As a kid, me and my best friend Sonny would go camping back in the woods at the farm every chance we could get. I still have the canvass two-man pup tent we used some 60 years ago. Camping, I guess, was always in my blood. But it is difficult to imagine camping with thousands of men in a battlefield situation such as Yorktown, Va where George Washington defeated the most powerful army on earth to win American independence from England. When we pull into a campground today, there are certain expectations of water, latrine, and space. The men that camped by the Chesapeake Bay with Washington had none of the luxuries we expect today and hardly what Sonny and I had at our primitive camp.
There seemed to be certain levels of the Yorktown camp. One level was the makeshift dwelling of scrap wood and straw. Hard to imagine the heroes of the American Revolution sleeping in those conditions. Another level would be the more traditional that we see on television with the canvas tents all uniformly pitched in a nice straight line. And then there is the privilege of rank. Washington’s tent had many of the comforts that we see at campgrounds these days with the larger yurts and tents. Still, there were no bathhouses or restrooms. Imagine 19,000 men going without showers and facilities for months at a time. No wonder they defeated the British.
At the American Revolution Museum camp at Yorktown, a docent in period dress explained to Chris, Service Dog Charlie and me the camping conditions of our soldiers. He described the huge campfire dug in a circle with a mound of coals in the middle. This served as the “kitchen” for the soldiers’ cooks. Meals consisted of some beans, maybe corn, mixed into some broth. We were told that the soldiers were fed this once a day. Hardly what we cook up on the Blackstone or even burgers on the grate over our campfires in our tidy spaces at the KOA, right? Then there was the store where soldiers could buy a ration of rum, whisky, beer, or cyder—nothing like the camp store we have these days.
We took the tour bus into old Yorktown and visited the shops, ate at the outdoor café along the Bay by one of the only “swing” bridges left in America—instead of the traditional draw bridge, the George P Coleman Bridge pivots in the middle to allow ships to pass. We saw the Yorktown Victory Monument. And I had a conversation with Washington and the generals about the camping conditions at Yorktown. They remained stone-faced about the situation. At the end of the day, we set up our own camp at Camp Cardinal at Gloucester Point, had a campfire, watched some football on our outdoor TV set up—all a reminder of those great men of valor whose sacrifices made possible that even our camping experience could be so good.
