To the Hessian Hills

"My name is Reinhart von Richter—Captain Reinhart von Richter to you scum—and you are under my command now."

Scum indeed, Johann thought, as he stood in formation, hardly able to stand without wobbling, as he'd just come off the ship from the three-week crossing of the Atlantic. He was sure that he and all of his mates—those who had survived the voyage—looked—and smelled—much like the scum this new company commander was telling them they were.

Although he was trying to pay attention, his real focus was beyond the cocky blond giant of a man who was walking back and forth across the front of the formation, full of vinegar and bluster, no doubt intending to cow the men to his will from their first moment on shore. They had arrived on Staten Island, just a few miles off Manhattan Island of New York City on July 10th, 1776. The rebellious colonies of the Americas had combined to formally declare their independence from England just six days previously, two days after the initial British forces, not-so-fresh from their defeat when trying to occupy the city of Boston to the north, landed on Staten Island.

What Johann was watching, as he was able beyond the hulking posturing of his new Hessian company captain, was the unloading of the guns from the ship. As in Hamburg harbor, the men of the Hessian artillery company, aided by the ship's sailors, and under the command of the third mate, Jocko, had wooden ramps rammed against the side of the ship and were manhandling the cannon caissons down those bending boards to the ground. They were hindered in this in comparison to the effort in Hamburg by the uneven ground they had to maneuver the caissons onto, but they were aided by the missing railing section from when a gun had burst through and sunk in the turbulent sea during the hurricane.

The less Johann could think about that the better—although he simultaneously realized that, if Claus had not gone overboard, there would not have been those glorious nights of lying under August beneath the stars on the gently rolling deck of the ship.

He obviously wouldn't see Jocko again—and Jocko had lost interest in him the night Claus had gone overboard and Johann had ridden August to assuage the man's grief. And when would he again be able to lie under August? Johann had no idea.

He wasn't in control of his life. Other than the decision to cut and run from Lüneburg—to enlist with the mercenary Hessian troops that had brought him to the shore of the Americas—he hadn't had any control over his life. He hadn't even had control there, he knew. The recruitment officer had held him in thrall, able to turn Johann over to the men pursuing him at any moment that Johann stopped giving the officer what he wanted.

Especially where it came to men, Johann seemed to be powerless. When Rudolf had wanted him, he'd just taken him. When the recruitment officer wanted him, Johann gave him what he wanted. When Jocko had wanted him, he had just taken him. Even August had assumed Johann would lie under him. And the truth of the matter was that Johann would lie under any man with a hard dick and a vigorous stroke who wanted him. He'd never thought he'd be that way, but a succession of taking men had shown him otherwise. The shame he felt was that, in all cases, once the man had gotten his dick inside Johann, Johann had enjoyed the ride. And he hadn't put up much of a fight against the man getting his dick inside him.

"Are we keeping you awake, soldier?" The question was barked at Johann and caused him to snap to, to return his attention to his new captain, towering over him, pushing a whiskered face into his.

"No, Captain. I am at attention, Captain." Johann answered back, his eyes taking on the submissive stance he knew that the officer would want to see.

"Then take the rifle being handed to you," Von Richter barked back. "You'll be needing it soon enough. I trust you know how to fire a Jäger rifle."

"Yes, sir, I know the Jäger rifle," Johann said, noticing for the first time that the solider standing next to the captain was handing out rifles as Von Richter moved down the line of the formation.

The captain stood back, looking Johann up and down, and then came in close again, holding Johann's eyes with his until Johann's gaze sank into submission. Johann had seen that look before. He's seen it in Rudolf and he'd seen it in the eyes of the recruitment officer, and in those of Jocko. His cock involuntarily gave a lurch. The captain was a powerfully built man, and he would be a handsome one save for the slash of a wound running from beside the top of an earlobe down to his chin, which was only partially hidden by the man's close-cropped blond beard. Perhaps from a fencing accident? Or previous combat? Whichever, it gave the man an aura of power, mystery, and danger. It gave Johann the first sensation that he was in the New World, about to embark on battle himself.

