[2][3] Captain West had previously served as the 1st Lieutenant of Woodruff's Weaver Light Artillery of Pulaski County.

On the same day Hindman wrote to Major (former Brigadier General Nicholas Bartlett Pearce of the Confederate Commissary Department at Fort Smith stating, "I want these batteries completely effective by August 25th.

The battery fired in support of Shoup's Division until driven off by the rifled guns of the union artillery.

As Hindman attempted to reorganize his defeated army, West's battery was assigned to the brigade of Colonel Robert G. Shaver.

[15] On January 1, Hindman's retreating army was met east of Van Buren by the 15th Texas Cavalry under Colonel J. W. Speight.

At nearby Piney Bayou on January 7, the "four demoralized Texas [dismounted cavalry] regiments were put under command of Col Speight, creating a brigade.

The brigade, including West’s Battery trudged in varying degrees of cold winter rain and snow, short of wagons, across a country already stripped of forage for men and animals.

Snow piled up eight to ten inches deep in places, and a hundred mules from the teams for the supply wagons and an artillery battery froze to death.

[20] In the summer of 1863, the battery joined Major General Richard Taylor's District of Western Louisiana.

[21] The battery then helps harass the retreating Union fleet and army as they attempted to escape the falling waters of the Red River.

[26] On December 31, 1864, The battery was assigned to Maj. Thomas A. Faries' 3rd Artillery Battalion, in Maj. Gen. Camille Giles de Polignac's 2nd Infantry Division, in Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner's First Army Corps.

[27][28] Lieutenant General Richard Taylor offered Captain West the position of Chief of Artillery with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, but West declined, saying that the people of Desha County had sent him this battery to command and he would "remain with it to the close of the war and take the survivors back to their homes".

[30] The date of the military convention between Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith and Union General Edward Canby for the surrender of the troops and public property in the Trans-Mississippi Department was May 26, 1865, however, it took a while for parole commissioners to be appointed and for public property to be accounted for.