The second day's fight at Preeble's Farm, Va. was not much of a battle as battles went in those days, but it proved very disastrous to my regiment, and especially to my company. Of the thirty odd men captured by the Confederates thirty belonged to company D. As we were being conducted to the rear, a rebel soldier saw a ring on my finger and asked me for it. When I refused, he told me I might as well give it to him as it would be taken from me when we reached Petersburg. I took my pipe and managed to squeeze the ring into the bowl which I filled with tobacco, and carried in my mouth unlit. Sure enough we were searched at Petersburg and our money and other valuables confiscated. I had an old knife with a broken blade which the rebel officer allowed me to keep. I swapped this knife a few days later to a rebel guard for a cold sweet potato, the sweetest morsel I ever tasted having eaten nothing except a few mouldy crackers for three days.