During this preparation on Breed’s Hill, all was confusion elsewhere. General Ward was at Cambridge, without sufficient staff-officers to convey his orders. Henry (afterward General) Knox was in the reconnoitring service, as a volunteer, during the day, and upon his reports Ward issued his orders. Late in the afternoon, the commanding general despatched his own, with Paterson and Gardner’s regiments, to the field of action; but to the raw recruits the aspect of the narrow Neck was terrible, swept as it was by the British cannon. Colonel Gardner succeeded in leading three hundred men to Bunker Hill, where Putnam set them intrenching, but soon ordered them to the lines. Gardner was advancing boldly at their head, when a musket-ball entered his groin and wounded him mortally. His men were thrown into confusion, and very few of them engaged in the combat that followed, until the retreat commenced. Other regiments failed to reach the lines. A part of Gerrish’s regiment, led by Adjutant Christian Febiger, a Danish officer, who afterward accompanied Arnold to Quebec and was distinguished at Stony Point, reached the lines just as the action commenced, and effectually galled the British left wing. Putnam, in the mean time, was using his utmost exertions to form the confused troops on Bunker Hill and get fresh corps with bayonets across the Neck. All was order and firmness at the redoubt on Breed’s Hill as the enemy advanced. The artillery of the British swept the interior of the breastwork from end to end, destroying many of the provincials, among whom was Lieutenant Prescott, a nephew of the colonel commanding. The remainder were driven within the redoubt, and the breastwork was abandoned. Each shot of the provincials was true to its aim, and Colonel Abercrombie and Majors Williams and Speedlove fell. Howe was wounded in the foot, but continued fighting at the head of his men. His boats were at Boston, and retreat he could not. His troops pressed forward to the redoubt, now nearly silent, for the provincials’ last grains of powder were in their guns. Only a ridge of earth separated the combatants, and the assailants scaled it. The first that reached the parapet were repulsed by a shower of stones. Major Pitcairn, who led the troops at Lexington, ascending the parapet, cried out, “Now for the glory of the marines!” and was immediately shot by a negro soldier. Again numbers of the enemy leaped upon the parapet, while others assailed the redoubt on three sides. Hand to hand the belligerents struggled, and the gun-stocks of many of the provincials were shivered to pieces by the heavy blows they were made to give. The enemy poured into the redoubt in such numbers that Prescott, perceiving the folly of longer resistance, ordered a retreat. Through the enemy’s ranks the Americans hewed their way, many of them walking backward and dealing deadly blows with their musket-stocks. Prescott and Warren were the last to leave the redoubt.