The Fighting Ground

“And hadn’t Jonathan talked with his friends of war, battles old and new, strategies fit for major generals? And, having fought their wars, they had always won their glory, hadn’t they?” 

Jonathan holds a romanticized image of warfare—all greatness and no bloodshed. It hasn’t yet occurred to him and his friends that, where there’s a victor, there’s also a loser. He has no inkling of the blood, agony, fear, and shame that lie in wait for him in war.

“It was spring, and warm, and wonderful ripe for war.” 

Dreams of being a soldier surge through Jonathan’s mind as he runs to the tavern to learn of any war news. The tavern bell keeps tolling, and he decides to join up when he gets there. Heedless, he marches off with the men toward what he imagines will be a glorious afternoon of fighting and victory. While the air feels ripe with promise, Jonathan does not yet realize it is also ripe for the more agonizing results of war.

“Why were things happening so quickly? It was unfair. The smoke got thicker. He could not see through it to understand what was happening. On all sides guns kept shooting. Sometimes they went off two at a time. Then came long, terrible empty pauses when nothing happened at all. Then orange flashes burst through the smoke again. Through it all, Jonathan heard the Corporal’s voice raging above the din: ‘In line! In line! In order, idiots! Damn all, in order!’” 

His first taste of battle stuns and disorients Jonathan. This is nothing at all like what he had imagined. Soldiers begin to fall, some bloodied and moaning, some dead where they drop. The sound of musket fire is tremendously loud, like slaps to the ears. Jonathan is in way over his head. The staccato presentation of the narrative throughout this section reflects the experience at hand—chaotic, fast-paced, and untraceable.

“‘O God, O God, O God,’ he whispered. He had failed in all he had meant to do. He was alive and wished that he was dead, but not being dead, he was scared that he might die.” 

The war so far is a terrible disaster for Jonathan. Exhausted, he sits alone on the forest floor. Having fled in terror from the battlefield, his mind now floods with regret. Slowly he will return to his senses, but his world will never be the same. By including Jonathan’s whisperings to himself and to God, the author communicates the sheer terror and hopelessness felt by Jonathan at this moment.

“The three Hessians were standing together, deep in conversation, the younger one still holding the rope. Jonathan tried to rekindle his hatred, but all he could muster was the desire to stand close to them, to be taken care of. He didn’t want to be left out.” 

Adrift in a situation over which he has no control, Jonathan searches for safety from the very men who took him hostage. Having tried too soon to become a man, he finds himself so far out of his depth that he reverts to a dependent child. He’s at their mercy and hasn’t yet found the inner strength to figure his way out of his predicament. In this moment, Avi communicates to us not only Jonathan’s youth and naivety, but the sheer humanity of warfare.

“He began to wonder about what truly had happened when they had fought. He knew they had been beaten. It had been so confused, so wrongly done, it was a wonder that they had even stood and fought at all. It seemed so stupid now.” 

Jonathan takes his first tentative steps toward a better understanding of the battle he has just experienced. He senses there was something wrong about it, something he thinks of as nonsensical but which might have had a deeper meaning. This dawning of understanding begins to transform his attitude toward warfare.

“The grass underfoot, the branches, the bark, the leaves, all held a soaking sheen. A gray-green mist filled the wooded air with a soft half-light, making the surrounding trees rise up like vaulting shadows. There was no edge to things. It was impossible to see far. They might have been at the very center of the world, or near the end. From somewhere hidden, but nearby, a woodpecker worked with a rat-ta-tat.” 

The storm passes, and a mist rises from the warmly soaked earth, making the forest appear dreamlike, a place far from normal reality. This elegant passage reinforces the reader’s sense of Jonathan’s disorientation and the fact that his life has changed utterly in the past few hours. The strangeness of the forest after a storm, especially its visual obscurity, parallels the strangeness he feels after the battle.

“If he escaped, where would he go? To his father, who had not wanted him to leave? To his mother, to whom he had not listened? To the tavern keeper, who had warned him, and to whom he’d given his word he’d return the gun? To the Americans, who would mock him? To the Corporal? He had failed them all! As he pictured each face, it broke apart, until there seemed nothing left of his past.” 

Jonathan finally thinks about doing the soldierly thing and trying to escape. He realizes, with a terrible shame, that there’s nowhere to return to, since everyone he knows will condemn him. His only possible friends are his captors. This is the moment when his certainties about who are the good people and who are the bad begin to crumble. The reader also begins to understand Jonathan’s sense of shame, not in his performance as a soldier, but in his decision to become a soldier at all, especially against the wishes of his family.

“Approaching the door, he reached out a hand, withdrew it, and gazed back toward the soldiers. ‘Los!’ came the impatient, whispered command. The old one lifted his gun. Jonathan heard the click as he drew back his flintlock. Nervously, Jonathan knocked timidly on the door.” 

