In the last minutes of the Battle of Mill Springs, Union commander General George H. Thomas said the 12th Kentucky and the Tennessee brigade reached the field to the left of the Minnesota regiment and opened fire on the enemy's right flank as the 2nd Minnesota maintained a galling fire in front and the 9th Ohio charged with fixed bayonets, turning the Confederate flank and driving the enemy from the field in disorder and confusion. Colonel Speed Fry of the 4th Kentucky (U.S.) wrote that the enemy gave way, flying before Union forces like chaff before the wind, and his men refilled their cartridge boxes, gathered their wounded, and joined the pursuit toward Beech Grove. In their haste, the Confederates left dead and wounded on the field, and the road south was strewn with muskets, swords, knapsacks, blankets, provisions, while wagons and cannons stood abandoned. The fighting was violent and bloody, especially given the inexperience of nearly all the soldiers on both sides, and when the Confederate line collapsed, the rout at Mill Springs became one of the most complete defeats suffered by a Confederate army during the Civil War, as by late morning better-armed Union troops had prevailed and panic spread among Confederates frustrated by ineffective, outdated weapons.