Thank You

For requesting the short story “Soles of War” 
and subscribing to the Fairbanks History.com monthly newsletter notification if you aren’t already a follower. 

“Soles of War” is a short story I wrote about George Washington’s troops at the Jockey Hollow Winter Encampment after Valley Forge. They had learned valuable lessons at Valley Forge, but the men were just as sick and destitute at Jockey Hollow as they were earlier. Many didn’t have shoes. The winters were recorded as being even colder than the Valley Forge Encampment. This is the story of local Patriots who helped the soldiers that cold winter. There are many facts buried in this story. I hope you enjoy it. This work received a Daughter’s of the American Revolution award in the 2021 American Heritage contest.

Hope you enjoyed “Soles of War.”
Let me know how you like it and watch for glimpses of the new book being published Made to Last Forever: A Family A House A Nation
offered in upcoming blog posts.

Soles of War

Ruth’s eyes welled as she buried herself in a hug between her two sons. Her husband recently deceased, the boys were the only ones she had left. She was sending them to fight with the young General Washington against the British. The boys going together gave her some comfort, even though she didn’t know how she would manage the farm without them.

Seth, her “big man”, had dark strong features. At home, he had gentle eyes and touch. He was not a bully, but other men stepped aside when he came onto the scene. Ephraim, her younger son, was a short, slight man with dirty-blond curly hair. Ephraim looked up to his big brother, who stood on guard in the background, when he had issues with other boys.

            Ruth looked down at Seth and Ephraim’s shoes, worn hand-me-downs from their late father. She had no money for leather for new ones. Even if she did, the cobbler didn’t come to town for another month. Ruth’s hands shook as silent tears dampened the heavy homespun coats and knit caps she held out to her boys that warm autumn day in 1679. These, made by her own hands, were the only protection she could offer them against the punishments of war.

        ***

During the balmy late fall, the coats seemed cumbersome. Ephraim laid his aside at night to feel the breezes blow over the sweat and dust of the daytime march. In the chill of this morning, he reached over to find a tattered thread-bare coat in its place. Seth had warned him.

The golden, orange, and red leaves swirled to the ground portending a hard and early winter. Too soon, Seth and Ephraim marched into a flurry of snow. Seth insisted on trading coats with Ephraim. Embarrassed and ashamed, the cold gnawing through his thin body. Ephraim exchanged coats with Seth. He slid into the big coat which felt like his mother’s hug, while Seth tugged into the worn coat, stressing the weak seams.

By December, the troops were headed for their winter encampment. The crosswinds hurled ice against their exposed skin like pellets from a gun. Seth’s shoes were sucked off in a bog as they crossed a freezing creek. He pulled dry grasses and straw to pad his feet and wrapped them in strips of a tattered scarf from a soldier lost in battle.

           As they pushed through another storm, the soldier ahead of them cursed the blisters and pain caused by the shoes that he had taken from another fallen soldier. Seth tapped his foot with the butt of his gun to show Ephraim that it was numb. His gate was unsteady, but he smiled and said he had no pain. His shoulder bumped the trunk of a pine tree close to their path. He stumbled over roots and rocks. It was as if he could no longer sense the rutted path with his feet.

          No one had eaten in three days. Sleep was not regular nor long. The cold bit into their strength and started playing its deadly tricks on Seth. With his heavy flintlock gun slung over his shoulder, he buried his hands under his warm woolen cap and talked of Mother rubbing his fingers by the fireplace after a long day of cold farm work. Seth wiped away imagined sweat from his brow and pinched open the strained buttons of the coat. He lagged behind, when he usually led. His feet dragged in the snow. Finally, they saw Morristown, New Jersey, in the distance. All the troops were to meet and billet there for winter encampment with General Washington. The men that had quartered there in the winter of 1677 called it, Jockey Hollow.

  Seth was having a hard time keeping up with the troop. Ephraim and a friend, risking reprimand, fell back with him. They couldn’t understand Seth’s words, but Seth blamed the howling wind. As they both put their hands under Seth’s arm pits to half-guide and half-drag him onward, they couldn’t help from laughing at the pleasant warmth surrounding their fingers.

