*****
The third day out, the militia marched in haste.
Then their forest road wound down to a deeper seep;
Andrew, near the front with Uriel, got past
Where a bridge of sinking logs half-blocked a creek.

The heavy air closed in. The column slowed.
Hemlock, tangles, thorns: hushed walls of green.
Then the thickets bloomed with musket fire, as smoke
In whitish threads climbed slowly up the leaves.

Time hung. If Andrew ran with Uriel,
Uphill, their muskets clubbed and swung like flails,
One left, one right, against the warriors’ skulls--
The earth grew slick with the dying and the maimed.

Below, a mired horse screamed: proud Cox was down.
Here cover—wind-felled trees and stinging briars.
If they wormed and crawled, till saved by the thunderous rain,
So violent that muskets could not fire--

If they reached the little hill, the copse of trees
Where General Herkimer still held command,
Pipe in mouth, back propped against a beech--
They were seasoned men, sure they’d rally with their friends--

They knew to fight in pairs, behind each tree,
So one could safely load while the other fired—
But able men were slain like huddled sheep
On those tipping logs, and their bodies clogged the mire.

                                          ***

Of the General’s eight hundred valley men,
Three-fourths were casualties that August day.
Uriel, who is listed with the dead, fell then;
Their General lived, leg shattered, ten more days.

They never reached the fort they had to save.
They could not know the Loyalists lost too:
Brant’s Iroquois pulled back, the fort siege failed;
In sixteen days the British troops withdrew.

                                           ***

Now a mass grave honors those who gave their all
And won: the valley stayed American:
Though crops lay rotting in the fields that fall,
And there were six more warring years to come.

Surely Andrew fell that day with Uriel:
They disappeared from valley history,
Where both the brothers had been notable,
In trade and marriage ties and properties.