Joseph Plumb Martin was only 15 in 1776 when he joined the revolutionary army in Milford Massachusetts. He spent the rest of his teen and young adult years marching, working, fighting, foraging and sometimes almost freezing and starving with his fellow patriots until the war ended in 1783. As an older man, he wrote and published his account of his wartime experiences, well known events as Washington and Lafayette and the winter at Valley Forge and the surrender at Yorktown; but also the lesser known facts such as the serious lack of food and clothing that the soldiers had to endure.