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some of you present, escaped into the woods and returned just as I came up.
A young officer, a Captain Riddick, who was in my commissary wagon, and who had been wounded some months before, and who, had been in the Confederate hospital, was also captured and carried off. His sister, a splendid young girl of about eighteen or twenty years of age, I omitted to say, accompanied him from Petersburg, where she had been nursing him, and was with him in the wagon. She refused to leave the wagon when he was taken, and as they could not burn it with her in it, it was saved and all of our commissary stores by her courage and firmness. There was also a fat chaplain
along, the Rev. . Miss R said that he escaped by making
the best time she had ever seen through the woods. We did not see him again.
The young lady we put into the wagon of a North Carolina quar- termaster which had just come up, and in which there were already
two other ladies, one, a Miss D , of New Orleans, whose father
was quite a learned man, and who had held some important office
under the Government in Richmond, and the other, a Mrs. S ,
whose maiden address impressed itself on my mind, because my
brother had been a great admirer of hers, Miss F C , of
Florida. The subsequent fortunes of these brave women who had determined to follow the Confederacy, I will rehearse presently. . There was a young surgeon from North Carolina who took to that wagon mightily for the few days that they remained in our company, and things seemed very lively, considering the circumstances.
My chief of ambulance escaped, though I saw him no more, I believe; also my orderly, who was a Moravian that had been im- pressed or conscripted in the army, but who refused to fight on ac- count of religious scruples, and had been sent to the medical department and was ordered tome. He had been with me for many months, was faithful, honest and fearless, and the greatest forager I ever saw. It was owing to his being off on an expedition of this sort that he got away. He did better than escape he captured a very fine saddle and bridle from a dead horse and one of the finest young thorough-breds, about four years old, I ever saw, which I think the Yankees had stolen and been unable to manage. Burk- hardt (that was my man's name) caught him, mounted and rode him to Appomattox Courthouse, though I saw him get some hard falls.
That disposes of all our party except two colored men, one named
