This text is part of:
[145]
fire they accomplished their mission, reached the body in safety, but on the return the gallant Fleming was shot down, a ball passing through his body.
Supposing himself mortally wounded, he said to his comrades, ‘Leave me and let me die in peace.’
The colonel's body was taken to Williamsburg on the shoulders of his devoted soldiers and left, near midnight, at a house in the town, with a note pinned to it, giving the name and rank of the lamented dead and requesting interment.
This proved to be the house of an Episcopal minister who had been a classmate and warm personal friend of Colonel Ward, and who performed for him at Williamsburg the last sad rites of Christian burial.
President Davis, in his ‘Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,’ referring to the battle of Williamsburg makes the following mention of Colonel Ward: ‘Among the gallant and much regretted lost by us was Colonel Ward of Florida, whose conduct at Yorktown had been previously noticed, and of whom General Early in his report of the battle of Williamsburg says: “On the list of the killed in the Second Florida regiment is found the name of Col. George T. Ward, as true a gentleman and as gallant a soldier as has drawn a sword in this war, and whose conduct under fire it was my fortune to witness on another occasion.
His loss to his regiment, to his State and to the Confederacy cannot be easily compensated.”
’
Lieutenant Fleming, upon reviving from the first shock of his wound, managed to drag himself a short distance toward the regiment and was discovered and brought in by Perry's company on the extreme left.
His brother, Lieut. Frank P. Fleming, with volunteers from Starke's company, carried him to Williamsburg, and, while assisting in this, Corporal Grey received a wound in the leg from a minie ball.
When the enemy entered Williamsburg, with the assistance of the Confederate surgeons the wounded who were left there were cared for, and Lieutenant Fleming was allowed to remain at the house
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.