From Confederate Veteran magazine, January, 1911 issue:

“Recollections of the retreat from Richmond in April 1865:

“At Chesterfield Courthouse I met Huger’s (formerly Alexander’s) Battalion of Artillery, where I had previously served, [and found] we looked back at the great clouds of smoke over burning Richmond, and I remember the anxious looks and pale faces of Parker’s ‘Boy Battery,’ which was  from Richmond. They never blanched in front of the enemy, but did at leaving home and mother to an unknown fate.”

Those, that is, whom the war hadn’t already made orphans, as it had of the novel’s Sergeant Pitchigru Pease.

The historical Boy Battery surrendered a few days after the retreat, at Saylor’s Creek. The officers went home. The boys were sent as prisoners to the Union’s infamous Point Lookout prison camp in Maryland.