 Wood served as a corporal in Company C in the V.M.I.Cadet Corps which was ordered in May 1864 to join the Confederate Army of Major General John C. Breckinridge, who was attempting to stop a Union advance up the Shenandoah Valley.At New Market, Virginia on May 14, 1864, a rainy Sunday afternoon, a corps of 247 teenage V.M.I.