Lifeline to Victory by Don Stivers

The concern with logistics and supply can-in wartime-suddenly turn from exact numbers and cold calculations to chaos and hot, flying lead in combat. In the fall of 1863 just after the tumultuous Battle of Gettysburg, the Federal army moved back into Virginia, establishing headquarters in Culpepper Suddenly, the Confederates were on the march again, threatening Washington. On October 10th and 11th Confederates advanced across the Rapidan River to cut the Union army's lines into the capital. While the rest of the army fell back toward Washington, over 4,000 six-mule wagons filled with forage, clothing, equipment and food for the army were put under the command of Lt. Col. Richard N. Batchelder, Chief Quartermaster for the Second Corps. Over dirt roads and wilderness hills, the vulnerable caravan plodded on, day and night. The army could afford no escort and so Batchelder armed his teamsters. The fierce Confederate raider John Mosby and his partisan rangers struck frequently and violently, but Batchelder personally commanded his men in fighting them off, insuring the constant delivery to the army of food for the man and forage for the animals-thins as vital to soldiers on the move as ammunition and weapons. For his tireless actions and distinguished gallantry against Mosby's guerrillas from October 13th to the 15th on the march between Catlett and Fairfax Stations, Virginia, Lt. Col. Batchelder was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.