To the Hessian Hills

It was a fairly easy two-day march north from Lüneburg to Hamburg, one of the major seaports on the North Sea of the former Hanseatic League, which had maintained its importance even while the inland Hanseatic cities declined. Antwerp had lost prominence when its access to the sea, via the River Scheldt, had been closed down by a war treaty. Amsterdam similarly had fallen on to bad times as a seaport, and Bruges’ access to the sea had silted over. In the spring of 1776 Hamburg, less than fifty miles north of Lüneburg and eighty miles from the sea via the River Elbe, would be the departure port for the Brunswick-Lüneburg Hessen troops under the command of Baron and General Friedrich Riedesel. From Hamburg the destination for the Hessian force was New York City, in the New World, which was then under siege by British royalists.

Johann had been lucky in his last days in Lüneburg. When he had raced to the square to enlist, he had barely made it before the recruiting was closed. Then he was marched along with the other recruits from that day to the bivouac area at the edge of town, where he was measured for two sets of uniforms in the signature Hessian troop dark blue and spent the better part of a week learning to march in file and to handle and fire a Jäger rifle. All young men Johann’s age were able to handle firearms, Johann no less expertly than any of the others, but the Jäger rifles were exclusive to the Hessian mercenary troops. They required special training.

On his second evening in the camp, the officer who had taken his recruitment in the Lüneberg square came out of a small tent as Johann was passing by and interrupted Johann’s progress. The man was one of the older soldiers, grizzled, but still obviously maintaining the demanding physical conditioning of the military drills. He had had a sharp eye at the recruiting table and now showed Johann now just how sharp-eyed he’d been.

“Johann, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Johann answered, lowering his eyes, sensing the heat of the man.

“Johann, the plaster worker?”

“Yes, sir.” Had that been put down on his recruitment form? Johann couldn’t remember. He’d been very nervous at the time.

“Some men came by the recruiting station yesterday looking for you—quite anxiously, if I must say.”

What could Johann say? His heart was racing. The grip of the hand on his forearm was as strong as any jailer’s would be.

“One of the duke’s men asked even before you approached the table. A red-faced man claiming to be your master came after you’d left for the camp.”

Again, what could Johann say?

“Neither need know you are here,” the officer said. “If you are good to me, of course. They told me why they were looking for you—what you were and had done and would do.”

The recruitment officer seemed to think a blow job in his tent was good for him—but not sufficient. Johann was on all fours, with the bulky officer crouched over his back, feeding his cock inside Johann’s ass and starting to pump, while the young recruit was thinking if it would ever be thus that he would need to accommodate men to be safe.

The officer—unnamed, as he never seemed to consider giving his name to Johann as required—was good at his word, and he fucked Johann twice more while the men were bivouacked outside the city. In all that time, neither Rudolf nor the duke’s men were able to seek him out at the mercenary troop bivouac and, rather than bemoan his loss of possible higher status in the trades, Johann was grateful that he had escaped the entrapment of Rudolf and Christina alike and the wrath of the duke. Still, he held his breath until his was marching to Hamburg along with the other recruits.

He had done no worse than his original prospects had been; he had always planned to go as a soldier adventuring beyond Lower Saxony, if he could. He had always worried that he was undersized and looked too delicate to be recruited, though. Once he started the march to Hamburg, on the open road, under the sun, he realized how confining Rudolf’s smoky workshop and controlling desires had been and savored his first hint of freedom.

Toward evening on the first day of the march he saw his old friends, August and Claus, who had previously enlisted in the artillery unit, for the first time. The young men of the privileged classes were more likely to be assigned to the artillery, which, though it required more muscle power, provided a ride rather than a trudge to the next destination. The artillery pieces were transported on caissons, and the caissons were drawn by horses, so the soldiers of the artillery rode to Hamburg on the caissons, rather than walking.

