The Declaration of Independence is barely a year old -- and a motley band of farmers and city folk, beggars and gentlemen, makes up the army of a newborn country. Joseph Plumb Martin, once a sixteen-year-old private in the Continental Army of the Revolutionary War, here narrates his true adventures as one of them. With neither horses nor uniforms, little food and less lodging, Martin and his fellows feed off the taste of freedom and warm themselves with only the prospect of independence and the shirts on their backs. Their growling stomachs only sometimes quieted by stale bread and salted horsemeat, Martin and his comrades traverse the mid-Atlantic colonies, from Connecticut over to Pennsylvania and back down through Delaware. Forging most of the path only by foot, these men leave tracks of blood with which the British trace them.

Although his story is over two hundred years old, Martin's experiences mirror those of every soldier -- and give a rare glimpse of the earthy beginnings of a nation's history in a compelling memoir of hardship and war.