action was renewed, to push his command forward as a turning-column in conjunction with Emory.  After some delay in the annoying defile, Crook got his men up, and posting Colonel Thoburn’s division on the prolongation of the Nineteenth Corps, he formed Colonel Duval’s division to the right of Thoburn.  Here I joined Crook, informing him that I had just got word that Torbert was driving the enemy in confusion along the Martinsburg pike toward Winchester; at the same time I directed him to attack the moment all of Duval’s men were in line.  Wright was instructed to advance in concert with Crook, by swinging Emory and the right of the Sixth Corps to the left together in a half-wheel.  Then leaving Crook, I rode along the Sixth and Nineteenth corps, the open ground over which they were passing affording a rare opportunity to witness the precision with which the attack was taken up from right to left.  Crook’s success began the moment he started to turn the enemy’s left; and assured by the fact that Torbert had stampeded the Confederate cavalry and thrown Breckenridge’s infantry into such disorder that it could do little to prevent the envelopment of Gordon’s left, Crook pressed forward without even a halt.

Both Emory and Wright took up the fight as ordered, and as they did so I sent word to Wilson, in the hope that he could partly perform the work originally laid out for Crook, to push along the Senseny road and, if possible, gain the valley pike south of Winchester.  I then returned toward my right flank, and as I reached the Nineteenth Corps the enemy was contesting the ground in its front with great obstinacy; but Emory’s dogged persistence was at length rewarded with success, just as Crook’s command emerged from the morass of Red Bud Run, and swept around Gordon, toward the right of Breckenridge, who, with two of Wharton’s brigades, was holding a line at right angles with the Valley pike for the protection of the Confederate rear.  Early had ordered these two brigades back from Stephenson’s depot in the morning, purposing to protect with them his right flank and line of retreat, but while they were en route to this end, he was obliged to recall them to his left to meet Crook’s attack.

To confront Torbert, Patton’s brigade of infantry and some of Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry had been left back by Breckenridge, but, with Averell on the west side of the Valley pike and Merritt on the east, Torbert began to drive this opposing force toward Winchester the moment he struck it near Stephenson’s depot, keeping it on the go till it reached the position held by Breckenridge, where it endeavored to make a stand.