As August and Claus’ battery passed Johann’s company on the road, forcing the soldiers off the road to stand on its verge while the guns passed, the eyes of August and Claus met Johann’s. August looked surprised and Claus looked startled. For his part, Johann had thought for some time that he would find August when he could, so he was less surprised. August waved with gusto—Claus a little less enthusiastically.

“See you in New York Colony!” August called out in genuine pleasure as the caissons passed.

Johann waved and called out in return, but what he said was lost in the sound of the creaking wheels of the caissons and muffled by the dust cloud rising off the road in the wake of the guns’ passage.

In any event, the three would be meeting up long before the shores of the New World were reached.

Hamburg was a larger and much busier city than Lüneburg was, and Johann’s unit was marched through so many narrow and winding streets en route to the port area that he completely lost his bearings. As they drew nearer to the river port, the cobblestoned streets became wider, but the congestion increased. Units from all over Lower Saxony were converging on the docked ships that would take them to the American colonies. The ships were British. From this point forward, the Hessian troops were mercenary soldiers in the employ of the Royal British Army.

As the units entered the dock area, they were being directed to their assigned ships. And it was here that Johann’s infantry company met up again with the Lüneburg artillery unit—and with Johann’s friends, August and Claus. The three friends would be crossing the ocean together.

Until the artillery guns were on board, however, the infantry unit had to stand at ease, but in formation, on the dockside. Moving the guns onto the ship was no simple task. Johann would have thought that the infantry soldiers would help with that, but the separate units did not mix. If anything, the artillerymen felt too much the elite to permit simple foot soldier anywhere near their guns.

They couldn’t get the cannons on board the ship, however, without the expertise of the ship’s crew, so they could not reject this help. Johann and his infantry comrades stood and watched as wide wooden ramps were put into place against the side of the ship, running from the dock to the gunwales. Smaller ramps descended from the gunwales onto the deck of the ship. The guns had to be raised, hoisted over the gunwales, and lowered onto deck by human muscle power and ropes. The guns would have to ride on the deck, covered with tarps, and tied down to keep them from moving. If a gun broke loose, it would cause considerable damage and havoc to the ship’s rigging and was likely to plunge into the sea.

The artillerymen and the ship’s crew were stripped down to the waist for the muscle-challenging chore of moving the guns, on their caissons, up the ramp from the dock and then back down onto the deck. Working with the guns was a muscle-bulging exercise in any event. Johann, with his new-found experiences of sex between men, now looked on his friend, August, in a light in which he’d never seen nor considered him before. August was a tall, broad-shouldered, Teutonic, magnificent specimen of manhood, just as Johann, on a smaller scale, was—but more so in nearly every aspect. The work he’d done in the artillery unit already had served to add and further define muscle. Seeing August stripped to the waist as he was now, Johann was aroused in a way that he now understood.

Claus also was well muscled and handsome, but he was dark and hirsute, where August was blond and with a hairless torso, and he was more wiry than bulky. And Johann sensed that Claus was not for him—that Claus perhaps preferred to have another man inside him much as Johann realized now that he had been fucked by Rudolf and had fucked Werner that he also preferred to be used by another man. With Johann’s new-found understanding of the interest one man could take in another, he was able to discern that the looks and touches between August and Claus, while working together to move the guns onto the ship, signaled that they were a pair.

Johann slightly regretted this. He and August had been moving toward each other before Johann went to Rudolf as an apprentice. Johann didn’t understand then that they were developing an affinity for each other, but he understood that now. And now it seemed like the opportunity for that had passed. August and Claus seemed the pair now.

Johann’s eyes cast over the other men working on moving the caissons, and they stopped on one of the sailors. A roughly, but magnificently built British redhead seemed to be directing the effort—but directing it from the position of the most-dangerous and muscle-challenging position. And he had the musculature to accord him ascendance among all of these well-built men.

Once Johann laid eyes on this man, his attention only momentarily was able to turn elsewhere until the guns were on deck, covered in tarps and tied down, and the infantrymen, at last, were being marched up the gangplanks and on board.

