HARRISONBURG, VA., September 27, 1864.

LIEUTENANT: I have the honor to submit the following report of the part taken by the Third Brigade of the First Division, Army of West Virginia, in the battle near Winchester, on the 19th instant:

My brigade consisted of five regiments, viz, the Tenth Eleventh, and Fifteenth West Virginia, Fifty-fourth Pennsylvania, and Twenty-third Illinois, commanded respectively by Major H. H. Withers, Lieutenant Colonel Van H. Bukey, Major J. W. Holliday, Lieutenant Colonel J. P. Linton, and Captain S. A. Simison, and numbered 1,841 officers and enlisted men for duty. I formed it in line of battle, under the superintendence of the commanding general, in the open field in rear of a wood into which the First Brigade had just been sent forward, and in which it was then resting. Having formed my line, I threw it forward into the woods, under the direction of the colonel commanding the division, being aided very materially by different members of the colonels staff as well as by my own, the thickness of the woods and unevenness of the ground rendering it very difficult to preserve a good line in advancing. Having found my command immediately in rear of the First Brigade, which had halted and was resting. My command did the same, and upon a short reconnaissance I found that the First Brigade had been advanced so as to form a continuation of the line formed by the Nineteenth Corps, and that it thus occupied at that time the right of our line, the left of the First Brigade being a little to the rear and overlapping somewhat the right of the Nineteenth Corps. The Third Brigade now occupied a position parallel to the First and a few paces in its rear. Whilst resting here I received an order from the colonel commanding to throw my two right regiments to the rear in a line perpendicular to the line of battle, for the protection of our flank, and to have them throw forward skirmishers as far as the edge of a small creek or slough that bounded our right flank, and was at the same time informed that Colonel Wells, of the Thirty-fourth Massachusetts, commanding the First Brigade, had been ordered to throw a regiment to the rear in like manner on his right, with which my two, regiment would connect and form a continuous line. Colonel Duval, of the Ninth West Virginia, commanding the Second Division, who had formed his command in two lines in my rear at my first formation in the field, I now found had thrown his command across

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* Shows 6 men killed, 29 men wounded, and 6 men captured or missing; total 41.

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