Chapter 76: Three Brave Girls

They made me watch, damn them, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was trussed up and tied to a supporting beam in a hillside barn, and the Hessians were raping three young women while I watched, rutting like animals they were, their muscular backsides flexing rigid pricks in and out of the poor girls' lean bodies, using all three orifices.

I had been detailed to guard the girls, daughters of one of Washington's engineers, and to get them safely back on the stage to West Point. Now they lay, spread-eagled in the straw with a German soldier holding their arms while another skewered them in whatever manner he preferred, grunting and laughing while he sawed at them. Two of the girls were bleeding and weeping, but the oldest was stoically tolerating her pain and indignity, trying to keep her body inert and her eyes closed while her sisters cried and wailed.

By nightfall when they forced the girls into a small tack room and barred the door, each of them had been savaged by six or seven men, full grown men with hard members and no mercy.

I also felt violated although I had only stood, arms bound hard behind me and watched as man after man plowed and humped the naked youngsters to his satisfaction, ramming into their groins and mouths so that their slight bodies bucked and writhed. After the officer checked to make sure the door to the girls' cell was securely bolted, he came and stood before me.

"Tomorrow," he said, in barely accented English, "ve kill you all, mit bayonet, yes. You last; this is your fault, is it not?"

I nodded since he was right, and he smiled and then hit me in the face with his gloved fist, cracking my head back against the post. "Swine," he said and stalked away.

I slumped against my ropes, tried expanding my chest, wriggled and pulled and got nowhere. I rubbed my wrists up and down the edge of the post until they bled and filled with splinters, and I even tried to pull the post out of the ground with no effect. Then I heard a board crack, groan and splinter. Suddenly the moonlight showed me one of the girls, her torn shift now draped about her, standing before me and working on my knots.

"We kicked a weak board loose," she said.

Then another appeared and turned her attention to the knots on the back of the post down at my ankles. Soon I was free and rubbing my wrists, stretching my arms. I touched all three of them on their curly. blonde heads and told them I was sorry. They sniffed and nodded.

"We'd better go," said the oldest who was called Nelly by her sisters. She was eighteen or so; Merry was fifteen and her sister, Nan, was at least a year younger than that.

I found my belt and bayonet where it had been thrown, urged them to the ladder, and we left the barn through the second floor entrance atop the hill. They were barefoot, and I tried to remember that since I had my boots. We crossed a small meadow and entered the woods, staying along the edge instead of going deep. We were, according to my figuring, heading north.

We slept, huddled together like dogs, and woke to drink from a small creek and then move on. By noon we had passed several tidy farms and resisted the temptation to ask for food and help. And by nightfall, I had been challenged by an American sentry and found a cavalry camp. One man took them to a smoldering cook fire while I reported to the officer in charge, a tall lieutenant. Soon a small group of men was watching the half-clothed girls eat their gruel, that worried me some as the officer questioned me.

"Hessians," he said after I told him my story, "damn beasts. How many would you say?"

I told him and then showed him on a map where I thought we had been. He nodded, said the young women would be looked after, lent me a horse and urged me to get back to my own company and report. Since the sun was barely down and I only had four or five miles to travel, I took his advice, hoping to get Foster to attack the Germans at once. I bade the girls good-bye and they waved me out of sight.

When I returned two days later, disappointed that our retreat was still underway, the cavalry camp was deserted. I dismounted, kicked at the fire and looked about.

"Hist," someone said, "over here."

I looked around, saw no one and then spied a waving hand at the treeline. I led my horse that way, wary of ambush and found the three, blonde girls hiding in the weeds.

"Nan's dead," the oldest said, looking up at me tight lipped. "Those men you left us with used us, they poked us, all of them, all night, most of yesterday, and then they rode off this morning after some of them did us again."

I bent and examine the slight body. The girl was undoubtedly dead, dried blood in her nose and on the thighs. "We'd best bury her," I said.

"You left us," Nelly said, "and you wasn't but out of sight 'fore the first one, that officer you talked to, grabbed me and hauled me to his tent. I heard the girls screaming most of the night. Now Merry won't say nothing, just sits there."

I felt the fifteen-year-old's forehead and brushed her fine hair from her face. "She'll be all right," I assured her sister not at all sure myself. I found a flat rock and some sticks and we scraped out a decent grave, rolled the small child in very gently and then covered her body with dirt and stones. Nell, still silent, made a cross out of twigs and stuck it in the raw dirt.

I got them both up on my horse and took the reins. We headed back to Foster's camp, but the war again got in the way. I already felt betrayed and disgusted when we heard the clatter of horses behind us and quickly got off the trail. Cavalry men galloped past and Merry grabbed my shoulder. "It's them, the Jersey fellers," she said shrilly. "The ones that did us yesterday."

I wondered what to do and decided just to follow along at our walking pace and take whatever came our way. By dusk we came upon the cavalry camp. I hid the girls back in the woods with what food I had, waited until it was dark, mounted up and rode on in after nodding to the half-dozing sentry. I dismounted and found the officer in charge, not the man I had talked with just two days before but a small captain with a thin mustache. Most of the tents were dark and the fire was just ashes.

I saluted and told him my name and unit.

He looked me over. "What can I do for you?" he said.

"I left three young women with your company, day before yesterday, and your men raped them and killed one of them."

"Never happened," he said.

I turned and dropped his tent flap. Then I drew my knife and showed it to him. "You want a court martial with two blonde young ones testifying about what your men did to them?"