Chapter 17: Hessians

For the Hessians, rape was evidently a normal part of making war. Anything portable, they took; anything burnable, they burned, and any woman they caught, of any age, they raped brutally and repeatedly. They also had other nasty habits including an almost inbred inability to take prisoners. And they seemed to love using the bayonet while most of the Americans I knew hated the damned thing. On many occasions they killed men who had laid down their arms, and there were a few instances of prisoners being spiked to trees by laughing Germans.

I had just come down out of the woods on a scouting mission when I saw two blue-coated soldiers chasing chickens in a farmyard and another wrestling with a woman near the cabin door. I decided to ignore the chicken thieves for the time since they seemed unarmed and fully occupied, each with a bird or two in his belt, and concentrate on the screaming woman who was holding her own against her attacker until he leaned back and hit her with his fist. She fell to her hands and knees, head drooping and dripping blood.

I drew out my big bayonet, clamped it on my musket, ran from the tree line and drove my long blade into the man's ribs as he stood over the dazed woman working on his britches' buttons. He obviously never heard me coming with all the squawking going on behind him. He screamed as I speared him back to the log wall, pulled out my bayonet and chopped at his neck with a slashing blow. He crumpled, almost decapitated, and I pulled the sobbing woman upright. She wiped blood from her mouth, pulled her dress together and then stood with her hands on her hips as I confronted the two unarmed Germans in her yard with my dripping bayonet.

They dropped the birds they were holding, took the ones from their belts and put them on the ground gently, gabbling all the time to me in their guttural tongue. With gestures and my few words of German I got them moving behind the barn, and when I was sure the woman could not see me, I bayoneted one in the belly and then shot the other in the back as he ran toward the woods. He flung out his arms and ran several more steps before he fell to his knees and by then I was on him and stuck my blade through his thick neck. The other soldier was trying to crawl away, blood pouring from his mouth and stomach. I kicked him a few times until he fell to his back and then I smashed in his face with the butt of my musket and left him moaning in the dirt with his belly ripped open and what was left of his nose in his mouth.

I walked back to the house getting my breathing regulated, handed the woman my musket and dragged the body from her yard and back behind the barn to lie beside the dying German whose broken teeth gleamed in his shattered face, one eye still working, following my movements, what was left of his mouth producing red bubbles. I cut his throat for him and wiped my blade on his jacket.

"Is there a swampy area nearby?" I asked the woman, who poured me a drink of water when I came to sit on her back step and apologized for having nothing better. I resisted the urge I had for immediate sex.

"No," she said, wiping her hands on her apron, "but I got a wagon. We can haul 'em to the river."

"Maybe we'd get spotted. Hard to explain three dead Hessians."

"There's some deep places and tangles in the woods."

"It'll have to do. Long as the birds don't start circling like there was a dead cow in there or something. We can throw dirt on 'em. You all right?" I looked at her for the first time, a plain and strong woman with good shoulders and a pleasant mien. Her dress had been torn open and a bruise showed on her chin, but she pushed back her hair and faced me, gray eyes calm and steady. She shook her head, shivered once and stood.

"Let's get at it," she said.

I rifled the bodies, found nothing worthwhile, took their boots and cartridge pouches out of habit, and together we dragged them into three different areas, deep in the thick and scrubby second growth. I stuffed one under some deadfall limbs and another we rolled into a big patch of berry brambles. Where it was possible, I kicked dirt and stones over the bodies.

"You alone here?" I asked the woman as we washed up at her well.

She nodded. "Man I lived with run off when the militia call come," she said. "Didn't hold with it, war making."

"Where'd he go?"

"Into the hills, comes down now and again to lie with me."

"So you do all the work?"

"Tain't a big place. Did have a cow. Germans took it first time they was here."

"Poke you then, did they?" It was on my mind, obviously, and I guess it was on hers too.

She did not answer as we walked back to her house. She stirred up her fire and swung her kettle over the flames. "That'll take some time," she said. "I ain't had a man for a while, but I sure didn't want them foreigners a'swiving me again. I'm glad you come by." She smiled, a good smile full of truth and warmth.

She sat on the side of her bed and pulled off her boots and then examined her torn bodice, evidently noticing the damage for the first time. Then she stood and took off her skirt. "What 'chu waitin'' for?" she asked, "Don't chu wanna?" and I was out of my boots and britches before she could pull up a quilt.

We got lost in each other fully and suddenly and by the time we paused, we could smell the stew scorching. She rolled out, pulled down her shift, poured some water in the kettle, stirred the stew a couple of times and almost ran back to the bed and my arms. We enjoyed each other again, urging our strong bodies to do our will until we were spent and moaning happily together.

We ate her stew and cold corn bread, drank some water, talked for a while and got back in bed to make much-more-gentle love until we slept. In the morning we enjoyed ourselves with joyous shouts of pleasure.