After Confederate forces overwhelmed Union defenders on Rice's Hill and advanced across this field, they came under artillery fire from Union cannon atop Bushong's Hill one thousand yards away. Among those caught in the shelling were the VMI Cadets. Cadet Sgt. Gideon Davenport recalled the incessant bursting of shells and remembered passing wounded soldiers who cheered the cadets until a shell burst among them. Another shot fell among the cadets near this spot with devastating effect. Cadet Capt. Frank Preston later recalled that three cadets were killed by a single shell: Sgt. William H. Cabell, Pvt. Henry J. Jones, and Pvt. Charles G. Crockett. Cabell's brother John, also a cadet in the advance, later returned with dread to search for him and found him dead from a shell fragment. That night Cadet John S. Wise returned to the field and found the bodies of the fallen cadets, including Cabell, whom he remembered as a leading student, a fine soldier, and the equal of any boy in the command in physical and moral manliness.