General George
Washington wrote of the march into Valley Forge: "To see men without
clothes to cover their nakedness, without blankets to lay on, without shoes by
which their marches might be traced by the blood from their feet, and almost as
often without provisions as with; marching through frost and snow and at
Christmas taking up their winter quarters within a day's march of the enemy,
without a house or hut to cover them till they could be built, and submitting
to it without a murmur is a mark of patience and obedience which in my opinion
can scarce be paralleled."
George Washington
reached out for support, writing, "for some days past, there has been
little less, than a famine in camp. A part of the army has been a week, without
any kind of flesh, and the rest for three or four days. Naked and starving as
they are, we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the
soldiery.
The Continental Army that marched into Valley Forge consisted
of about 12,000 people, including soldiers, women, and children. That winter, starvation and disease killed
nearly 2,000 soldiers.
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