The six guns of Union Captain Peter Simonson’s 5th Battery, Indiana Light Artillery were posted on this ridge, where they had a commanding view of the Confederate advance and anchored the center of the Union battle line at the Battle of Perryville. Before the Confederate attack, Southern artillery on the far hills fired on Simonson’s battery and Captain Cyrus Loomis’s Union artillery to the right, but Simonson’s rifled guns outranged the Confederates’ smoothbore cannon and quickly silenced them. At 3:00 pm., more than an hour after the artillery duel ended, Confederate infantry commanded by Colonel Thomas M. Jones advanced against the Union center, and Simonson’s guns blasted the attackers with canister rounds. Although Simonson’s gunners and supporting Union infantry checked the initial advance in this area, Jones’s troops struck the artillerymen hard, and as Union soldiers to the right fell back, the battery was endangered. It was ordered to a position 300 yards behind this ridge on high ground southeast of the Russell House, a Union headquarters building, where it again endured waves of attacking Confederate infantry. There, a Confederate artillery round struck one of Simonson’s limbers holding an ammunition box, causing an explosion that killed Frederick Ehrich and wounded Ormond Hupp, C. Miller, Abraham Forry, and A. Pettit. After firing 755 rounds, the battery ran out of ammunition and retired from the field. Simonson’s ninety men lost two killed, fourteen wounded, and five missing, nearly a quarter of the command. At Perryville, rolling terrain often brought enemy regiments into close proximity, and both sides used canister, a tin can filled with many lead or iron balls that scattered when fired and could cut down advancing infantry at short range, with a maximum effective range of about 400 yards. Robert C. Carden of the 16th Tennessee Infantry recalled seeing a man in front of him killed instantly when Simonson’s battery fired canister.