The Long Winter: Intrigue at Valley Forge

By Frank Stopa

Washington’s Continental Army is battered and almost defeated as it sets camp at Valley Forge in the bitter cold of December 1777. Nobody appreciates this better than Brigadier Henry Nichols. Charged with a secret mission by the King himself, Nichols schemes with a rogue and criminal to put an end to the American flirtation with independence, while Washington’s spies seek to uncover the threat before it’s too late!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Stopa
• Release date: Feb 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465879738

Frank Stopa

Frank Stopa is a former intelligence officer who has negotiated and worked successfully with law enforcement, intelligence and military services worldwide. In addition to his writing pursuits, he is currently engaged in training police officers across the United States in homeland security issues.

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PROLOGUE

By the winter of 1777-1778, the American rebellion was foundering miserably. The volunteer soldiers were suffering through a cold, disease-ridden winter. Though not the worst on record, it was harsh by any measure. Poor supply services and a corrupt quartermaster corps rife with plagued Washington’s Continental Army. Men could be seen walking through the snow with their bare, bleeding feet wrapped in cloth. Starvation was a daily occurrence. Despite the seasonal ceasefire, men died in British ambushes for want of powder or shot with which to defend themselves. Worse, the morale of the soldiers, as well as those colonists who supported the push for independence, was failing.

The British, commanded by General Sir William Howe, had landed at Head of The Elk at the northern reach of the Chesapeake Bay in late August and had twice defeated the Americans, first at Brandywine in September and then at Germantown in October, before settling comfortably into the colonial capital for the winter. They were warm and snug, supplied plentifully by the Royal Navy, and living off the relative luxuries of Philadelphia. From there, Howe permitted his dragoons to launch harassing forays into the countryside, picking at the edges of the Colonial forces, wearing down their morale one day at a time, one supply wagon at a time, one soldier at a time.

Across the lines, Washington had yet to prove his competence on the battlefield. Although he had skilfully out-manoeuvred the Redcoats time and time again, he could really only claim to have avoided disastrous defeats, first on Long Island, then in New York, all the way through New Jersey, and into Pennsylvania. On the political front, he had cajoled the Continental Congress into providing what meagre support it could, thus keeping the independence movement alive. But to say he enjoyed Congress’ confidence would be an overestimation.

The morale of the people wasn’t good either. They had no sense of the internecine political battles that pitted Washington against his adversaries in Congress. They couldn’t conceive how desperately the Continental Army scrapped for its survival, avoiding devastating battlefield defeats and engaging the enemy only when circumstances were favourable for victory. The people responded to victories, and Washington badly needed one. In their absence, disenchantment grew amongst his soldiers, amongst the independence minded colonists, and certainly amongst their representatives in Congress. And it grew, in particular, amongst those officers unhappy with Washington's command of the Army.

Earlier in the year, with the British occupation of the colonial capital looming, Congress had fled Philadelphia in haste and found itself re-seated in the bucolic Pennsylvania town of York. There, its members awaited good news, any news that didn’t foretell the destruction of the army and the snuffing out of the dream of independence. In a word, it awaited the news of a battlefield victory.

And that news finally came in October 1777 from far away Saratoga in the forests of northern New York. There, the rag tag continentals under Horatio Gates won a fabulous victory over the British forces of General ‘Gentleman Johnny’ Burgoyne. With victory in hand, Congress turned its attention to the shortcomings of Washington's command of the Army. In fact, a duplicitous letter from Army Inspector General Thomas Conway to Gates provoked a move within Congress to replace Washington. And that move intensified upon Howe's defeat of Washington’s army at Germantown.

Back in the field, Washington struggled daily to hold his ragged army together. His men were starving and freezing in the acrid smoke that perpetually enveloped their desolate winter encampment. Every day, he saw his officers resigning their commissions, some even so bold as to take their enlisted men with them as servants. He saw alarming desertion rates, men in search of food and warmth, yearning to be reunited with their families. They were tired of fighting and starving for some quixotic idea of freedom. They simply wanted to go home.

And with all this as a backdrop, Washington was about to choose Valley Forge as his army’s winter quarters. He knew that, if his men could suffer the harsh weather only a few months longer the French would enter the war on their side and provide the impetus for victory. He also knew in his heart that if he were replaced, the Army would never hold together. Gates was no commander-in-chief. He lacked the fortitude to lead the men through hardship. With him in command, the Continental Army would falter and then fall apart, the men returning to their homes and forgetting forever the dream of freedom. They would all once again become mere subjects of the British Empire, servants in its New World possessions. Washington believed he could prevent this. His ability to do so depended on remaining in command.

