Drill at Valley Forge, 1778

Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben rode into Valley Forge on February 23, 1778, a former Prussian captain carrying a letter from Franklin that called him a lieutenant general he had never been. Washington did not care. The army needed a drillmaster.

He began in March with a model company of a hundred men, personally, musket in hand. He spoke almost no English. He drilled in French and German, swore in both, and had an aide curse in English for him when the men laughed. Each trained company went back and trained its regiment. Within weeks the whole army loaded, wheeled and marched the same way.

The test came at Monmouth on June 28, 1778, when Continental regiments stood in open field against British regulars and held. The manual Steuben wrote that winter stayed in use for thirty years.

The line stretches from one edge of the picture to the other, muskets shouldered at the same angle, bayonets catching the thin winter light. The only figure facing them is the drillmaster in blue, arm straight up, about to give the word. Everything waits on that hand.

The ground is the real subject — churned mud, meltwater in the ruts, patches of dirty snow. The soldiers' coats are every shade of brown and gray, nothing matches, and yet they all stand exactly the same way. That is the point.