On the 14th May 1781, Colonel Delancey and his unit of loyalist militia, De Lancey's Refugee Corps, assaulted Pine's Bridge (near present day Yorktown, New York) and caught Colonel Greene and the Rhode Island Regiment by surprise. Delancey's troops killed Colonel Greene, Major Ebenezer Flagg and eight African-American soldiers of the Rhode Island Regiment. The black troops were reported to have “defended their beloved Col. Greene so well that it was only over their dead bodies that the enemy reached and murdered him.” Colonel Greene and Major Flagg were buried at the First Presbyterian Church in Yorktown.