At Ox Ford, rough terrain discouraged large-scale battle and turned fighting along the North Anna River into a bitter contest of small units and individual soldiers, with active sniping keeping men under cover in muddy trenches for three days. Hunger briefly cut through the danger when five members of the 8th Florida Infantry crossed the rain-swollen river toward a cow grazing in Union territory, but alert Union pickets captured the nearly undressed party, to the amusement of soldiers of the 9th Corps. On May 27, after the withdrawal of the 9th Corps left its picket line unsupported, Lieutenant Alfred H. Zachry led Corporal James C. Flemister and Privates Job B. Russell and Major J. Wheeler of the 3rd Georgia Infantry across the river, where they captured five Union soldiers. More Georgians then crossed in search of Federal skirmishers, and Flemister, with Private E. J. Horton and David Harris, crept to the Union trenches, leaped onto the parapet, and compelled at least thirty-five Union soldiers, mostly from the 51st Pennsylvania Infantry, to surrender. These prisoners were sent to Andersonville, where two Pennsylvanians died in captivity, while Flemister, Horton, and Harris survived the war and surrendered at Appomattox Court House in 1865.
