As Union artillery fired on Philippi, Colonel Dumont's infantry pounded across the covered bridge into the five hundred people who lived there. In April, when the war was still a lark, local attorneys Thomas Bradford and Albert Gallatin Reger recruited men to form the Barbour Greys. In May most of those troops marched away to Grafton, only to return when the Union army under General McClellan arrived in the region. Confederate commander Colonel George Porterfield's Virginians camped in town, and some were even welcomed into residents' homes. The Battle of Philippi was brief, but the resulting Union occupation was hard on the civilian population. Union troops scavenged houses and stores, burnt fences, and slaughtered livestock for meals. A reporter for the Cincinnati Times wrote that the village bore more than any other he had seen the ruinous effect of war, with many houses ransacked and maliciously damaged and not half of them occupied because the inhabitants had fled. Union officers did arrest troops when they were caught looting, and at one point nearly one hundred men were under guard for breaking into dwellings and houses.