His Hessian captors, searching for a place to hide for the night, force Jonathan to investigate a farmhouse while they stand by, ready to shoot at the enemy should any be hiding there. This puts Jonathan directly in the line of fire. At the story’s end, Jonathan’s commanding officer, the Corporal, will force him to do the same when the American volunteers approach the farmhouse in search of the Hessians inside. Jonathan will look back nervously and receive the same signal to continue forward. The two incidents and their parallels suggest that Jonathan is a pawn in both sides’ plans.

“Jonathan moved to the cow and stroked her about her ears, still searching about for a bucket. Remembering the shed he had seen off to one side, he caught the soldier’s attention and pointed toward it. The soldier winked at him from the porch where he stood. The wink made Jonathan grin, and filled him with a sense of camaraderie. Feeling good, almost happy, he walked across the way and pulled the shed doors open.” 

The simple act of fulfilling a human need—obtaining milk from a cow so Jonathan and the men can have some food—makes Jonathan feel closer to his captors. So, too, does communication across language barriers, achieved via a simple wink. His elemental search for safety in a crisis has pushed him toward an alliance with his enemy. Though his sense of safety improves, his confusion about whose side he’s on grows.

“More than once he glanced up at the soldier, who was hardly keeping any watch on him at all. One moment Jonathan wanted to tell him. The next moment he did not, confused anew about whether the Hessians were his friends or enemies.” 

The discovery of a little boy hiding in the shed puts Jonathan in a moral quandary: His instinct is to protect the boy, and he doesn’t know whether the Hessians will help or hurt the child. Jonathan’s uncertainty about where to turn for help—to friend or foe—tests the limits of his young mind’s ability to navigate this difficult situation. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s much more a person of peace than a soldier of war. By blurring the lines of friends and enemies, Avi effectively communicates that these lines are perpetually blurred in war because, ultimately, we are all human.

“With growing dismay, Jonathan gazed at the bodies, at the boy, at the remaining soldier, the old one. Reaching out, the Hessian clapped a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder, gave him a shake, and nodded toward the house. Then he walked off a few paces.”

The Hessians seem not to care about the dead couple; this affronts Jonathan’s sense of decency. The Hessian leader impatiently grabs Jonathan by the shoulder and gruffly commands him to return to the house. Later in the book, Jonathan will receive the same shoulder-grabbing gesture from the Corporal when he’s directed to move forward and do something he doesn’t want to be part of. In their callousness, neither leader worries much about the damage of war nor its effect on a young boy.

“For a moment he saw and heard the fighting as it had been on the road. He opened his eyes and looked at the old soldier. His teeth clenched. He could feel tears on his face. ‘Do it!’ He tried to pull the trigger. His fingers would not move. He could not shoot. Jonathan slowly let the weight of the gun carry the muzzle down.” 

Jonathan simply can’t shoot someone in cold blood. Though he feels ashamed, his instincts do him credit. He’s learning what he will not do to his fellow human, and this understanding pushes him farther away from the desire to fight.

“‘That’s what he was, a spy. Our Committee of Public Safety discovered it. Gentlemen,’ he said, appealing to the group, ‘what do you do when you discover a deadly snake? You destroy it, don’t you?’ No one said a word.” 

The Corporal explains why he ordered the French farm couple executed. In war, out in the field, there are no trials, and justice is swift. The Corporal seems not to revel in this approach but to justify it and use it a bit too often. In their lack of a response, the reader learns that the troops may not agree with the perspective of their leader, but they are powerless to object. Jonathan watches and listens, his views still forming.

“The Frenchman listened to the boy intently, nodding, shaking his head, occasionally reaching out and touching the boy’s face, his hand, his arm. As the boy talked, the man who had been looking on yawned and turned away, but not before tapping Jonathan on the head and saying, ‘Don’t you worry none.’ Then he was gone.” 

Among the volunteers are men who, though tough in battle, are kindly elsewhere. Jonathan watches as the Frenchman speaks gently to the little orphan boy and decides to bring the child to his own family for protection. The other volunteer’s reassuring words soothe Jonathan’s guilt and seem to offer him readmission to his community, from which he feared his cowardice had severed him. Their actions and words stand in stark contrast to those of the Corporal, who seems to represent the framework of war, while the soldiers represent its reality.

“Young friend, this Corporal is a man that is known as—well, how to say, a man who—fights. Bravely. When the fighting happens, yes, of course, he is what one wants. To be sure. But when the fighting stops, well, no, perhaps that is something that is different. Then, perhaps, you hope that he… that he is not there.” 

The other volunteers understand, much better than Jonathan, that their leader is a fiercely able fighter but sometimes too quick to punish civilians. Jonathan’s own mixed feelings for the Corporal parallel his confusion about a war sometimes fought between neighbors. He wants to be loyal, but he also doesn’t want to kill wantonly. In this passage we learn that Jonathan’s perspective, though youthful, is not an anomaly; the other soldiers share his sense of egalitarianism.

