📅 On This Day in Military History
2 events across history
Washington's Continental Army spent the brutal winter of 1777–1778 encamped at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, just 18 miles from British-occupied Philadelphia. Without adequate food, clothing, or shelter, approximately 2,500 soldiers died from disease, exposure, and starvation. Yet the army that emerged was transformed — Prussian drillmaster Baron Friedrich von Steuben trained the ragged troops into a professional fighting force.
Valley Forge was the crucible that forged the Continental Army. Von Steuben's training manual became the standard for the U.S. Army for decades. The army that marched out in June 1778 could stand and fight in the European manner — as proven at Monmouth six days later.
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Leading an assault on San Mateo in a driving rainstorm, Major General Henry Lawton — conspicuous in a white raincoat and pith helmet at the front of his skirmish line — was shot through the chest by one of Licerio Gerónimo's sharpshooters. He was the highest-ranking American killed in the war. The town fell, but the Army had lost its most aggressive field commander.
Lawton, who had run down Geronimo in Arizona in 1886, was killed by a general who happened to share the Apache leader's name — an irony the press seized on. His death closed the conventional war's bloodiest year on a somber note for the Americans.
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