part in
the charge.

Four confederate cavalrymen undertook the duty of escorting myself and a
young Sixth cavalryman who had been trapped in the same way to the rear
through the woods. Anticipating that our attack would be followed up, we
managed to delay our guards as much as possible, and had gone not more
than a hundred yards when a yelling in the road proclaimed that the
curtain had risen on the second scene of our little drama. Custer had
ordered Birge to charge. Birge's advance put the confederates to flight,
what there were left of them. The noise of the pursuit disconcerted our
captors so that we took the chances and made our escape under cover
of the thick undergrowth. They fired at us as we ran but did not succeed
in making a hit. Fortunately Birge directed his course through the woods
out of which the enemy had come and into which they had gone in their
flight. In a minute we met him coming with a squad of men. He was
greatly rejoiced to find that he had rescued me from my disagreeable
predicament and, looking back across the years, I can see and freely
acknowledge that to no man on this earth am I under greater obligations
than to Manning D. Birge. But for his approach it might not have been
possible for us to successfully make our break for freedom. That was the
only time I ever was a prisoner of war and then only for about ten
minutes. Custer, referring to my capture, says that I was rescued by a
charge of my own regiment led by Captain Birge.

[Illustration: MANNING D. BIRGE]

Bidding Birge to follow my late captors I hurried out to the road and
thence to the crossroads from which we had started so short a time
before. Custer was still there. His battery was there. Most of the Sixth
was halted there. My recollection is that the First and Seventh about
that time joined Custer, after finding that Fitzhugh Lee had withdrawn
from their front looking toward Louisa Courthouse. Birge's charge had
cleared the road of the enemy, for the time being. Custer ordered that a
rail barricade be thrown up across the road leading to the right, from
which direction the attacks had been made on him. Putting the men of
Vinton's and Birge's squadrons who were available at work, Lovell's
squadron of four troops which was intact and well in hand under as good
an officer as there was in the brigade, was posted in line mounted,
parallel with the road, and behind a screen of timber, in readiness to
repel any further attack.