Yes, Johann knew that look. If the captain wanted him, would he submit? Of course he would. He could feel the drip of precum just from the thought of such a possession.

Von Richter gave Johann a sneer-edged smile of recognition of all that mattered—that Johann was his for the taking if the captain was so inclined. Johann ventured a faint smile and lowered his long, curly eyelashes in submission.

Yes, my

Kapitan

, if you want my ass, it is yours. This was submission—according to the captain's pleasure. But it also was power. Johann was discovering his own new-found power. His power over men who needed to possess and dominate. And in that there was pleasure to be had for Johann as well—and a certain measure of control for him.

"We may see how proficient you are with the Jäger," Von Richter said in a sarcastic tone with a snort. "You will be on night sentry tonight. And there undoubtedly are colonialist spies buzzing around taking our measure and testing our defenses. We will see if you can survive your first night in the New World. We'll see how you can handle a real man's gun."

"Yes, Captain," Johann answered, his answer a mere submissive murmur—knowing the meaning of what Von Richter had told him. As the captain passed down the line to the next soldier, Johann stole another glance at the ship. The cannons were off and gone. August was nowhere in sight. Neither was Jocko.

That phase of his life was closed. Tonight would open up a new phase. Of that, Johann had little doubt.

Von Richter fucked Johann up against a tree enough paces into the woods from the edge of the encampment on Staten Island that Johann's cries couldn't be heard. Johann's legs were hooked on the big bruiser's hips and his wrists were locked behind the captain's bull-thick neck, as their foreheads pressed together and their eyes were locked, Von Richter's boring into Johann's in domination, while Johann fluttered his eyelashes and provided the look of awe he knew the captain was expecting.

This, of course, was why the captain had put him on sentry duty on his first night in New York, Johann realized.

The captain's cock was thick and long, as Johann had expected and hoped for, and he took Johann in long, cruel, upward strokes and a prodigious gushing of cum deep up inside Johann that the young soldier also was anticipating.

Von Richter was enough of a seasoned military officer that he hadn't come alone. He'd brought the same soldier who had been following him down the muster line and handing out Jäger rifles. The soldier took up Johann's sentry post—and held Johann's rifle as well—while the captain fucked his new recruit against the tree, only glancing at the coupling from time to time, mainly doing what trained sentries did, though. There was no question in Johann's mind that the captain was in full, dominating control of his company and that his proclivities were known and accommodated.

The captain probably could fuck any man in the company he wanted, and he was here fucking Johann. There was a certain thrill at that for Johann—and a feeling of his own power.

When Von Richter had ejaculated, with a grunt of satisfaction, he let Johann slide down the trunk of the tree to the soft ground below and stood over him, buttoning the fly of his breeches. Johann wondered if that was it. If the captain went through his entire company like this, asserting his dominance and having his way. Somewhat embarrassed and displeased with himself that he felt that way, Johann hoped that the masterful officer would favor him again—and again—on occasion.

He couldn't tell if he had pleased the officer, though. He expected Von Richter to bid the other young soldier to hand Johann's rifle back to him and to make him stand sentry for the rest of the night while the captain took the other soldier off and to his cot. Johann wasn't sure he could even stand without wobbling in the next hour as big as Von Richter was built and as vigorously as he had fucked.

But then the captain turned to the other soldier and grunted, "Give him back his rifle and stand sentry here for the rest of the night."

Leaning down and helping Johann up, the captain said, "You do well. You've done well many times before, I allow. You'll be my orderly now and attend me in my tent. As the winter comes on, you'll be glad of the extra warmth, as I discern that you are glad of my cock moving up inside you. Or do I surmise wrong?"

"No, Captain, you understand quite well," Johann managed to say, the words still coming out in a pant and a moan.

The captain helped Johann hobble to the edge of the woods and told him he'd have to enter the encampment and find the captain's tent on his own.

