Soon after reaching Bentonville General Wheeler was ordered to Averyboro, N. C., to assist General Hardee. This took a day and night’s march, if I remember rightly. General Hardee had taken position there to resist a column of the enemy marching toward Bentonville. Skirmishing was going on when we arrived upon the field. While awaiting orders Private Liter Herndon, of Company G, came up and asked permission to carry a battle flag that had been given us by a lady friend who happened to be at Winnsboro, S. C., as we passed through there a few weeks before. It was a beautiful flag of fine material, said to have been made in Scotland. It was a Maltese cross, with eleven stars forming the cross of St. Andrew. We thanked the lady for the gift, promising her that it should be unfurled in our next battle. Remembering this, I asked Colonel Smith and his inspector general, Capt. J. R. Lester, to let Herndon have it, which was agreed to; and Herndon, cutting a sapling, attached the flag to it and soon disappeared. In a little while the brigade was ordered off to the right, where we were engaged in brisk skirmishing till nightfall, when we were ordered to our left front to relieve some infantry in a line of temporary works. We learned that the enemy were intervening between us and Bentonville, that General Johnston’s little army was threatened, and that a battle was imminent. In passing up the road to the works, the rosin on the pine trees had been lighted, and we were visible to the enemy, who kept up a constant fire. As our infantry would pass us going to the rear, we heard more than one squad speaking of a soldier who had come upon the line that morning and said to them: “What are they keeping up such a racket for? I can see no one to fire at.” Deliberately climbing over the works and, reaching an elevated position some distance to their front and mounting it, he waved his flag toward the enemy, who immediately turned loose a volley at him, and he and his flag fell to the ground. This brought to mind the incident of Herndon and the flag. When I inquired of the next soldier that passed, I was informed that he had been sent to the field hospital. I at once dispatched one of his company back to investigate the matter. I did not see him until the next day, when he reported the facts as stated, and that he found Herndon in the field hospital badly wounded in several places, and that one of the surgeons in charge told him that Herndon was mortally wounded and was certain to die. Before the friend left him, Herndon requested him to look in his haversack and get out the flag and return it to headquarters with his compliments. I have never heard of Herndon since, and I suppose that he died and was buried at or near Averyboro, N. C. This flag was afterwards most gallantly carried by James B. Nance, the bugler of the regiment, through the battle of Bentonville. The surrender of the army occurring a few weeks after this, Nance concealed the flag and brought it home with him to Smith County, Tenn. I have regretted since that I did not preserve the flag. I did not meet Nance for a year after we came home, when he said that he had given the flag to his wife and she had made an apron of it for her little girl. If I had it now, it could tell of more fire and battle, though short-lived as it was, than many of the flags we see so heroically flaunting at latter-day reunions.