November 28, 1777 — Valley Forge Approaches

Late November, the army marched toward Valley Forge. Tattered coats, bleeding feet, bellies empty.

I wasn’t there—I was still on the Monongahela—but word of their suffering reached us quick. What mattered wasn’t just the cold. It was whether the men would stay.

And they did. Through hunger, frost, disease, they stayed. By spring, von Steuben drilled them into a sharper blade.

Sometimes, the greatest victories aren’t on battlefields. They’re in the quiet, when men refuse to give up.

— Captain Samuel Mason, Washington County Militia

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