Thus was Johann’s first sighting of Jocko, the ship’s third mate.

* * * *

If Johann—and possibly any of the other Hessian soldiers aboard—had had any inkling of how grueling the sea passage would be to America, he quite likely never would have enlisted. Few of the men from Lüneburg had been to sea before, so they all shared the initial misery of seasickness and the crowded and close accommodations of below decks that they all quickly learned to call the “hell hole.”

Mercifully, they weren’t forced to endure the sail in the Hessian uniforms they had been issued in Lüneburg, but were issued the cooler and looser “slops” kit that the sailors wore—a loose-fitting natural-color off-white cotton jacket that buttoned down the front and short, wide-legged breeches. In the heat of the passage, especially any time they spent in the hold, the jackets weren’t buttoned. Most of the time the men went barefoot—and even without their jackets for most of the time too. For the most part the passage was warm enough that this clothing was sufficient. In any case, it was what was available in abundance and easily washable, because the ways in which sailors’ slop kits—and especially when worn by landlubbers—could be soiled were endless. Even on the coldest night, though, the soldiers preferred being on the deck, when possible, to facing the conditions below decks.

The sailors themselves tended to dress down even more than that. Working in the rigging was a muscle-taxing, sweaty job. Much of the time the sailors appeared to be scampering around the rigging above like monkeys, girdled only in what passed as loincloths. For any man inclined to admire other men, this was a voyeur’s delight.

All who were trapped below decks, hunched on decking slick with salt water, vomit, urine, and excrement and packed closely together, were subjected to misery—the stench of unwashed bodies, body secretions, and vomit. They were easy prey to seasickness, fever, dysentery, headaches, stifling heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, and other forms of fast-developing rot. The only reason they didn’t go on deck was from the perpetual hope that the ordeal soon would be over—none of the sailors had the bravery to tell them that the journey would last for two or three weeks and that maybe a fourth of them would be dead before they saw solid ground again—and because being on deck in anything but dead-calm waters came with the danger of being swept overboard.

Most of the ship’s passengers were terrified of the sea. Even the sailors gave it the respect it demanded.

Added to these miseries was the shortage of provisions and potable water. The ship had no hope of transporting the food and water that the number of passengers being transported would require. The calculations of rationing actually included the assumption of attrition.

Not more than half way between the shores of northern Europe and the New York Colony, the fear of the afflicted, dwindling in numbers, and unprepared and uninformed Hessian soldiers was that the ship would go to the bottom of the ocean within the next hour rather than that they would not make a safe landfall.

The artillerymen, on the whole more hearty than the infantrymen because of the demands to develop greater strength and fitness to be able to handle and move the guns, had opted to never go below decks—to weather the entire voyage out on the open deck with the guns, where at least the air was fresh and they stood the chance of muscling their way through the dangers coming their way. For the same reason—to be with August and Claus—Johann also decided to try to outlast the voyage on the open deck, huddled between the guns.

There was more reason than just to be with his friends that brought Johann there, though. He was mesmerized by the sailor—the third mate—who he had watched move the guns from the dock to the ship’s deck. The man was magnificent in body and, more telling, he had spied Johann, made eye contact, and shown his own interest in the young Hessian. He also eschewed the usual mate’s attire in favor of the skimpy loincloth most of his sailors wore. Johann quickly found that the man was heavily sexed too, often being seen to take advantage of his near nakedness to pick off this sailor or that and fuck him in one of the many nooks and crannies to be found on the deck of a ship just by pulling his hard dick through a leg hole of his loincloth. None seemed to resist him. He was the third mate.

It was a good thing, too, that Johann was developing an interest in one of the muscle-bound sailors, because his thoughts of becoming close with August, now that Johann had discovered his attraction to men and discerned that August had had that attraction all along, were not bearing fruit. It was quite clear that Claus possessed August’s sexual interest and was very possessive of that. Obviously seeing Johann as competition, Claus did everything he could to maintain a position between Johann and his old friend.

