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Last In, First Out In the past half hour the Ninth Minnesota, in a sharp counterblow, had driven back Bell’s reinforced brigade, thereby relieving the perilous situation of the Union right wing along the Ripley-Fulton road. Lacking visible support from friendly troops, Marsh marched the Minnesotans back through the brush to the low ridge from where he had counterattacked. A staff officer galloped up with urgent orders from McMillen to retire to the Wire Road. Re-emerging from the woods southwest of the crossroads, Marsh discovered the NinetyThird Indiana was nowhere in sight. He placed the Ninth Minnesota behind the Wire Road, with two of Captain Fitch’s cannons positioned to his left at the crossroads. To the west, Captain Skaro’s stalwart Company D effectively shielded the Federal right flank. Rebel Captain Jackson’s elite escort troopers were ranged behind a fence about four hundred yards from the main Federal position, with “a clear open field lying between.” They and Captain Tyler’s Kentucky squadron at Scott’s farm laid a galling fire on the Minnesotans, who also absorbed bullets and shells from the fierce fight that was raging north and northeast beyond the trees. “We had not long to wait,” wrote Markham. “They poured such showers of all kinds of missiles on us it seemed not a man to escape.” Sergeant Merrilies likewise marked “bullets beginning to come over from both flanks crossing the [Fulton] road at almost right angles, and taking our line of battle directly in flank.” Marsh had the Ninth Minnesota lie down. Some stragglers previously hobbled by heat exhaustion stumbled forward to rejoin the ranks there. “At that time,” recalled one, Pvt. Samuel Ennerson, the regiment “was in the hottest part of the battle.”1  chapter eight ‫ﱸﱷﱶ‬ The Battle of Brice’s Crossroads (II) “Before being fairly engaged” in the new position, Marsh was surprised, indeed astonished, by peremptory orders from McMillen to withdraw immediately to an unspecified point beyond Tishomingo Creek. For the time being, Skaro’s men had to fight on alone. Moving by the left flank, the Ninth Minnesota passed Brice’s house. The road was still obstructed by “a mixed throng still going toward the front,—soldiers singly and in squads, stragglers, campfollowers , servants,—all hurrying over the bridge and toward the crossroads,” forcing the Minnesotans into the adjacent fields that sloped toward the bridge.2 “As we were falling back to get to another position,” remembered acting Adjutant Sherwood, “the rebels turned our own batteries and gave us hell and repeat.” When “we crossed a field,” wrote Keysor, “the shell and solid shot seemed to fill the air and strike on all sides of us, yet we moved on in good order, passed by the dead and dying, and leaving them to fall into the hands of the enemy.” Private John Allen wondered why they did not simply retake the lost guns. But “we had to ‘get out o’ that,’ which was done as quietly and cooly as on company drill,” wrote Lieutenant Daniels. “Not a man broke, but each marched in his proper place.” Though no Minnesotans appear to have been killed during the move, several were wounded. “While we were leaving the battlefield a shot from a cannon knocked down a slab or piece of bark or limb of a tree against [Pvt.] Arad Welch’s face,” recalled liberator Nate Palmeter. Head bloodied and shirt torn, Welch nonetheless “did not seem to think it was anything serious.” Many years later the wound turned cancerous and killed him. Wood splinters from a tree branch gouged out by a cannonball tore up Lieutenant Capon’s left leg. Orderly Sergeant Hays loaded the “Big Frenchman” into a convenient ambulance and sent it racing ahead to the bridge. Lieutenant Niedenhofen, the former Prussian Jäger from Winona, took over Company K. Although sick upon arriving at Memphis, he had begged his superiors to be allowed to go along. Shell fragments temporarily blinded Pvt. Joel D. Chamberlain. He, too, was fortunate to leave the field. A few wounded had to be left behind.3 Waiting west of Tishomingo Creek for the rest of his cavalry brigade to mount and cross the bridge, Winslow happened to be standing with Grierson when a shell burst “within  feet.” The cannon that fired it, Winslow observed, must be sited near the crossroads. “Do you not know we have been beaten,” Grierson shot back, “and will soon be in full retreat...

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