ubmerged in the dark waters, but the
dangerous crossing was safely made, the British and Hessian troops,
spending the holiday hours in feasting and carousing at Trenton, were
captured, and a great victory won for the American army.

Some time in the spring of 1777, John Koen must have returned to his
home in Pasquotank County, for we find in the Colonial Records that in
the month of May, 1777, he enlisted in Moore's Company, Tenth Regiment,
from North Carolina, and that in June he was promoted to the rank of
corporal.

According to the fireside tales told by Colonel Koen to the household in
the old Koen homestead, this young soldier, then only twenty years old,
was with Gates' army, that, under the valiant leadership of Morgan and
Arnold, won for the newly born nation the great victory of Saratoga; and
the winter of that same year--'77--we find him sharing with Washington's
army the trials and privations of the days of suffering at Valley Forge.

"I have seen the tears trickling down my grandfather's face when he told
of the sufferings of that awful winter," said his granddaughter, Mrs.
Temple to the writer, "and I used to wonder at seeing a grown man cry,
and often I said in my childish way that war should never bring a tear
in my eyes. Little did I know then that the bitterest tears I should
ever shed would be caused by war, and for eighteen months during the
terrible struggle between the North and the South I should mourn as dead
my soldier husband, whom God in His mercy restored to me after all hope
of seeing him alive again was over."

Although the Colonial Records state that Koen enlisted for only three
years in May, 1777, he must have re-enlisted in 1780, for he has left
with his family a graphic description of General Lincoln's surrender of
Charleston in that year, and of the horrible treatment to which the
Continental troops were subjected, who found themselves prisoners of the
victorious British army.

The hot climate, the wretched condition of the prison ships, the
unwholesome and insufficient food, made these days of imprisonment at
Charleston equal in horror to the worst days at Valley Forge. Of the
1,800 prisoners who were taken captive on May 12, 1780, only 700
survived when they were paroled, and of these our hero was one.

In what other battles or experiences Colonel Koen shared we have no
record, historical or traditional, but according to his granddaughter's
account, learned from his own lips, h