Johann got to the tent before the captain did. He stripped and lay, chest down, on the cot, which, thankfully, was a sturdy one. He lowered his legs over the side of the cot, placing the balls of his feet on the ground, and slightly raising his pelvis off the cot—presenting as a bitch in heat. When Von Richter entered the tent, he gave a low laugh at what he found. Soon he was naked himself, straddling Johann's hips, the captain's fists pressed into Johann's shoulder blades and his feet pressed into the dirt of the ground on either side of the cot. Johann raised his hips even higher, giving the captain a straight shot, clearly signaling his willing surrender. Using the balls of his feet for leverage, Von Richter thrust inside Johann's still-open and cum-lubricated hole and rode the young soldier's ass hard and deep.

The next morning, the captain told Johann he could spend the day in the tent, recovering, saying he didn't want the other men to see the sloppy grin Johann couldn't erase from his face or that the young soldier wasn't able to walk a straight line.

Johann's grin wasn't all pretense. He increasingly was resigned to just giving in to it. To take what pleasure he could from the inevitable.

* * * *

Von Richter had been at him almost insatiably for over seven weeks, which, on the whole, hadn't been too bad. Johann didn't have any affection for the Hessian captain, who did everything with Prussian perfection, detachment, and zeal, including fucking Johann. Joann was just a physical release for an oversexed man on a military campaign.

In turn, though, Von Richter was mainly a means of survival and slightly greater comfort for Johann. He did want to obtain sexual release, yes, but he didn't need it as often as Von Richter needed it. Johann suspected that the captain's itch was being scratched elsewhere in the camp too—and he wished that there would be more of that rather than less.

Life as the man's orderly and the privilege of sleeping in an officer's tent, even though it came with an officer's cock up his channel,

had

been a privileged position, and Johann appreciated that. But the constant sex during the night while they were bivouacked on Staten Island had drained Johann and he still had to attend the musters of the infantrymen during the day.

In fact, he had wanted to continue with the training and the preparation, because within days of his arrival, they had begun to ready themselves for an assault on Manhattan Island. He had known that August's artillery company was already in place on the nearest shore of Staten Island to Manhattan Island, because he could hear the periodic booming of the bombarding guns. But he also had known that his own company was being readied to go on the attack—and that if he wasn't prepared for hand-to-hand fighting, his survival was questionable.

But that was weeks ago. That was before yesterday's battle on Long Island, where the British under General Howe had won a decisive victory on August 27th against the colonialists under George Washington and had forced Washington and the remnants of his soldiers to retreat across the water to Manhattan Island to dig in and make a stand there.

The battle had been traumatic for Johann. Looking back on it some years hence perhaps he could be detached and calm enough to appreciate that he had accorded himself well in battle and had survived. But the experience had been grueling. He had killed his first man—or men, as it transpired—in close fighting. It was a highly personal and savage face-to-face combat for more than several minutes—for an eternity it had seemed to him. And there hadn't been just one skirmish. It had been one after the other. The rag-tag American fighters had been wild men. But he had to acknowledge that they were fighting for home and hearth, not just for personal survival as he was.

Von Richter had reveled in the fighting. There was no question he was a brave man. But he was as insatiable in putting a man to the sword he wielded in his hands as he was to put him to the sword he drew from the fly of his breeches. And his stamina in the fight was also insatiable.

Johann had dragged himself from the battle and back to the newly established encampment on Long Island as a man nearly dead, fully traumatized, and close to tears from what he had seen and done and endured. He had flopped down next to the cot in the captain's tent, spent, bloodied, and in a torn and filthy uniform, wanting nothing more than to blot out the world, to sleep for a week, and to try to wipe the images of the battle from his mind.

But Von Richter had bounded into the tent, exuberant and trumpeting the sweet taste of victory. And he was hot for the spoils of war. He had put the bruised and despairing Johann on all fours on the dirt floor of the tent, mounted him like a dog in heat, and fucked him interminably, as Johann could do no more than moan how spent and empty he was. He wasn't empty for long, though.

The morning after Johann's first battle blooding in the engagement on Long Island—a morning after a night of being assaulted over and over again in the captain's effort to drain away all of his adrenaline—Johann for the first time entertained regrets of having given away his body to gain protection, privilege, and an ounce more of safety than he otherwise would have.

