When White and Chadwell came in, they reported total captures, in their two hours on duty, to be fourteen, and were going back to capture a squad quartered for the night in a log-cabin about a mile away, of which some of their prisoners had informed them, and taking with them two or three of the men at the reserve, they did go and capture several more.
On the 19th of May, Gen. Ewell, with part of his corps and Rosser’s brigade, made a flank movement, about 4 o’clock in the evening of that rainy day, around the left wing of Grant’s line, and had a very severe fight of about half an hour, in which the battalion only engaged as supports to Chew’s artillery, and after Ewell had withdrawn, having learned the important fact that Grant was flanking, which was the object of his expedition, the brigade followed slowly and by dark was at its old camp near Shady Grove. The boys used to say that no matter what direction Gen. Rosser moved, during those fighting days in the Wilderness, White’s battalion would surely bring up at Shady Grove, and it was true, too, for more than two weeks.
Part of the time, during this warm campaign, “the people” suffered for rations, but were generally better fed than they anticipated, and as a general thing, men under constant and high excitement require less food than at other times; in fact I have frequently seen the soldiers, while listening to details of a battle, apparently forget to eat, although they had fasted for a day; but rations was the first thought which flashed through the minds of White’s battalion when the news reached them, about the 10th of May, that Sheridan’s cavalry had cut the Virginia Central Rail Road, at Beaverdam Station, and destroyed fifty thousand pounds of bacon. They had no idea of being whipped in the field, for all thought that no army commanded by “Uncle Bobby” could he whipped by fighting, but if starvation came upon them they knew the war must end, and when Gen. Stuart hastily gathered what force he had convenient, to go after the raiders, he had the prayers of every praying man in the Army of Northern Virginia, and the earnest wishes of all the rest, for his success.
About this time the enemy made a heavy movement on the left flank, and General Hampton, with the few cavalry left him by Stuart, had to do his best, and on the evening of the 18th ordered the battalion to support Thompson’s battery which, as usual, got into a very hot place. The Cobb Legion was in front along the edge of the pines, dismounted, and the artillery on a hill something like a hundred yards in their rear, while fifty yards to the rear of the guns stood White’s people, and when the swarm of Yankee infantry made their appearance the legion retired to their horses without firing a shot, but Thompson opened with grape and canister and for a short time checked the advance, but by this time the musket balls were cutting the wheels of his gun-carriages, and Rosser ordered him to retire, at the same time calling to Colonel White to move everything but one squadron and to leave that with instructions to follow the battery and save it.
The Colonel called out to Captain Myers, “hold your squadron there and when the Yankees come on the hill, charge them,” and moved the rest of the command to the woods on the left. The enemy’s artillery, from the other side of Po river, was now firing rapidly at Thompson, and nearly every shell passed over or through the squadron, while the infantry fire was making the situation very hot, and when at length the battery did move it was found that the tongue of one of the caissons was broken, but Mec Souder, a Loudoun county man and Sergeant of the battery, cut a sapling and as rapidly as possible improvised a pole which enabled him to save the caisson.
The 1st squadron then moved off, but none too soon, for as they passed the woods about a hundred yards to the left, the Yankees swarmed upon the hill, cutting General Hampton off from his command, and capturing one man of the battalion. This was looked upon by the men as decidedly the narrowest escape they had ever made, for certainly if they had remained three minutes longer not a man could have escaped, as fully ten thousand infantry would have been within less than fifty yards and the squadron would have stood exactly in the centre of their line.
These were the men who captured General Edward Johnson, of Ewell’s Corps, with most of his division that same day, and they were then moving up to make their attack on the Confederate works. The cavalry halted a short distance to the left and waited for the Yankee troopers to appear, but they were all with Sheridan near Richmond.
The battalion had become so much reduced in numbers by the casualties of war that it was now formed in two squadrons, the first composed of Companies A and C, under Captains Myers and Dowdell and Lieut. Sam. Grubb, and the second, of Companies B, E and F, with Capt. French and Lieutenants Strickler, Chiswell and James for officers.
The second squadron was sent on picket to the left of the army, where it remained for some days, and on its return to the command about the 20th, the first was ordered out for a tour of duty of the same kind between Todd’s Tavern and the Court House; but about 2 o’clock on the morning of the 21st received an order to join the battalion, then bringing up the rear of the army, which was moving by Spottsylvania Court-house towards the North Anna river. The march was rather an exciting one, leading as it did over the broad battle-fields of the Wilderness, where many hundreds of dead men still lay unburied, and the squadron was obliged to pass directly over them, when, as the hoofs of the horses would strike the corpses, the flesh would strip from the bones, leaving them glistening in the phosphorescent light that played around them, and the weird, ghostly influence of the scene affected the men, in the silence and gloom of that early morning, more than the presence of any number of live Yankees could have done; but the night wore away—very slowly indeed, it seemed—and by an hour after sunrise the battalion united a few miles below the Court-house, when it slowly marched along the Richmond road, still acting as rear guard for the army. A small party of the men under Lieutenant Samuel Grubb came directly by the Court-house, barely escaping capture by the force of the enemy which occupied the village, as rear guard for Grant’s army, and after passing that point they captured about a hundred stragglers, whom the Lieutenant and his squad formed in line, and after breaking their guns and “going through them” for watches and greenbacks, paroled the whole party and sent them on their way rejoicing; with a net result of about a dozen brass watches that wouldn’t keep time; a hundred pocket-books containing in all, probably five hundred photographs, and two dollars in five cent notes, besides a few sutler tickets.
The battalion crossed the North Anna about sun-set and having no horse-feed, rode until 11 o’clock hunting for a grass field, which they at last found near Hanover Junction. For several days the old Fork Church took the place of Shady Grove, to the “Comanches,” and although they might be operating along the river—on the Rail Road; or skirmishing on the Telegraph road—yet every day found them in bivouac during some part of it at the church which had stood for more than a century; its bricks having been brought from England during colonial days, and all its surroundings associated with the memory of the boyhood of Henry Clay; indeed the home of the great statesman’s mother was scarce half a mile from the church, in the slashes of Hanover, where, as a boy, he cultivated corn and tobacco.