“Reaching across the fence again, the Corporal turned Jonathan so hard that the boy stumbled. All the same, he looked back. The men were watching him. The Corporal pointed toward the house. Jonathan remained where he was. ‘Please,’ he said, appealing to the men. He knew he had tears on his face. The Corporal cocked the flintlock of his gun. A trickle of horror, like a finger sliding up his spine, came to Jonathan. ‘Do it,’ said the Corporal, ‘now.’” 

Jonathan must move forward to the farmhouse, where he will check to see that the Hessians still sleep within. The actions of the Corporal forcing him to do so echo the moment the day before, when the Hessian soldier forced him to check the same house for American soldiers. Whichever side he’s with compels him to do its bidding in the same way. While Jonathan understands that the views of his fellow soldiers align with his own, they do not step out in support of him. This scene presents the ways in which a group follows a leader in war, even against their own judgements or instincts and sometimes at the expense of other soldiers.

“When Jonathan had covered half the distance to the house, he stopped and looked back. The Americans were lined behind the fence, standing in a dark row like cemetery stones against the blue-gray sky. Their muskets were black staffs. Their eyes, possumlike, alone contained some faint light. He heard the cow shifting her weight by the shed. Again he looked at the Americans. The Corporal raised a hand and urged him on. Turning, Jonathan moved again toward the house.” 

Once again, Jonathan repeats his walk toward the dangerous house, his leader, like his captor before, signaling him to continue forward. This time, though, Jonathan knows there will be shooting. He wants desperately that his captors, who treated him well, not be executed before his eyes at his own signal. When he turns back to looks at the Americans, they seem to foreshadow the deaths to come when they appear to him like gravestones. It is a foreboding image that hints at the coming events.

“Whose side was he on? Slowly, he reached out and lightly touched the door. It swung shut, leaving him inside. For a moment he just stood there, trying to understand what he had done. Then, with a quick move, he came to life. He leaned against the door and latched it. Hurriedly, he went to where the young soldier slept. Crouching down, he shook him.” 

The war forces Jonathan to do terrible things, no matter which side he defends. It’s this horrible dilemma that teaches Jonathan that war, which seems appealing and heroic from the outside, is in fact a grotesquely inhumane way to settle differences. He doesn’t rebel against the Americans; instead, he tries simply to save the lives of the Hessians. In this moment Jonathan tries to strike his own balance, but we will soon learn that the personal actions of one person are quickly overpowered in war.

“‘You tried to save them, didn’t you?’ said the Corporal. ‘Yes.’ ‘They would have killed you.’ ‘They didn’t.’” 

Jonathan tries to get the farmhouse Hessians to surrender, but they refuse and die in a volley of American bullets. The Corporal sees the Hessians as brutal and bloodthirsty, but Jonathan knows them to be regular people in a tough situation. In his discussion with the Corporal, the reader comes to understand that, despite his leadership, it is in fact the Corporal who is naïve, leaning on assumptions about his enemy where young Jonathan defines them based on his experience. After 18 hours of violence and fear, Jonathan’s view of the war has changed from enthusiasm to disgust.

“They killed one of ours yesterday. And you don’t know how many others before. At Long Island, they bayoneted the wounded. They were soldiers. So am I. So are you. You were lucky, that’s all. There’s nothing more to it.”

The Corporal explains the cold logic of war. It’s not for people who care deeply about the lives of others. From a moral standpoint, the Corporal is arguably both right and wrong. Jonathan wants nothing to do with any of it. This conversation also draws into question the perspective of the reader; while Jonathan did present the Hessians as compassionate and humanistic, the Corporal’s perspective does make us question if Jonathan’s perspective is right or merely born of luck.

“But now his rage had seized him completely, pouring through him. Gripping the gun even tighter, he began pounding it against the stones, again and again and again. The gun stock splintered. The metal bent and burst. Pieces flew in all directions. He fell to his knees sobbing.”

Jonathan destroys his borrowed flintlock gun. It’s all he can do to protest a tragedy he couldn’t stop. He’s angry because of the unnecessary waste of life that war engenders. He blames himself, the Hessians, and the Corporal for letting themselves fall under the sway of that terrible logic. In destroying the gun, Jonathan also destroys the very symbol of war. It is a protest not only of his role in this small conflict, but against the act of war itself.

“Then the innkeeper remembered. ‘Hey,’ he called. ‘Where’s my gun?’ Jonathan stopped and turned. ‘It’s gone.’ ‘Gone? What happened to it? You gave me your word, boy.’ Jonathan, not wanting to explain, simply walked away.”

It’s true that Jonathan broke his promise to return the weapon. Somehow, the tavern owner, having missed the fighting and the terrible choices Jonathan had to make, doesn’t deserve an explanation. Jonathan wants never to think about guns—or war—again. By destroying the gun, Jonathan has prevented one more weapon from joining the ranks and destruction of war.