Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1291

Rh body of troopers he was in frequent danger, and it was his peculiar distinction that he was captured oftener by the enemy than any other Confederate soldier, so far as known. It was his misfortune to be five times a prisoner of war; once, being wounded, he was left on the field for want of ambulance facilities; twice he escaped after capture; a fourth time he was paroled after the Gettysburg battle; and the last time he experienced imprisonment under peculiar hardships at Fort McHenry. During six weeks of his detention there he was kept in a dungeon and fed with bread and soup once a day, and for nearly three months he was put to work on the streets of Baltimore and at the rolling mills at Locust Point. Declining to take the oath he was held in this imprisonment until June, 1865. During his service he was wounded near Berryville, while participating in a raid, and in the subsequent race for liberty was chased five miles and two horses were killed under him. A detailed account of his romantic and dangerous experiences would amply illustrate the daring of the young Southern troopers. After his final parole he resided at Berryville, Va., for several years, and in 1876 removed to Washington, where he served as a clerk in the navy yard until his promotion in 1884 to the position of chief clerk of the department of files, records and supplies. He maintains his comradeship with the soldiers of the Confederacy and has membership in the camps at Washington and Leesburg of the United Confederate Veterans.

Alexander Thurman, chief of the fire department of Lynchburg, was well prepared for his position by active and brave service as a Confederate soldier. He was born at the city he now so faithfully protects, in 1845, and being but a boy when the war began, was not able to enter the Confederate army; but in 1861-62 he served as volunteer fireman of the city, the able-bodied young men being at the front. January 1, 1863, he entered the Virginia military institute and accompanied the corps of cadets in three or four of their expeditions against the invaders. Seeing the need of his State for all her sons who were able to bear arms, he was not content to remain there, and left in December, 1863, immediately entering the army in Company B, Second regiment of Virginia cavalry, in the brigade of Gen. T. T. Munford, in which he served until the close of the war. In the period of the struggle which followed that date were crowded many romantic, gallant and desperate encounters, in which, as a daring trooper, he did his share in maintaining the brilliant reputation of the Virginia cavalry. A mere outline of the battles in which he took part, sometimes dismounted, as at Cold Harbor, repelling the desperate and repeated attacks of the enemy, will give an idea of his service and that of his command. The list includes the seventeen days' fighting in the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania Court House, Meadow Bridge, Second Cold Harbor, Hawe's Shop, Nance's Shop, Reams' Station, Winchester, Cedar Creek, Tom's Brook, Bridgewater, Catherine Furnace, Fisher's Hill, Wier's Cave, Waynesboro, Trevilian Station, Louisa Court House, Yellow Tavern and Front Royal. About March 25, 1865, he was stricken with illness, and was sent to hospital at Lynchburg, where he was still disabled when the war came to a close, and was paroled in May, 1865. In 1869 he removed to Missouri, and remained there a year, engaged in railroad surveying. Returning