On the afternoon of January 15, 1865, about 250 Confederates defended Shepherd's Battery, a crucial position in the defense of Fort Fisher. Their defenses included a 12-pound Napoleon at the gate, a mine field of torpedoes in front of the land face, and the expected support of 350 South Carolinians from Hagood's Brigade. The torpedoes were disabled during the naval bombardment, and Hagood's brigade did not arrive in time, leaving the remaining defenders outnumbered by more than ten to one against the attack of three of General Ames's brigades. If Union troops broke in here, they could gain the fort's interior. In fierce fighting, the 117th New York raised the first battle flag on the second traverse, and the struggle over the Stars and Stripes became a brutal close-range contest of point-blank rifle fire and hand-to-hand combat with rifles used as clubs, as men fought among the dead, dying, and wounded. Corporal Henry Clay McQueen of the 1st North Carolina Battalion Heavy Artillery, Company D, saw twelve fellow artillerymen killed in the battle for Shepherd's Battery. Union forces captured the position, and the fighting then moved east down the land face, traverse by traverse. Sergeant Edward King Wightman of the 3rd New York, in the vanguard of the Union assault, was killed by a bullet that passed through his right arm and into his chest, and his father later traveled to Fort Fisher to recover his body and return it to Connecticut. Colonel William Lamb believed the assaulting column could have been repulsed and the fort held longer if his order to man the parapet had been obeyed along the left, but he instead saw the Stars and Stripes flying from the top of the parapet with what seemed to be a thousand Union soldiers around it.