Warren C. Dockum

He took the enemy flag after two men had died trying for it.

Warren C. Dockum was born at Clintonville, New York, on 1 January 1844. He entered the Union Army during the Civil War and initially served in Company E of the 16th New York Infantry. His early service included the Maryland campaign. A later local account records that he was wounded and captured at Antietam before returning through a prisoner exchange.

On 11 May 1863 he transferred to Company H of the 121st New York Infantry. The transfer formed part of the redistribution of longer-service soldiers from regiments whose original terms were ending. Dockum remained a private in his new regiment, which served in the Sixth Corps of the Army of the Potomac.

By the spring of 1865 the 121st was in the trenches around Petersburg. It participated in the final assault on 2 April and then joined the pursuit of Robert E. Lee's withdrawing army. For Dockum, the fighting continued after the Confederate evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg, as Union troops sought to prevent the retreating columns from escaping westward.

At Deatonsville, during the Battle of Sailor's Creek on 6 April, he captured a Confederate flag belonging to the Savannah Guards. Two other men had already been killed attempting the same feat. His Medal of Honor citation identifies that sequence explicitly, recognizing the capture in the face of danger demonstrated by those deaths. The official award account, preserved by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, states that the flag was taken "after two other men had been killed in the effort" (https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/warren-c-dockum).

The award was issued on 10 May 1865, shortly after the fighting ended. Dockum remained with Company H until its muster-out near Hall's Hill, Virginia, on 25 June. The New York adjutant-general's register records both his transfer from the 16th and his final discharge with the 121st.

His civilian life eventually took him to Colorado. After his wife's death in 1893, he and his son moved to the Pueblo area. He lived for more than half a century after the Civil War and died at Montrose on 2 October 1921, aged seventy-seven. He was buried in Roselawn Cemetery at Pueblo, where his family also had their graves.