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Dorothea Graham Jensen
a book bubble about
The Riddle of Penncroft Farm
Children's Books
Author Insight
Cold?? At Least We're Not Buff and Blue
I believe that one strong factor in our soldiers surviving the winter at Valley Forge was making such jokes about their plight. (The "buff and blue" and "Firecake and water" jokes are true enough.) Lafayette's friend Baron de Kalb said that no European army would have similarly endured such hardships.
Book Excerpt
The Riddle of Penncroft Farm
As I attempted to bathe away some of the scabies and lice on his skin and hair, he looked down ruefully at the scarlet rash on his chest. “Just look at this, Geordie,” he said. “I’m as red as a lobsterback—and that without a tunic on!”
One of the other men guffawed. “You’ll soon be reduced to the official colors—Continental buff and blue—like most of us. We’re nearly stripped to the buff and blue with cold!” By then I’d learned that making such pitiful jokes was one of the only weapons these poor fellows had in facing their foes: hunger, cold, and grinding boredom. Not that anyone was actually starving to death—from time to time supplies did arrive at camp, but the roads were often nearly impassable. And sometimes the wagoners lightened loads by draining off the saltwater that preserved the food, so that what did arrive was rotten. When that happened, the soldiers survived on firecake, a tasteless mixture of flour and water charred over the fire. They even joked about this, saying they varied their diet by sometimes eating “firecakes and water” and other times eating “water and firecakes.”
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