TEARS OF THE FOOT GUARDS

ALLEGRO - STAVE IX

S T A V E

IX

Two-day old corpses in the heat. Black clouds of flies. A Nor'easter. Then fog. The Quartermaster Corp relied on their noses and crows signaling to each other. The King's Men collected first with the Rebels marked and staked as to their location. Not that it mattered, the mass graves flooded. So too the 'Regular Approaches', the zig-zag trenches of siege – water up to the diggers' waists as they closed within six hundred yards.

"Attack!" detractors grumbled. "The Rebels are wet. We are wet. Their guns will not discharge and we've every advantage with the bayonet."

"Billy's sweating them out," his defenders countered – he protects his boys. "Why shed blood?"

"His American Holiday – dawdling to keep his mistress and his army."

"Nonsense. It's diplomacy, and diplomacy's begotten by Liberal men, who by intellect build Consensus. Ever know a Conservative to bring parties to the Table? Right Thinking saves the day. And in saving the day, the Liberal Man increases."

As to the Private Man, fighting and digging, it's Roast Beef and Beer . . . And Quim . . . And to Win and go Home.

"They're bagged," Billy reminded his generals in the upper parlour of the Vechte

House, an impassive stone manse that had stood at the nexus of the battle. "We hold the Heights from Wallabout Bay to the millpond. Lord Howe controls the rivers and the harbours between Brooklyn and New York. The Rebels sit and quake. Mr. Washington wants our attack. He needs it. He's got them standing on their arms day and night. They're exhausted."

"Then give him what he wants," said Lord Percy. "Push him over and be done."

"And sacrifice the men when the Americans are collapsing on their own?" He looked out the window at the fortified lines and the star-shaped Fort Putnam. "They're . . . undone. Mr. Washington will surrender. Congress will sue for peace and be confined to await a "hearing". No one shall be hung. In the end, everyone gets what they want."

"Independence?" asked General Erskine.

Henry Clinton silent.

"Most everything," Howe conceded. "A provincial legislature for one, little tax, representation in Commons."

"And his Majesty's Government?" inserted beefy General James Grant, who'd fought on both the Continent and America – knew the Rebel generals intimately and loath them intimately – the Cowards, the Blackguards, the Want-to-Bes, to which Billy cocked his head.

"All the rest."

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Geordie and Tim on picket, soggy and miserable with blankets over their heads in a fog thick with sound. And everything to the imagination as they tied kerchiefs to their noses filled with tobacco and pine needles. Geordie leaned against a tree splintered from round shot at the height of a man's head. The unfortunate victim near about. God – the smell.

"Ja-sus," Tim gasped after a held breath.

Geordie wiped his hands on his sleeves, smelled them and winced. Tim loosed another gasp and breathed through his mouth, spitting and spitting.

"They'll hear you." Geordie said of the Rebel second line.

"Like they don't know we're here." Tim then shouted in the fog, "Hear me ye bastards?" No answer, not even a clink of a pot. "Maybe they're all drunk. I'd be drunk."