Valley Forge Letter

Dear Pa,




This year has been long and hard on me, right now I am stationed at Valley Forge, it is cold here so cold that it seeps into my bones and sitting around a fire doesn't help. My clothes are worn and shabby, my boots have the bottoms worn off, so I've wrapped some rags I found around them. We have been on the run all year and have not a single battle won. We live in ramshackle huts with 12 men in each, that have no doors only pieces of cloth to keep out the never ending cold. Sometimes I wish that I had stayed home in North Carolina with you, ma and sis and farmed like you wanted, tell everyone I miss them.

The camp is so dirty, the stream is dirty, the men are dirty, and I'm dirty. No one uses the out-houses they go wherever they feel like, they go upstream in the water that we have to drink. the only food we have is flour, so we make fire cakes by mixing the flour with water and cooking it for every meal. It has snowed and rained many times during the three weeks we have been here. Many have died from the cold so far, and many have also died from illness. General Washington is a good man and I would follow him till death many others would not. I believe we can win this war so I will be signing up again next year. Well its time for dinner here, have to go if I want any fire cakes.



Love, James