For much of the war, William Riddick Whitehead was the principal surgeon of the 44th Virginia Infantry. His remarkable life is described in Life and Experiences of an American Surgeon, on file at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond. A VMI graduate, he received his training from the University of Pennsylvania Medical Department and the School of Medicine in Paris. He served as a staff surgeon in the Russian army during the siege of Sevastopol in the Crimean War (and left a valuable account for students of that war). Joining the Confederacy early in the war, he was left behind to tend to the wounded of his division at Gettysburg, and was afterwards sent to Baltimore with other captured Confederate surgeons. In Baltimore he was "confined to one of the upper rooms of the Gilmore House, formerly a hotel, and used then for prisoners of war." A famous restaurant, Guy's, was close by, and he and another surgeon (Frank L. Taney, 10th Lousiana) arranged for a grand meal. As they dined on stone crabs and champagne, in walked Federal Colonel Porter of New York State (perhaps P. A. Porter, commanding officer of Fort McHenry?). Porter remarked how the prisoners were enjoying themselves, but Taney was so charming and diplomatic, inviting Porter to join them, that he soon retired from the room with a bow and left them to finish their meal. The surgeons and chaplains taken at Gettysburg were soon transferred to Fort McHenry. There, a chaplain of an Alabama regiment told Whitehead that the sergeant of the guard, would for a "consideration" ($10 greenback) not post his sentinels promptly. So one night Whitehead and two chaplains escaped, heading north into Canada (at Niagara Falls), aided by sympathetic citizens along the way. Whitehead described one of the accompanying Chaplains as a Scotsman about 40 years of age, and he infers the other was Dr. James H. Southall. (However, Southall was surgeon of the 55th Virginia and reportedly paroled from Fort McHenry in December 1863). In Montreal, Whitehead met up with a fellow VMI graduate, W. W. Finley, who was in the blockade running business. Subsequently, Whitehead ran the blockade into Wilmington, NC, by way of Bermuda, and rejoined his regiment. Ironically, the other surgeons who had been with him at Fort McHenry were already back in the Confederacy, having been exchanged in the interim.