Jim Taylor
Testimony From the War Between the States
Thursday, December 01, 2022, 10:05

"Nearing the
Singleton farm, the Union forces topped the gentle rise and saw ... a line of two hundred dismounted guerrillas standing silently to their horses....Major Johnson was a brave officer.... he calmly dismounted his company.....and formed a twenty-yard line of battle. The guerrillas were astounded. ....John Kroger...said..."the fools are going to fight us on foot." and then added, "God help'em." ....led by a screaming Bill Anderson they charged up the hill at the Union infantry. Johnson's men fired one volley with their single-shot Enfield muskets. That volley, downhill, was high, and only three of the partisans were hit....In the next minute the guerrillas, their terrible revolvers popping, had ridden into the terrified Union infantry, through it, and had scattered their horses. Frank James stated that some of the soldiers were desperately....attempting to reload. In a
few moments, most were dead...The guerrillas roared back into Centralia and rode over Theis'smen....in a little more than an hour the Thirty-Ninth Missouri Infantry had lost 114 men and two officers killed, two men wounded and six men missing."

From "Grey Ghosts of the Confederacy", page 219-220