***

Am I awake? Is this still a part of a horrible dream, or will I never wake again? Seth’s eyes felt heavy, as if someone had laid the coins of the dead on them. He struggled to lift his heavy arms to brush the coins away. Seth opened his mouth to shout, “I’m not dead!” As the words filled the air, the snow fell into his mouth and delighted his parched tongue. A thunderous sneeze cleared his nose. Seth turned his head to see a patch of ground cleared around him the size of a coffin. He lay on a bed of frozen grass. Moisture seeped through his clothes.

 The glow of the fire at his feet caught his attention. Sharp needles stabbed the soles of his feet as the life crept back into them. He struggled to heft himself on his useless arms. On his third attempt, he propped himself on his elbows long enough to see his blackened toes. He heard Ephraim and another soldier return with twigs and pine straw to cover the floor of the tent. Too heavy for his own arms, Seth thumped to the ground and drifted away.

Ephraim and his friend dragged him through the snow to the center of the tent. Ephraim sidled into the spoon position at Seth’s front, the way he had as a boy on cold winter nights at home. The friend soldier lay at Seth’s back. As the shadow of the drifting snow crawled up the outside of the tent, the inside became protected from the bite of the wind and over fatigue stole their consciousness. With the dawning light, Ephraim awoke. Stiffness and cold impeded every movement. He shook Seth. He would not wake, not now, not to return home after the war. Terror loomed as Ephraim thought of Seth no longer being there to protect him from the cold, a foe, or the war.

  Ephraim knew if he hid the body, he might receive Seth’s rations for a while. He couldn’t dig a grave in the frozen earth, so he asked his friend to help tug Seth’s body away from the encampment before the others rose. After searching Seth’s pockets, Ephraim gave the tattered coat to the friend. Ephraim took Seth’s belt and warm woolen cap. Mother would want me to keep the cap. With freezing tears, Ephraim yanked it down over his ears.

            When it came time to take Seth’s shirt and trousers, Ephraim couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t leave his brother naked in the cold. When his friend, out of desperation, started removing the clothes, Ephraim found the strength of his big brother and stood up to him. They piled brush and stones over the body to ward off wild animals that were as hungry as they.

***

When Ephraim returned to camp, it was a stir. A young officer rode in after a night at a nearby farmhouse. He carried the plans for log huts to be built in rows, to form an organized community. Each hut was to be 16.5 feet by 14 feet with a fireplace on the end and bunks on the sides.

            Ephraim asked the young officer how they were to build the huts without tools. The officer, silently looked into the distance until Ephraim’s eyes followed. There was a barn down the hill past a pasture clearing by the house where the officer stayed at night. Ephraim took this as an order. His conscience would be clear of theft when he returned home to church.

              ***                                                    

At the farmhouse, Jacob Conine hitched his draft horses to a wagon. Steam rose from their barn-warmed backs and blew out their nostrils. He loaded two jugs of his peach whiskey for General Washington and shoes to sell at the town store. Morristown would be bustling in preparation for the arrival of Washington’s wife, who stayed each winter with the General.

  Jacob, a hard-working, serious Dutchman, was wealthy in land, but poor in sons. A man of land needed sons to work the farm, so he could keep up with his cobbler’s trade. Jacob had teenage daughters but his sons were still small.

  Fifteen-year-old Susannah, tall and stout, ran out of the house tying her scarf over her ears, her heavy coat flying open. “May I go father?” Her mother appeared at the door with a scowl, wiped her hands on her apron and then slammed the door as she returned to the kitchen.

  “Hop up, my Susannah. I’ll need you to take the shoes to the store, so I can deliver the whiskey to the young General.”

            “Do you think Mistress Washington will be there?”

            “We’ll know long before we get to Morristown.” As Jacob flicked the reins over the rumps of his drafts, the wagon rocked onto the frozen rutted road. Over the hill, Jacob saw a couple of ragged figures at the crest of his pasture, now a common sight. Jacob watched and mentally retraced his motions of securing the barn.

***

At Morristown, Jacob and Susannah went their separate ways. In the store, Susannah passed the ribbons, clothes, and candies without notice. She planted herself in front of the counter and placed the shoes from the large basket in pairs in neat rows.

  “Well, Susannah, you’ve brought me shoes. You must have made these,” said the rotund, flushed-faced keeper, as he examined a shoe. “Your work is even better than your father’s

            “Thank you kindly,” Susannah blushed and told the keeper the price her father had set. The keeper looked at Susannah as if he was about to bargain the price. Susannah kept her head high and met him eye to eye. He turned to fiddle with his ledger, then gave Susannah a note of credit in the store.