That, however, wasn't a certainty. While Washington focused his energies on holding the Army together through the interminable cold, skirmishing along the main lines between the two armies continued. Soldiers on each side, positioned well beyond their own friendly lines, guarded the main routes of travel. The British were there to harass and prevent the re-supply of the rebels by patriotic Philadelphians. The Americans were there to somehow assist those same patriots willing to brave the British advance guards. On both sides, spies and provocateurs were everywhere. While the British were clearly much too comfortable in the city to brave the low temperatures and provoke a winter battle, threats did exist. To confront and neutralize these threats, Washington would have to seek the assistance of some very special, gifted men to fight a secret war; a war which very well might decide the fate of their struggle for independence.

On the British side, the Crown’s prosecution of the war wasn’t going all that well either. In the summer, Howe had landed his forces at the Head of The Elk, fought two successful battles and occupied the colonial capital. This was scant reward. Washington had frustrated him at every turn. While he had defeated the rebels in almost every battle, he couldn't win the war. Worse, as the frigid winter gripped the country and the army settled snugly into Philadelphia, intelligence warfare supplanted battlefield action - unfamiliar territory for Howe. He didn’t know whom he could trust and whom he couldn’t, and he didn't know what to do about it.

Howe understood America. He could see its vast potential. He wanted Britain and America to continue on friendly terms. In London, the Crown perceived this as weakness, as unwillingness to forcibly bring the colonists into line. His requests of London were poorly supported. He'd had enough. He wished to relinquish command and return home.

In the end, neither side was satisfied. Washington needed a victory to hold together his army and the independence movement. Howe needed a victory to avoid the ignominy of defeat at the hands of the rebels. And King George III demanded an end to the rebellion. In this explosive environment, something was bound to happen, something unconventional, something extraordinary.



Wallabout Bay, New York

21st November 1777

The rhythmic lapping of bilge water against the bulkhead below reminded the smuggler of the tenuous existence to which he clung deep in the bowels of HMS Kitty. By day, he struggled like all the others to survive the brutality of their British captors, and by night, it was the prisoners themselves who presented the challenge.

Again, he passed the night with his back against the inside of her hull clutching a long wooden splinter wrenched from the knees of this aging British prison ship. Like countless nights before, he barely slept, wary of the man sent to dispatch him to the next world.

The British sloop Harrier had captured him, his men and their sloop Jade three weeks ago. Since then, he'd survived in a makeshift hell deep inside Kitty’s lower decks. The Royal Marine guards had separated him from his men. They'd been shackled together and transported to an unknown ship in the bay.

There was Henry Johnson, Jade’s master, a proud father of two. A farmer from northern Connecticut, he’d turned to smuggling when the British burned his farm, wrongly suspecting he’d harboured Rebels. Then there were the brothers, John, Thomas and Robert Cummings, students all. They’d been studying the sciences at Harvard College. Unfortunately, the British naval blockade of Boston harbour had disrupted those studies and driven them to find employment. Jade’s bosun was Jeb Hart, a cantankerous old perfectionist in his late forties. He was the heart and soul of the sloop, the man who saw to every last detail. There was never a line out of place on Jade and Hart made sure of it. The last two crewmen were Ezekiel Black, a freed slave from the Carolina colony, and ‘Little Bucky’ Peters, the twelve year-old son of former crewman ‘Big Bucky’ Peters who’d assumed the role of family provider when his father had expired after an interminable battle with the consumption.

John Lee Waterman, smuggler, himself had been imprisoned amongst the American naval prisoners, and questioned endlessly about his doings on the Sound that night. He gave his interrogators nothing, quickly discerning their personal foibles, using them one against another, and giving the crews from his other boats time to relocate. For their part, his interrogators increased the pressure on Waterman. First, they accused him of piracy, threatening to hang him. When that didn’t work they turned the Americans against him, insinuating that he was an informant, that he was a mercenary who stole from both sides, a criminal who deserved nothing but a place at the end of a noose. Although he wouldn’t succumb to their tactics, the British made life miserable. He wondered why they were so intensely interested in him.

Waterman surmised it was boredom. The guards really seemed uninterested in collecting intelligence from him. Mired in a tedious shipboard existence, they needed entertainment to keep them alert and interested. And nothing answered so much as a little sport at the expense of these decrepit, imprisoned Americans. Waterman was the perfect quarry.

What they didn't know was that John Lee Waterman was no ordinary prisoner. By his own admission, he was a merchant, a purveyor of goods to those in need. He acquired and traded scarce supplies, muskets and powder, reselling them to the highest bidder. In point of fact, he was a smuggler, a mercenary arms trader who gave little thought to those who bought his wares. The British needed them. The Continentals needed them. And the colonists needed them. If you could pay, Waterman would sell. And his business was profitable...very profitable.

