Confederate forces under General William Hardee counterattacked Union troops under Major General Joseph Mower on three sides to protect the vital Mill Creek bridge, the only avenue of retreat for Johnston’s army, and with cavalry commanders Wheeler, Hampton, and Allen and the support of Cumming’s infantry, they stopped and drove back two veteran brigades of Sherman’s boldest division. Lieutenant General Wade Hampton remembered Hardee returning from the fight with his face “bright with the light of battle,” saying, “That was Nip and Tuck, and for a time I thought Tuck had it.” The assault on March 21 came at great personal cost, as Hardee’s only son, Willie, was mortally wounded while charging with Terry’s Texas Rangers, which he had joined that morning. Expecting another attack, the Confederates extended their lines from the Cole plantation to Mill Creek, and Johnston continued reinforcing the Confederate left flank with every available man, but surrounded by Union forces on three sides and no longer holding the advantage of surprise, he led his army in retreat to Smithfield, ending the Battle of Bentonville. Under sporadic artillery and small arms fire on the rainy night of March 21, the Confederates began crossing Mill Creek bridge, and at dawn Wheeler’s troopers tore up the bridge flooring, though Union troops pursued as far as Hannah’s Creek two miles north before breaking off. Sherman, content to let Johnston’s army escape, continued his march to Goldsboro on March 22. Only sixteen years old, Willie Hardee had joined Terry’s Rangers despite his father’s reluctance; Hardee sent his wounded son to Hillsborough, where his wife and daughter were staying with his niece Susannah Hardee Kirkland and her husband Brigadier General William W. Kirkland, but Willie died on March 24 and was buried at Saint Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Hillsborough. Before the war, O.O. Howard had tutored Willie Hardee, and at Bentonville Howard commanded the Federal Right Wing. A soldier of Cumming’s Brigade recalled that after falling back to the edge of a field, the men met General Johnston, gave him three cheers, and heard that they had saved the army, while Sherman later wrote that he believed he had erred in not following Mower’s lead with the whole right wing, since their vastly superior numbers would have brought a successful general battle. Mill Creek near Bentonville, swollen by recent rains and not fordable anywhere, made holding the bridge critically important.