I sat with my young son at the top of our back yard late on a cool October evening. A small fire crackled in the fireplace and hot dogs sizzled over the flames. We were poking at the coals and talking about the brooding woods around us, here at the top of this dark hill.

Our little home is nestled into the southern side of a hill, a steep, wooded ridge running Northeast to Southwest, a few miles north of Philadelphia. The woods were infused with a palpable sense of history that night up on that hill, a feeling that filtered down through the shadowy branches of the trees, mixing with the starlight.

We were enjoying our cookout on hallowed ground, my son and I. The steep backyard where we live our comfortable suburban lives had been consecrated by the blood of patriots, and it was important to me that my boy should understand the significance of that.

There was another teen aged boy, I told him, quite possibly just your age, who sat on this same hill among the trees. The boy's name was Joe. Joseph Plum Martin, in fact, and he sat on our hill, maybe right here in this same spot, two hundred and thirty years ago.

It wasn't a cool October night when that boy was here, though. It was the first week in December, 1777, and while winter hadn't officially begun, it was already brutally cold. And Joe, even though he was only as old as you are now, was already a seasoned veteran of war.

Joe was cold that night, and he was hungry, and he was very, very tired. He hadn't been paid since summer. He and the other young men serving under General George Washington had suffered two major defeats in battle. Philadelphia had fallen to the British. Washington's spies had determined that the British, commanded by Sir William Howe, were well entrenched in Philadelphia and were far too strong to attack.

But Joe was itching for a fight, so he hoped that Howe would come to them. They were dug in up here on this fortified hill, after all, and felt confident of their position. Besides, they wanted to take out their frustration on some Redcoats.

Years later an aging Joseph Plum Martin wrote down some of his memories of that night on this hill:

"We had a commanding position and were very sensible of it. We were kept constantly on the alert, and wished nothing more than to have them engage us, being in excellent fighting trim, as we were starved and as cross and ill-natured as curs. While we lay there, there happened very remarkable northern lights. At one time the whole visible heavens appeared, for some time, as if covered with crimson velvet. Some of the soldiers prognosticated a bloody battle about to be fought, but time, which always speaks the truth, showed them to be false prophets."

But a bloody battle was just what Howe wanted, too. He desperately wanted to destroy Washington's army and have done with it before winter set in. So Joe got his wish, and Howe marched 12,000 British and German troops - nearly his whole army - out of Philadelphia.

But try as they might, the British couldn't find a break in Washington's lines. They moved back and forth, about a mile away, and Washington's troops shadowed them. They tried to outflank the line on the left, right here on this hill, on the bitterly cold night of December 7th, 1777, in a series of fire fights that became known as the Battle of Edge Hill.

Finally Howe gave up, much to the disappointment of General Washington (and Joe), and retreated to Philadelphia to settle down for the winter. They were too strong to be attacked, so Washington took his army away too, leaving behind the blood of 90 dead and wounded to seep into the ground that you and I are sitting on now.

Joe marched away with the Continental Army to their winter quarters and settled down for what was to become one of the cruelest winters that any man has ever endured It was the winter of trial for men with the moral strength to risk and sacrifice all for a noble cause. It was the Winter of 1777 in Valley Forge.