Waterman had commanded two sloops since the spring of 1775, the Jade and the Emerald, along with three smaller whaling boats that plied their illicit trade across the Long Island Sound, putting in secretly at small anchorages at Oyster Bay and Glen Cove on the Island and Rye, Stanford and Norwalk in New York and Connecticut. With his fleet came loyal and savvy crews of seamen, scoundrels, and scouts, each loyal to his share of the profits, as well as the man who provided those shares. Whether moving goods by land or by sea, Waterman had an almost instinctive knowledge of his surroundings, a natural intelligence. He evaded danger with ease and sniffed out opportunities for profit like a bloodhound. He had more than earned the respect of his men.

Though well regarded by customers on both shores of the Sound, Waterman and his fleet were elusive and mysterious to British authorities. He maintained a discreet, unassuming cabin not a stone’s throw from the headwaters of the Saugatuck River, a place the British had been searching for in vain since the Battle of Long Island. He and his crews, though, were always on the move, one day staying on the Island with pro-independence conspirators, another putting in at one of the Connecticut ports, and occasionally even remaining at sea.

That part of his life had changed irreversibly three weeks ago when Harrier happened upon Jade in dark, stormy seas a few miles out of Oyster Bay. With two twelve pounders, swivel guns and a small contingent of Royal Marines, Harrier was headed into port, looking for a place to sit out the weather. Jade, heading out with Waterman in command, had just delivered a passenger to the Island and was on her way back to Norwalk when Harrier spotted her sails and gave chase. Waterman and his crew ran. And they would have eluded the British that night had not a poorly aimed shot from one of Harrier’s twelve pounders fouled the rigging of Jade’s mainmast. With the rough seas that night, the stresses on the mast were too much and it gave way. Harrier’s Marines easily boarded and took her a prize.

Now as he lay back against the inner hull in the small hours of the ‘dog’ watch, hundreds of prisoners crammed below decks with him, Waterman listened for the telltale movement that would alert him to the presence of an intruder. Amidst the coughing and wheezing of sleeping men and the continual dripping of snowmelt from the upper deck, he picked out a sliding sound, clothing rubbing against clothing. An attacker wouldn’t dare walk upright in this jungle of bodies. There was simply too much chance of casting a shadow, of breaking some imperceptible shard of light that happened to find its way to the lower decks, or simply just tripping over an unseen limb. No, if he wanted to reach his quarry, his attacker would crawl, wriggling like a snake over and through the bodies. The sound was subtle, barely audible, but it was different, out of place, and it was all Waterman needed to steel himself against the impending assault.

Hackett was a tall powerfully-built man, a long serving prisoner – on Kitty, ‘long serving’ typically meant months as opposed to years – captured at sea when a British frigate overtook and boarded the blockade runner on which he’d served. He was a serious, battle-hardened sailor with hands the size of baskets, dark leathery skin interrupted by the deep lines of weather and age, and a chest the size of a barrel of salted pork. He lacked nothing in the line of physical prowess, but made up for it several times over with a dim-wittedness that had no rival. It took little convincing from the other prisoners to set him to the task of removing a British informant from their ranks. He’d kill Waterman with his bare hands.

As Hackett wormed his way as quietly as he could through the bodies and limbs of the barely sleeping prisoners, Waterman waited nervously, his heart racing, hoping his improvised bayonet would do the job. He’d fought and killed men before, but never so close, never so personal. He was afraid.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the large powerful sailor was upon him. Hackett rose quietly from his prone position, squatting first, and then sprung out at his prey, going for the neck and head. He yelled wildly as he always had going into battle. There was only one problem.

In the dark of the below decks, he’d failed to find Waterman. He’d attacked a fellow prisoner, putting his huge hands around his neck and bashing the back of his skull into one of the Kitty’s aging oak knees. He’d killed the man almost before he could cry out, before the poor wretch even knew what had happened to him. He slumped over the body, exhaling huge breaths of vapour, the tension running out of him. And that’s when Waterman struck. He was astounded at his luck. In the dark, his appointed assassin had mistakenly pounced on another man.

Quickly reassessing the situation, Waterman leaped onto Hackett’s back, hoping his own weight would keep the man still enough for him to strike his one fatal blow. By the time Hackett had realized his mistake, Waterman had already seized the advantage. The behemoth was helpless for an instant, and that was all it took, as Waterman took the oak splinter in his right hand and drove it mercilessly with all his strength deep into Hackett’s neck. Blood spurted in rhythmic pulses, splashing prisoners everywhere. The entire deck was now awake and agitated, the Marines of the dogwatch alert to the commotion below, wondering whether to intervene.

