Sentence:  General Jones <WSD>was</WSD> fresh from a long series of bridge burnings , including the long bridge at Fairmont , and , after seeing a great drove of horses and cattle he had collected safely across the bridge , he sent his men to work piling combustibles in and around it . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)