than most Americans realize. Not only were there near starvation, bloody bare footprints in the snow, and snow and sleet falling on a barely clad group of untrained civilian-soldiers, but the Continental Army went unsupported by perhaps the majority of their fellow citizens, many of whom were engaged in selling foodstuffs, horses, and munitions to the British forces living in relative luxury and wooing the teenaged beauties of the newly captured capital of Philadelphia.

How Washington, with his shrewd grasp of the role of battlefield terrain, managed to pull his weakened army together to prevail at the Battle of Trenton becomes a suspenseful narrative in Thomas Allen's Remember Valley Forge: Patriots, Tories, and Redcoats Tell Their Stories (Remember Series). Master of field position though he was, Washington faced other foes besides the Redcoats and their powerful Tory supporters--primarily the calendar and its corollary, the weather. Enlistments for most of his forces were for only six months, and most of these were set to run out on January 1, 1777, and with their state militias shrinking before their eyes, officers had only to resign their commissions to be legally free to return to their homes as well.

Despite his apparent despair, however, Washington somehow rallied his own will, and with the victory at Trenton and the retaking of Philadelpha, support from his own Congress and countrymen slowly rallied as well. Initially bound to a strong code of honor, Washington eventually gave in to reality and posted harsh penalties for deserters and thieves among the ranks and issued orders for his starving foragers to confiscate horses, wagons, food, and clothing and rustle livestock as needed from the civilian populations. Washington also successfully pursued his "secret war" through a network of spies and double agents that rival KGB/CIA legends, although he was outmaneuvered by one of the former Tory Philadelphia beauties, Peggy Shippen, who managed to marry General Benedict Arnold and "turn" him to become perhaps the most notorious turncoat spy of the war.

Proud but not jealous of his primacy, Washington chose to share leadership with European sympathizers such as Baron Frederic Wilhelm von Steuben, whose close-order drilling transformed the army, and the Marquis de Lafayette, among others, who took command in key skirmishes as the Continental Army drove the British back toward New York. With the American victories at Monmouth and Springfield, New Jersey, the British made the fatal decision to split their forces and attempt to defeat Washington by attacking from the south as well as from the north, a strategy which ultimately cost them the defeat at Yorktown, where Cornwallis' army was cut off from English naval support by French victories at sea. Although the peace was several years in coming, the revolutionary army had virtually secured the liberty they sought.

With all the caveats of history around the early leadership of Washington, author Allen makes the case that, militarily at least, he was the man for the job. It was Captain "Light Horse" Harry Lee, veteran of Valley Forge, who penned the words which have always defined General George Washington for history: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Ironically, of course, Light Horse Harry Lee went on to father Robert E. Lee, General of the Army of the Confederacy. But that, as we say, is a story for another day--and the matter of many another book.

The latest in National Geographic's Remember series, Remember Valley Forge: Patriots, Tories, and Redcoats Tell Their Stories (Remember Series). displays the scholarly supportive materials associated with its publisher--abundant photographs and prints of period paintings, an extensive timeline of both the Revolutionary War and the Valley Forge encampment, maps, "Selected Sources," "Quote Sources," "Selected Postscripts," and an index.