THREE LITTLE CONFEDERATES.
Thomas Nelson Page has written very charmingly of "Two Little Confederates," but an incident that occurred during our stay at Green Brier shows that "there were others." On Nov. 14, '61, three Virginia boys living in vicinity of our camp, and all under fifteen years of age, were out squirrel hunting on the Green Bank road, which led partly in the direction of the Federal camp on Cheat Mountain. Rambling through the woods in search of game, they came in sight of Yankee soldier, who was out on a similar errand, or possibly on an independent scouting expedition. As he was a "stranger" they decided to "take him in." He had laid aside his gun and cartridge box and was sitting by a tree eating his lunch. Slipping up noiselessly in his rear they captured his arms and then presenting their squirrel rifles they offered to serve as an honorary escort to our camp. He was rather loth to comply with the request of his youthful captors, but the muzzles of their guns were very persuasive, and with true Virginia pluck, they marched their mortified prisoner to Gen. Jackson's quarters. I regret that I failed to preserve the names of those three brave little Confederates.
But few other incidents worthy of record in these memories occurred during our stay on the Green Brier. On Nov. 17 there was a hotly contested snow ball fight between the 1st and 12th Ga. Regiments, resulting in a drawn battle. Two days later at 2 a. m., in response to the rattle of musketry at the picket post, we were aroused and marshalled into line in the wintry night air to repel an expected attack on our camp. It was on this occasion that the cholera morbus incident, to which allusion has been made, occurred. The alarm proved groundless, as the pickets had mistaken an old grey mare and her colt for a body of the enemy. As the animal was clothed in grey, the Confederate color, the mistake was all the less excusable.