  Susannah left the store with the credit, another contract for shoes and a bit of precious sugar wrapped carefully for her mother’ baking and for her father’s whiskey. Jacob was waiting for her outside the store with the horses and wagon. As Susannah climbed nimbly up the high step of the wagon, Jacob beamed and put a calico package in her lap.

“Go ahead; open it.” He could hardly keep from helping her. “General Washington gave it to us for billeting his officer last winters.”

Susannah found a collapsible telescope wrapped neatly in the cloth. She extended it and put it to her eye. She peered down the road. “I don’t see Mistress Washington’s carriage yet.”

           “General Washington has ordered us to make 2000 pairs of shoes for his troops. He will pay us handsomely, if there are funds in the treasury. I hope they plan to pay us in hard money.”

           “Oh, Father, that’s wonderful. Can I help? I’d rather help you than do house chores.

           “Why, Susannah, I could not do it without you. Your mother will just have to pout.”

When they reached home, Susannah ran to tell her mother of the town activities and show her the telescope. Jacob went to the barn. Shutters on a window were pushed in against its irons, there was just enough room for a small man to climb through.

  As Jacob’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw that tools were missing: hammers, axes and froes. Turning to the cobbling area with dread, he knew he wouldn’t be able to get tools in time to complete the General’s order. The leather was untouched. The shoe molds, one mold for each of the three sizes, stood like soldiers in a row. The cobbler’s tools remained.

***

Susannah and Jacob rose early and worked long hours to make the shoes in the unheated barn during the worst weather in history. They took the shoes from time to time to Morristown, over the path in the drifted roads cleared by neighbors.

            On the ride, Susannah tucked a stray blond hair under her scarf as she thought about the officer dances the town girls were invited to attend. She fancied herself in a beautiful dress, with a formal invitation in her hand, being escorted into the hall by a handsome officer in full uniform. She knew she was young. The neighbor boys teased her about being large and plain.

            An invitation didn’t come. Susannah turned her attention to helping the soldiers who desperately needed shoes, instead of daydreaming about gallantly decked officers.

***

Before spring, Jacob and Susannah completed the 2000 pairs of shoes. They drove through the newly fallen snow to deliver the shoes to the supply officer. He asked them to wait. Jacob paced and repeatedly looked out the window for the officer’s return, wanting to get back to the farm before it got dark and more snow fell.

            A gust of cold air blew through the open door, General and Mistress Washington entered, each carrying a package. Jacob rose from his chair and touched Susannah’s elbow. She rose and curtseyed, not taking her eyes off Mistress Washington’s simple calico dress.

            As General Washington bowed, Jacob extended his hand. Jacob’s grasp was a firm grip of a farmer and cobbler; Washington’s was a hand of confidence and command befitting a general. The Commander smiled and promised they would celebrate together when the war was won. Then Washington presented a package to Jacob. He explained the silver ladle was made by Paul Revere. It was a token of his gratitude for the Conine family housing his officer and making the shoes.

            Mistress Washington handed a package to the General and gave Susannah a warm hug. Martha explained that the women of Morristown gathered at the Ford Mansion, where she and the General stayed. They mended clothes and knit socks and caps for the soldiers. “However, Susannah your work on the shoes is exceptional.”

  After taking the package back from her husband, Mistress Washington handed it to Susannah. She explained that the pewter teapot inside was from Thomas Jefferson. Mistress Washington nodded toward the Conine’s wagon. She told Susannah that she would find a sewing chest for her there. Then the General’s wife whispered to Susannah, “Mr. Benjamin Franklin told his own sister when he gave her the same gift, ‘I consider that the character of a good housewife is far preferable to that of being only a pretty gentlewoman.”

***

Ephraim was given a sturdy pair of shoes from the Conine’s last delivery. When Ephraim returned home, his mother’s tears fell again onthe frayed knitted cap she made for Seth. Later, as she put her younger son’s worn war issue shoes in a chest along with the tattered knitted cap, she wondered about the heartache the cap had covered and the tales the tongues of those shoes could tell. Then she blessed the cobbler whose shoes brought one of her sons back home.