An army is an intricate mechanism needing the same variety of agencies that is required for the well-being of a community.The chief aim is, of course, to defeat the enemy, and to do this an army must be prepared to move rapidly.Means of transport, so necessary in peace, are even more urgently needed in war.Thus Washington always needed military engineers to construct roads and bridges.Before the Revolution the greater part of such services had been provided in America by the regular British army, now the enemy.British officers declared that the American army was without engineers who knew the science of war, and certainly the forts on which they spent their skill in the North, those on the lower Hudson, and at Ticonderoga, at the head of Lake George, fell easily before the assailant.Good maps were needed, and in this Washington was badly served, though the defect was often corrected by his intimate knowledge of the country.Another service ill-equipped was what we should now call the Red Cross.Epidemics, and especially smallpox, wrought havoc in the army.Then, as now, shattered nerves were sometimes the result of the strain of military life."The wind of a ball," what we should now call shellshock, sometimes killed men whose bodies appeared to be uninjured.To our more advanced knowledge the medical science of the time seems crude.The physicians of New England, today perhaps the most expert body of medical men in the world, were even then highly skillful.But the surgeons and nurses were too few.This was true of both sides in the conflict.
Prisoners in hospitals often suffered terribly and each side brought charges of ill-treatment against the other.The prison-ships in the harbor of New York, where American prisoners were confined, became a scandal, and much bitter invective against British brutality is found in the literature of the period.The British leaders, no less than Washington himself, were humane men, and ignorance and inadequate equipment will explain most of the hardships, though an occasional officer on either side was undoubtedly callous in respect to the sufferings of the enemy.
Food and clothing, the first vital necessities of an army, were often deplorably scarce.In a land of farmers there was food enough.Its lack in the army was chiefly due to bad transport.
Clothing was another matter.One of the things insisted upon in a well-trained army is a decent regard for appearance, and in the eyes of the French and the British officers the American army usually seemed rather unkempt.The formalities of dress, the uniformity of pipe-clay and powdered hair, of polished steel and brass, can of course be overdone.The British army had too much of it, but to Washington's force the danger was of having too little.It was not easy to induce farmers and frontiersmen who at home began the day without the use of water, razor, or brush, to appear on parade clean, with hair powdered, faces shaved, and clothes neat.In the long summer days the men were told to shave before going to bed that they might prepare the more quickly for parade in the morning, and to fill their canteens over night if an early march was imminent.Some of the regiments had uniforms which gave them a sufficiently smart appearance.The cocked hat, the loose hunting shirt with its fringed border, the breeches of brown leather or duck, the brown gaiters or leggings, the powdered hair, were familiar marks of the soldier of the Revolution.
During a great part of the war, however, in spite of supplies brought from both lance and the West Indies, Washington found it difficult to secure for his men even decent clothing of any kind, whether of military cut or not.More than a year after he took command, in the fighting about New York, a great part of his army had no more semblance of uniform than hunting shirts on a common pattern.In the following December, he wrote of many men as either shivering in garments fit only for summer wear or as entirely naked.There was a time in the later campaign in the South when hundreds of American soldiers marched stark naked, except for breech cloths.One of the most pathetic hardships of the soldier's life was due to the lack of boots.More than one of Washington's armies could be tracked by the bloody footprints of his barefooted men.Near the end of the war Benedict Arnold, who knew whereof he spoke, described the American army as "illy clad, badly fed, and worse paid," pay being then two or three years overdue.On the other hand, there is evidence that life in the army was not without its compensations.Enforced dwelling in the open air saved men from diseases such as consumption and the movement from camp to camp gave a broader outlook to the farmer's sons.The army could usually make a brave parade.On ceremonial occasions the long hair of the men would be tied back and made white with powder, even though their uniforms were little more than rags.
