John Q. Burbridge, colonel in the Missouri State Guard, commanded, “Missourians, never run,” as he fell from his horse, wounded by severe minie-ball fire. On Bloody Hill, taking these guns in the low valley was key to a Southern victory. Three times the Missouri State Guard advanced into iron shot and canister fired into their ranks, and three times they were driven back, bloody and torn. In the last assault, exhausted men of the State Guard reached the muzzles of the cannons, only to be forced back in hand-to-hand combat with Totten's gunners. Afterwards a Southern officer wrote, “We watched the retreating enemy through our field glasses and were glad to see him go.” Thomas Bacon, a private in the Missouri State Guard, said that the blast of a cannon at such range, within 200 yards, would blow an infantry line out of existence and that no human courage could avail against such machinery.