The Comanches: A History of White's Battalion, Virginia Cavalry

by Frank M. Myers

Lieut. White and the Colonel were not on entirely friendly terms, for the reason that when the latter was raising his company, the Lieutenant caused some opposition, by objecting to the men enlisted by the Colonel being excused from duty as militia until the company was organized and in actual service.

This caused a coolness which was not fully dissipated until, in the tremendous battle of Brandy Station, Lieut. White displayed such conspicuous gallantry that he completely gained the Colonel’s confidence and good will, and was ever after considered by his commander one of the best officers in the battalion, as he fully deserved to be.

One little incident connected with this, his last day of life on earth, would seem to indicate that he felt a presentiment of his fate, for while riding down to his death, he and Capt. Myers were discussing an order of the General’s to the effect that the battalion should be armed with long-range guns, and both agreed that they very much objected, for the reason that they disliked fighting on foot, but the Lieutenant remarked that if he should ever be dismounted and sent into that Wilderness country there to fight, that he would certainly be killed, for it would so excite him that he would not understand how to act; and when the order was given for the men to dismount, and he was designated to lead them, he said to the Captain as he passed to the front, in allusion to their conversation, "Good-bye, Frank; I am going, and don’t expect to see you any more;" and there we saw for the last time the gay, high-spirited and popular Lieut. Tom White.

From this time until the 21st, the battalion was occupied, with the brigade, in picketing and skirmishing, varied with occasional scouts, in one of which the Colonel took a part of his command by the left flank to the rear of Grant’s army, visiting three large field hospitals, in which lay thousands of wounded men whose discharges from the service had been issued from the muzzles of Confederate rifles, and on this trip the boys broke up nearly 2,000 stand of arms. All this while the infantry were passing through that tremendous ordeal of fire which has made the Spottsylvania Wilderness famous for all time in the bloody history which marks the progress of the world from the days of old down to the present, and if ever hard, stubborn fighting deserved success, the army of Lee in those May days of 1864 earned it, for every day the same awful roar of battle rolled along the lines, and every night came the same encouraging reports of the enemy repulsed with heavy slaughter, until it was a given up point that soon Grant would stop his “hammering,” for the good reason that the hammer was shivered to atoms on the solid anvil of Southern endurance and grit, but the national butcher kept throwing his doomed legions upon the invincible veterans of Gen. Lee, and supplying, from the teeming millions of Yankeeland and Germany, the places of the slaughtered men in blue, and day after day the hateful gridiron of the Yankee nation floated along the Rappahannock, telling that the war was not over yet.

On the 15th of May, Gen. Rosser marched to Enan Church, near the plank road, where he fought hard for an hour, to find if the enemy had infantry in that neighborhood, which proved to be the case.

Some of the boys said he only took the brigade down to hold the usual Sunday morning service, as the General had recently joined the Episcopal Church, but others remarked that he made a mistake in the prayer book, as Colt’s was not generally used in that Church. The night before had been spent by Company A on picket in the Wilderness, and as the author witnessed the performance, it will not be amiss to describe it, showing as it does one part of the soldier’s duty, and the manner in which it was performed in that God-forsaken country which is fit for nothing but a battle-field, and the worst one imaginable for that. The Company reached the picket line on the Cataupin road about dark, and the night set in rainy, and black as Erebus by the time the posts were established. There it was necessary to picket all around, and having at length got everything arranged, the reserve lay down on pieces of cracker boxes, an immense number of which were scattered around, for headquarters was established at what had been a field hospital for the 5th and 6th of May.

Nobody was permitted to unsaddle, of course, and without blankets the night was unpleasant enough, but pretty soon firing was heard towards the river, and by the time the pickets came in the company was mounted and ready for action, but no enemy appeared, and soon the line was re-established, only to be broken again in a few minutes, and the same ceremony of preparation for fight gone through with, which ended as before, without it.

This was done several times, and finally two men who never yet experienced the sensation of fear, were placed at the same post, which appeared to be the very centre of the Wilderness. These two men were John W. White and John Chadwell, and pretty soon firing was heard at their post, when all the pickets came in except the two who were supposed to have done the shooting, and after waiting in line of battle for some time, Capt. Myers ordered the Corporal, to whose relief they belonged, to ride out and see what was the matter, but that gentleman flatly refused to go, declaring his belief that the Yankees had killed the pickets and were waiting now to shoot whoever went to look for the missing men. After a little hesitation, the Captain concluded to go himself, and riding cautiously along the crooked woods-path soon came up to the two men, who halted him promptly and showed that they were up to their duty, and here the Captain found that these two men had captured a squad of the enemy’s sharp-shooters, armed with the long-barreled Sharpe’s rifle, and who had been causing all the disturbance during the night by creeping through the thick undergrowth, in the dark and rain, trying to get away from the rebel lines they said, but continually coming in contact with skirmishers, and having to lay quiet, until they were heard by White and Chadwell, who fired on them and then charged, when they surrendered.

The Captain asked his men why they didn’t come in and report the cause of it, to which White replied, that "there were some more Yankees out there in the woods, and as soon as they caught them, “Chad” was going to take the whole squad in together."

The Captain went back and told the company to “go to sleep, for White and Chadwell were on picket,” and taking his gum-cloth he spread it down, by feeling, at what he considered a good place for a nap, having a little mound for a pillow; and notwithstanding the offensive smell, went to sleep until day-break, when, rousing up, he was rather non-plussed at the discovery that his pillow was a pile of amputated legs and arms, and in arms-reach of him lay the swollen, blackened corpse of a Yankee Sergeant, whose thigh had been shivered by a shell.