From Enid News, Op Ed piece: A Valley Forge Winter:
“What does not kill me, makes me stronger.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
These words from the German philosopher in the year 1888, very well could have been applied to every man in Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army as it entered the bone-chilling winter of 1777-78.
In fact, the famous saying very well could be applied to the American Revolution as a whole.
To say it was the most trying time in American history is a face-blushing understatement.
The 12,000-man Continental Army had been routed by the British at the Battle of Brandywine, Pa., near Philadelphia, in September 1777, leaving America’s then most-influential city undefended, and forcing members of the Continental Congress to flee.
While Congress finally re-established in New York, the British marched into Philadelphia Sept. 26.
Adding to the defeat at Brandywine was another thrashing a week later at the Battle of Germantown, Pa.
Washington was forced to take his weary, demoralized, ill-clothed, ill-fed and ill-equipped army to Valley Forge, a quiet hamlet northwest of Philadelphia, located at the confluence of Valley Creek and the Schuylkill River.
Back in the days of black-powder muskets, the bayonet and endless days of marching the muddy roads of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, armies did not fight one another during the cold and chill of winter weather — save for the icy- surprise Continental victory at the Battle of Trenton.
After active campaigning in the warmer months of summer and into late fall, Revolutionary War armies would fall back into winter camps to rest, resupply and prepare for battle upon the advent of warm weather.
Unbeknownst to Washington, or anyone during the Colonial period, this was to be one of the worst winters in this young nation’s history.
Immersed in what now is called the Little Ice Age, that winter would be as cruel as any previous.
Conditions at Valley Forge were horrendous, with troops forced to live in damp, crowded quarters in the most primitive of scenarios.
Typhoid, dysentery, typhus and pneumonia were rampant among the men, and it is estimated some 2,000 Continental soldiers died there.
As you would expect of such dreary conditions, and with the war going so badly, morale was nowhere to be found.
In despair over the conditions at Valley Forge, and with the suffering of his men, Washington somehow was able to wheedle more food, equipment and new recruits, despite a lack of help from the Continental Congress.
While incremental, all these improvements improved the morale of the men, lifting spirits.
With the help of former Prussian Army general staff officer Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, discipline was increased, renewing pride in the army and its cause against the British.
Von Steuben, upon arriving at Valley Forge, immediately began drilling the Continentals. From dawn to dusk, individuals, companies, battalions and regiments were incessantly schooled in the art of war.
He turned what had been a ragtag, undisciplined mob of individuals into a cohesive fighting force.
Out of the trying winter snows of that frigid winter emerged a new Continental Army, one that was confident and which had been fired on the forge of history.
On June 19, 1778, as the war’s campaigning renewed once again and the British abandoned Philadelphia, Washington’s men took off in pursuit.
At the Battle of Monmouth, N.J., the Continentals fought the British to a draw.
While not a victory, it certainly was not a defeat, and it helped renew American resolve to continue the Revolution.
The Continental Army would meet the British on many more fields during the final five long years of war.
After the war, Baron von Steuben became an American citizen, as did so many Europeans who came to these shores many, many years ago.
He was granted 16,000 acres of land in New York, and died there in 1794 at age 64.
Foreign-born men with names like Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Moetier, Marquis de Lafayette; Louis Lebegue dePresle Duportail; Johann de Kalb; Jean Baptiste Joseph, chevalier de Laumoy; Casimir Pulaski; John Paul Jones; and Charles Armand Tuffin, marquis de la Rouerie, all lent their names, their lives and their talents to helping America in its fight for liberty and democracy.
But they, like Washington and so many other native-born colonials who led the Continental Army in those dark days, were no more important than the common soldier who bled and froze and starved and died on so many battlefields.
So this December, as winter winds whip and chill our bones, take a moment or two to remember the men of Valley Forge.
They were the seeds of what eventually would become the finest army on earth, and the most powerful nation.
Who could ever have envisioned that — so long ago — during the winter at Valley Forge?
