was replaced as brigade commander by Colonel Robert M. Mayo. Battle of Five Forks The decisive Battle of Five Forks, was fought on April 1, 1865, southwest of Petersburg, Virginia, around the road junction of Five Forks in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. Five Forks was a critical crossroads that led to the remaining Confederate supply lines. Mobile task forces of combined infantry, artillery and cavalry from the Union Army under overall command of Major General Philip Sheridan with Major General Gouverneur K. Warren commanding the V Corps infantry defeated a Confederate Army of Northern Virginia combined task force commanded by Major General George E. Pickett and cavalry corps commander Fitzhugh Lee. The Union Army inflicted over 1,000 casualties on the Confederates and took at least 2,400 prisoners while seizing Five Forks, the key to control of the vital South Side Railroad. Union casualties were 103 killed, 670 wounded, 57 missing for a total of 830. Because of the approach of V Corp infantry on the night of March 31, Pickett retreated about to a modestly fortified line about in length approximately half on either side of the junction of White Oak Road, Scott Road and Dinwiddie Court House Road (Ford's Road to the north) at Five Forks. Because of its strategic importance, General Robert E. Lee ordered Pickett to hold Five Forks at all hazards. At Five Forks at the beginning of the Union attack about 1:00 p.m. on April 1, Sheridan's cavalry hit the front and right flank of the Confederate line with small arms fire from mostly dismounted cavalry troopers of Brigadier General Thomas Devin's and Brigadier General (Brevet Major General) George Armstrong Custer's divisions. They attacked from mostly positions sheltered by woods just outside the Confederate breastworks. This fire pinned down the Confederates while the massed V Corps of infantry organized to attack the Confederate left flank. With Sheridan fretting about the amount of remaining daylight and his cavalry possibly running out of ammunition, the Union infantry forces attacked about 4:15 p.m. Pickett and Fitzhugh Lee were having a late shad bake lunch about north of the main Confederate line along White Oak Road because they thought Sheridan was unlikely to be organized for an attack that late in the day and that General Lee would send reinforcements if Union Army infantry moved against them. The intervening thick, damp woods and an acoustic shadow prevented the Confederate commanders