Thus, in a twinkling of an eye, the Indians running southward in the two ravines and the British northward on the high ground between them, the fatal position of the battle was quickly assumed.[40] No encounter has been more incorrectly described and pictured than the Battle of the Monongahela.[41] Braddock was not surprised; his advance guard saw the enemy long before they opened fire; George Croghan affirmed that the grenadiers delivered their first charge when two hundred yards distant from the Indians, completely throwing it away. Nor did Braddock march blindly into a deep ravine; his army was ever on the high ground, caught almost in the vortex of the cross-fire of the savages hidden on the brink of the ravines on either side, or posted on the high ground to the right.[42] The road was but twelve feet in width. Even as Burton came up, Gage's grenadiers were frightened and retreating. The meeting of the advancing and retiring troops caused a fatal confusion and delay in the narrow road. The fire from the Indians on the high ground to the right being severe, Braddock attempted to form his bewildered men and charge. It was futile. The companies were in an inextricable tangle. Finally, to reduce things to order, the various standards were advanced in different directions and the officers strove to organize their commands in separate detachments, with a hope of surrounding the savages. This, too, proved futile. The Indians on either side completely hidden in the ravines, the smoke of the rifles hardly visible through the dense underbrush, poured a deadly fire on the swarm of red-coats huddled in the narrow track. Not a rifle ball could miss its mark there. As the standards were advanced here and there, the standard bearers and the officers who followed encouraging their men to form again were shot down both from behind and before.[43] As once and again the paralyzed grenadiers broke into the forest to raid the ravines, in the vain hope of dislodging the enemy, they offered only a surer mark for the thirsty rifles toward which they ran.