Claus also was quite clever about making his relationship with August clear to Johann without letting August know he was doing so. He made sure that Johann did not bed down between the same two cannons that he and August did—but that Johann could watch them from afar from his own shelter.

Almost nightly August fucked Claus. It seemingly was a masked coupling, with the two of them huddled together in the folds of the canvas covering the guns, their arms entwined, and their bodies rocking against each other until August shuddered and Claus moaned at the release of August’s seed deep inside Claus’s channel. At such times, Claus would turn his eyes on Johann, giving him a look of triumph.

He well knew that, but for him, the coupling most likely would be between August and Johann.

At first this, of course, drove Johann to distraction and almost to despair, but they were out to sea for not more than three nights before the third mate—Jocko—relieved Johann of all his pent-up sexual frustration. Coming across Johann watching August and Claus fuck between two adjacent cannon and Johann fisting his own cock while he viewed the sexual encounter, Jocko used the direct route to satisfy his own developing interest. He merely lifted Johann up from between the two guns where he was sheltering, pushed Johann belly-first down on top of one of the gun barrels, pulled the young soldier’s short breeches down below his buttocks, and plunged his engorged dick inside the puckered hole he found.

There was no struggling with the sailor. He was twice as big as Johann and four times as strong. Once Jocko was saddled, Johann didn’t really want to struggle with him. Jocko was magnificent all over, and he knew what to do with what nature had equipped him with. Johann had found relief himself several times before in watching Jocko fuck sailors. Thanks to Claus, Johann was keyed up and greatly in need of what Jocko proceeded to give him—vigorous and deep.

It was much more a look of envy than of triumph showing on his face when Claus saw Johann draped over the canvas-covered barrel of a gun, writhing and moaning, as the much larger and much more muscular sailor crouched over him, one hand on Johann’s hip and the other one fisting the young man’s hair, causing the smaller, slimmer soldier’s back to arch toward him, and pounded away at his ass.

With just that, Jocko claimed Johann as one of his possessions. And because of how well Jocko took care of him, Johann raised no objection. It wasn’t just sexually that Jocko took care of Johann, though—and by extension of August and Claus, as well, who became more friendly with Johann because of what he could obtain for them. What he could obtain for them was the most precious commodity on the ship—more and better-quality provisions.

“I want my lays healthy,” Jocko had said with straightforward honesty. There was nothing romantic in the gesture.

The ship’s sailors ate far better than any of the passengers who weren’t military officers ate and they drank more than just water. As third mate, Jocko could pull rations as he wished. He was so pleased with the favors that Johann gave him that he augmented what Johann received, who, in turn, shared with his two friends from Lüneburg, August and Claus.

And so it was that the next week on the high seas transpired, with the three Lüneburg friends deciding that they might be able to survive this voyage after all. But they had not taken into account the fierce storms that a ship such as theirs could sail into in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean—quite quickly and unexpectedly.

* * * *

The afternoon was sultry and the ship was nearly dead in the ocean. With little or no breeze to be captured in the sails, the sailors weren’t in the rigging. The sails were all set, though, in search of any breeze that could be found to propel the ship forward. The sailors were all on deck, swabbing or mending sails and whatever sailors did to leave the impression that they were being productive in the afternoon heat. The air was close and the sailors occasionally where lifting their heads, taking a sniff of the atmosphere, and looking a bit concerned and muttering among themselves.

Being a third mate, Jocko didn’t have to swab decks or mend sails. He could pursue other endeavors and have his hand—or other appendage—in other activities. The activity he was engaged in was fucking Johann on a coil of rope between two of the cannons, and it was a dick, not a hand, that he had buried inside Johann’s channel. Johann was on his back on the rope coil, with Jocko crouched over him. Johann’s ankles were hooked on Jocko’s massive shoulders, his hands were wrapped around the sailor’s bulging biceps, and his head was thrown back, with his mouth open and panting and his gaze darting from cloud to cloud.

