In the fight of the 27th of October, dismounted on each side of the Plank road below Petersburg, the regiment acted a conspicuous part, and drove the enemy from several positions. Lieutenant Lal. Washington, of Company C, was severely wounded. Privates B. B. Beale and J. N. Brown, of the same company, were killed, and several others were badly wounded.
In the pursuit of Warren's corps along the Weldon railroad down to Belfield Station in midwinter they were several times under fire and suffered for want of rations and exposure to ice and sleet. Much of the winter of 1864 and 1865 was spent in comfortable winter quarters near Belfield Station, each of the squadrons taking its turn of picket service, on a line about thirty miles from camp. They were on the right of our infantry at Hatcher's run in the month of February, 1865, and in an engagement on the 5th of that month suffered considerably.
In the last days of March at Five Forks and Dinwiddie Courthouse, and in all the privations and dangers of the memorable days from Sunday the 2d to Sunday the 9th of April they bore themselves in the same daring, dashing manner which they had shown for four years, exhibiting on the morning of the ill-fated 9th the same steady courage, the same intrepid bearing which marked them in the beginning. Supporting and participating in part in the last charge which was made upon the artillery by any arm of the Army of Northern Virginia, they cheered their comrades of the Fourteenth Regiment, led by the gallant Captain E. E. Bouldin, of the Charlotte Troop, returning with two twelve-pound brass guns, wrested from General Sheridan while the terms of surrender were being signed.[1] One company alone gave way under the crucial test of the last few days, the majority of them, with their captain, having left on the 5th of April.
- ↑ In this last charge the brave young color-bearer, James Wilson, and Samuel Walker, of Company H, Fourteenth Virginia Cavalry, both from Rockbridge county, laid down their lives, the last men to fall in battle in the Army of Northern Virginia.—G. W. B.
