Four volunteer regiments from Arkansas and Louisiana, advancing with great energy, unexpectedly collided near here with two Illinois regiments. Fighting at close range became so intense that men on both sides threw themselves flat on the ground to survive the storm of gunfire. Military order broke down as squads of soldiers rushed from stump to log to tree through the thick undergrowth, kneeling to fire, while visibility shrank so badly that one Illinois soldier later said he could not see even 20 feet ahead. Chaos and combat swept through Morgan's Woods all afternoon as dense smoke from thousands of muskets darkened the forest. Colonel Louis Hebert led the Confederate attack, but when he became disoriented in the smoke-filled woods, Union soldiers captured him and two other colonels, and the Confederate regiments here lost momentum and focus without their leaders.