“Oh, Chris’, man, you’re deep now,” he cried out. “Give it to me. Give me your cum!”

Jocko just grunted and pumped on, striving to dig deeper, holding his ejaculation in check.

“There, yes! There. Again. And again. Oh, fuckin’ Chris’! Yes! Now. Now. NOW!”

“You first,” Jocko growled, and his command was met with a deep moan and a release of Johann’s seed.

“Now you,” Johann cried out, leaving no doubt that he had adjusted well to the attentions the sailor was giving him.

But Jocko didn’t answer him seed for seed. Suddenly, he was tense, his torso lifted away from Johann’s, and his head thrown back, his nostrils sniffing at the air and his eye on the horizon. And then he was out of and off Johann, and racing along the deck, his cock still jutting out of one of the loincloth’s leg holes.

“Tempest! Tempest to starboard,” he roared. “All hands aloft. Pull in those sails before the storm be upon us and tearing them to shreds.”

Sitting up, frustrated that Jocko hadn’t come for him—but mellow enough because he had done so—Johann looked to the horizon on all sides, not yet knowing what “starboard” meant. He saw dark clouds scudding across the horizon, yes, but they were still a good distance away. But then they weren’t. Almost immediately the storm was upon them. The sailors were yelling, running in every direction, and crawling up the masts to fold and tie the sails.

Jocko was everywhere at once, yelling directions, pummeling sailors who weren’t moving fast enough or working on the highest priority need. Already raindrops were pelting everyone on deck, stinging more like bullets than drops of water. The wind was whipping around on the deck so that men had to lean into the wind to make progress and then, without warning, it was changing direction and dumping men on their backsides.

“All below who tain’t needed on deck,” Jocko was screaming. The captain, sleepy eyed, buttoning the fly of his breeches, and preceded from his cabin door by a bolting cabin boy, seemed sluggish and unsure what to do. He picked the wisest course, which was to grab the cabin boy before he could distance himself by more than a couple of yards, pull him back into the cabin, and leave Jocko to the work at hand.

August and Claus drew up beside Johann, who had managed to stumble to his feet but was holding on to one of the ropes tying down a cannon to keep himself from being swept overboard.

“We are called to go below,” August yelled at Johann as he and Claus struggled toward the hatch to the hold. Johann made to follow them, but just then they all heard the rumble of one of the guns, straining at the ropes holding it in place.

Jocko was there immediately. “You. You artillerymen. For God’s sake run more tether rope on them guns. They’ll break loose.”

Faces ashen, August and Claus moved toward the guns. So did Johann, knowing they needed all the help that could be mustered. He reached down to search for the end of the rope he’d been lying on while Jocko was fucking him. As he did so, he heard the snapping of one of the ropes holding the cannon in place beside him—and he felt the timber of the decking shudder as the wheels on the caisson began to move.

He rose again—in time to grab August and pull him away from between the cannon and the gunwale of the ship. But he wasn’t able to grasp Claus as well. It had been an instinctive move to grab August rather than Claus, not a purposeful one. Claus was positioned beyond August from Johann’s reach. In an instant, the gun was rolling toward the side of the ship, pushing Claus ahead of it. The smashing of the gunwale railing was a torturous sound. And then the gun was gone, over the side, and so was Claus, plummeting into the boiling sea.

Johann and August struggled to reach the railing of the ship, but, looking down, there was no sign of either the gun or of Claus. Johann grabbed for the wailing August and pulled him into his body, but they were given no time for grief. Jocko was at their side and in their faces.

“The other cannon. More rope. Tied down better. Now!”

And there was nothing the two Hessian friends could do for now but obey.

