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] June 1780: Participated as a volunteer in Knyphausen's Springfield Raid.

So everything connects. I pass through the site of the 1780 Battle of Springfield on the way to and from work every day.

The British were in New York, and Washington's army was encamped around Morristown, west of the Watchung Mountains. General Knyphausen and several thousand men set out from Elizabeth on a reconaissance in force (armyspeak for "looking for trouble") to see if they could get through the pass where NJ Route 24 now runs, catch the Americans off guard and destroy their supplies. Lookouts in what is now Summit, NJ saw the dust cloud, and General Greene met Knyphausen with a mixed force of Continentals and militia along the Rahway River (more of a brook) in Springfield, a few miles east of the pass. After a day of inconclusive fighting, Knyphausen decided that he had too few men to deal with approaching American reinforcements and went back where he came from. The Americans were content to let him go.

The field of battle is now buried under one of the scalier bits of suburban New Jersey: an interstate highway, a lower middle class residential neighborhood, some small office buildings and a couple of strip malls. Two roadside historical markers and the name of an apartment complex are the only evidence of the place where General Tilney's prototype risked his life for King and Country.