Von Richter was still cheery and bouncing around as he cleaned himself and dressed for the morning inspection. "Everyone musters out in thirty minutes. That includes you. We are on the move."

"Attacking Manhattan so soon?" Johann asked, unbelieving. They had just exhausted themselves in battle—albeit they had won. Even the soldiers who had not been fucked all night by the captain were in no condition to go immediately on the attack again today. Didn't the officers know that?

"I would. The element of surprise. But, no. Howe believes the British infantry troops here are enough to take New York now. We are ordered to march up into Canada so that we can drop back down into the colonies farther west and create a pincher movement with General Howe's forces moving up to the north after taking New York."

"And the Hessian artillery?" Johann asked, suddenly worried that he wouldn't see August again—suddenly concerned that he would never again make love with another man as he and August had made and would be doomed to be the vessel of rough sex that Von Richter—and Rudolf and Jocko in their time too—had made of him. Would that be all he was good for until his youth and trim body were gone and no man would want him again?

"The artillery stays—to continue the bombardment of Manhattan."

Johann moaned and threw his arm across his face, as emotionally distraught now as he was physically drained.

Von Richter walked over and nudged him with his booted foot. "You have twenty minutes now to be in the formation line. And I want you looking like the most squared-away soldier in the line."

* * * *

It took fourteen months for Johann and his Brunswick-Lüneburg unit, captained by Reinhart von Richter, with the entire British and Hessian force being under the overall command of Baron Frederick Adolphus von Riedesel, to maneuver from Long Island, New York, to the northern shore of Lake Champlain in Canada. There they were poised to drop down into New York again in a pincer movement with British General Henry Clinton coming up from the south to trap and decisively defeat the colonialist forces under General John Burgoyne and thus end the rebellion.

Fourteen months for Johann to enter into his next and last battle in the New World. And there was a battle—or two battles—the Battle of Saratoga fought on September 19th and October 7th, 1777, and it was Johann's last battle during the American Revolution, but he didn't fire a shot in it. He spent the battle at the British encampment, which was anchored by two redoubts. The outlying redoubt was manned by Johann's unit of three-hundred men under the senior command of Heinrich von Breyman, and the total casualty count of the defenders of this redoubt in the Battle of Saratoga was one dead.

Riedesel had attacked at Saratoga after waiting as long as his provisions permitted for the arrival from the south of the forces under Clinton. But Clinton never came, and the British lost the Battle of Saratoga. After the battle, the colonist forces moved to the British encampment and sieged the two redoubts that British and Hessian survivors of the battle had retreated to.

The first night of the siege, Johann was on sentry duty on the wall of the stockade, when his captain, Von Richter, visited him in the night, having grown frustrated that his accommodating orderly wasn't in his tent to service him. Von Richter decided to get his relief there, in the dark, at the top of the redoubt wall. He had Johann sideways to the protecting top of the wall and bent over, as he crouched over the young soldier's hips and fucked him from behind. At the moment of ejaculation, Von Richter straightened up in ecstasy, and an observant American sniper, with excellent night vision, picked him off with one shot. This made Johann's protector, Captain Reinhart von Richter, the only casualty at the redoubt. The next morning, the troops in the redoubt surrendered en masse.

Whereas Johann's war ended in a whimper and watching his protector and tormentor fall into the pit of the redoubt with a lucky-shot bullet through his head, his special friend, August, wasn't so lucky. The Hessian artillery was employed by the British forces in the battle. Two Hessian cannon, under a Captain Pausch, were combined with eight British cannon and placed right at the center of Riedesel's attacking forces on October 7th. August was manning one of the Hessian cannons. As Riedesel's lines broke ranks and began to retreat back toward the British encampment, the artillery men did their best to turn their caissons, get them hooked up to the horses, and save them from capture. But the cannons faltered and two of them turned over, one on top of August. And the horses, frightened by the battle now raging around them, bolted and ran.

American troops swarmed over the artillery position.