In one last gasp, Hackett reared up in pain, tossing Waterman aside like a rag doll. The man’s head struck a thick oak beam only a few feet above and his body crumpled lifeless to the deck.

Prisoners scrambled away from the scene, not fully comprehending what had just happened. Waterman, for his part rose up on one knee, his back once more up against the inner hull, scanning the scene for those who’d ordered the attack. Surely, they’d be in the background awaiting the results of their manipulations. Two of them were there, in the dark recess of the ladder to the upper decks, whispering, watching, terrified at the botched job. Waterman’s eyes bore into the two men, as he yelled across to them.

Gillingham! Paulsen! I see you over there! Your man has failed! I’m still here, an’ I’m comin’ for ya! His threat might be so much bluster, but he had to make it all the same. It would give him a night’s peace. Tomorrow, he’d worry about surviving tomorrow.

The two prisoners sunk back deeper into the recess, unwilling to react to Waterman’s taunt. They’d failed and now they might be subject to Waterman’s reprisals.



London

2nd December 1777

A shrill wind gusted through the confined streets of London, as the ‘chaise and four’ rambled over the cobblestones toward the palace. Its lone passenger, the ambitious Brigadier Henry Nichols shivered inside. He wore a black cloak draped over his full dress uniform, and a blanket on his lap to keep the cold from penetrating through to his body. He was on edge, nervous about the coming audience with the King.

As the streets unfolded before him, Nichols reacquainted himself with the buzz of his native city. Although he drew comfort from the familiar landmarks, he felt little in the way of attachment. What Nichols really wanted was to return to America, to put an end to the colonists’ ridiculous rebellion. He was about to meet the King, and if he played his cards smartly, he’d convince him to offer the chance of a lifetime.

Nichols began his rapid rise through the Coldstream Guards as a fledgling lieutenant detached to Gorham’s Nova Scotia Rangers during the French and Indian Wars. During that campaign, he’d won a reputation for brutal efficiency, ambushing more French columns than any other British officer in Canada. He’d climbed the ranks quickly, promoted to Major by his twenty-third birthday, Colonel by twenty-five, Brigadier by thirty. But that reputation had come at a cost. His Mohican scouts were ruthless, committing atrocities against French settlements and troops, and nearly exterminating the Iroquois. Nichols had blood on his hands. He’d been promoted to Brigadier, but General was unlikely.

For the past three years, Nichols had spent his time in around New York City. His commander employed him in particularly difficult missions, raiding Indian encampments that threatened Royal interests, collecting intelligence on the independence-minded ‘Patriots’, and eventually commanding operations to ferret out those spies and activists providing sustenance to the rebellion. There was no doubt Nichols knew the ‘Colonials.’ There was no doubt he was effective. And there was also no doubt his commander didn’t share his taste for blood.

As the wind howled around him, the carriage slowed at the Horse Guards entrance to the Queen’s House at Buckingham, the King’s preferred residence when not at Windsor Castle. A sergeant of the King’s Life Guard requested the requisite palace laissez-passer. Nichols produced the ivory coloured pass he’d received earlier in the day from his regimental headquarters. The guard, recognizing it immediately and noting his uniform and rank, allowed the chaise to pass through.

Thank you, sir, he added, straightening up to attention and offering a salute.

Thank you, sergeant, you may stand at ease.

The driver continued on to the palace entrance, stopped the horses and climbed down hurriedly to open the door for Nichols. The Brigadier stepped down imperiously from the carriage, his cloak floating behind him as he jumped athletically from the last step.

Looking up at the imposing palace facade, Nichols strode forward, supremely confident in his abilities and his plan. Still, he'd have to be careful. The King's advisors were cunning politicians who would stop at nothing to quash his plan, or take credit for it themselves. In addition, rumours were circulating that the King had been driven mad by his obsession with maintaining an iron grip on the colonies.

Nichols, however, was prepared. If given the chance, he’d blame the loss at Saratoga on Howe’s decision against sending reinforcements to Burgoyne, a clear symptom of his listless leadership. Then he’d turn that to his advantage, presenting his plan to destroy the American rebellion once and for all.

Entering the palace, Nichols announced his presence to the Life Guard sergeant seated behind an ornate baroque desk. The guard, noting the brigadier's name, called over a page to lead Nichols to the King’s offices. The boy led him down a long corridor lined with Palladian windows on one side, and gold framed portraits on the other, ushered him into a large anteroom, and took his cloak.

Around the room, Nichols espied two more soldiers of the Life Guards Regiment standing at ease on each side of a pair of wide French doors. He surmised – correctly - they must lead directly into the King’s offices.