* * * *

August and Johann were huddled together in the folds of the canvas between two of the guns on deck. Night had fallen a short time previously. The hurricane had passed over them swiftly, but Claus was not the only one who had been swept overboard. And there were those who had died in the mass of men in the hold being tossed about by the turbulence.

The artillery captain had been through and had initially only shown concern for the cannon that had been lost. It was all Johann could do to hold August back from lashing out at the officer about the loss of his friend—and an artilleryman—Claus. Jocko had helped by distracting the officer and noting how the Hessian soldiers on the deck had managed to save the other guns, which was no mean feat.

In the darkness, Johann held August tight and cooed to him while August, trembling in Johann’s embrace, poured out his grief. In time Johann’s murmurs turned more to the attraction August and Johann had for each other before Claus came on the scene, and his embraces and the movement of his hands on August’s body became increasingly intimate. August’s snufflings descended into quiet moans.

One of Johann’s hands unbuttoned the fly of August’s breeches and moved inside, grasping August’s cock. August didn’t stop him—and, in fact, was already hardening. Johann had gone hard earlier and positioned himself in the embrace so that August could not have missed that he was hard. August’s body went limp and his head bent back as Johann’s hand found the cock.

Johann moved his face close to August’s and murmured what he wanted—and what he was sure August wanted now too. Johann said he would do it all this first time, August only had to lay there and savor the connection. August didn’t demure, nor did he turn his face away when Johann lowered his lips to find and part August’s. August sighed a weary sigh and began to move his hips in the rhythm of Johann slowly pumping his cock.

August just lay there against the side of the canvas-covered gun caisson and watched Johann with hooded eyes, as Johann rose enough to strip himself of his breeches, leaving him naked in the semidark of the deepening night.

“Oh, god, your body is beautiful,” August whispered, as he ran his hands over Johann’s torso.

“I want you so much,” Johann whispered. “I didn’t know before—when we knew each other before—that I wanted you. But I know now that I wanted you inside me even then. Don’t turn me away. I’m no novice to this now. I will know how to please you.”

Johann was trying to imply that he would do it so much better than Claus had. From Johann’s observance Claus had lacked passion in the fuck.

August said nothing, but there was affirmation in his eyes, and there was a deep growl rising up from his belly as Johann threw a leg over his thighs, positioned himself in the saddle, and reached back, positioning the bulb of August’s cock, and then lowering his channel on the throbbing shaft.

August’s growl grew in volume and animal lust as Johann’s passage slid down the cock. He grabbed Johann’s slender waist between his hands, raised his pelvis off the deck with the leverage of the heels of his feet, and began to pump up into Johann. Johann arched his back, turned his face toward the stars, and let his arms dangle at his side, only his pelvis actively participating in the fuck, lost in the fuck that the man he had lusted after for so long was now controlling.

Hearing the sounds of sex and wanting to know who was doing who, Jocko sneaked up on the other side of the gun and looked over the barrel. He frowned when he saw that Johann was being fucked by August and seemed to be enjoying it immensely. He quietly moved away, in search of the young seaman who he had been eying before his attention had gone to the tasty, blond Hessian soldier. Finding the seaman, Jocko separated him from his friends, took him into the shadows of the far side of the deck, pushed him down on his back on a hatch cover, slapped his legs apart, skewered him, and angrily fucked the stuffing out of him so that the young sailor was bowlegged—and sporting a sloppy grin—for several days thereafter.

Jocko didn’t come for Johann again for the remaining week of the voyage. As enamored as he was with having hooked up with his old friend, Johann may not have noticed the abrupt change in who was getting Jocko’s attention, if his food and water rations hadn’t returned to no more favorable than any of the other Hessian soldiers. As besotted as he was with August’s cock now, though, he hardly noticed—and didn’t complain.

If Jocko had been using the cutback in rations to pull Johann back to him, he was disappointed in the result. That he was angry about it, though, showed in how many sailors hobbled around the deck bowlegged for the remainder of the voyage.