their first combat experience, Kemper's brigade conducted a disorderly but enthusiastic assault on the Whitlock Farm, which carried them through Seymour's two 1st New York heavy Parrott batteries on McCall's extreme left flank. This sudden disturbance caused McCall to deploy his reserve brigade under Simmons from the center to the left to answer the charge, leaving his right flank weakened. (Colonel Simmons, commanding the counter-charge, was mortally wounded while driving Kemper back into the woods) Soon thereafter, the Confederates emerged opposite Meade's brigade and proceeded to break through the main line with Jenkins's support near the right center, followed up within a few hours by Wilcox's brigade of Alabamians in the center and right. During the course of the battle, fighting gradually shifted from McCall's left (Kemper's assault at the Whitlock Farm) through the center (Jenkins' initial probing assault on Captain James H. Cooper and Lieutenant Frank P. Amsden's 1st Pennsylvania Artillery batteries) and to his left (Jenkins'/Wilcox's combined assaults on Meade's brigade where McCall's Division met Kearny's in the New Market Road). The Confederate brigades met stiff resistance from Meade and Seymour in bitter hand-to-hand combat where men stabbed each other with bayonets and used rifles as clubs. Officers even took to using their typically ornamental swords as weapons. Jenkins' brigade briefly captured Captain James H. Cooper's six 10-pounder Parrott rifles, but were soon repulsed by the supporting infantrymen of the Pennsylvania Reserves. Wilcox enjoyed the most successful assault near dusk, when half of his brigade (the 8th and 11th Alabama Infantry Regiments) emerged on McCall's right and found it exposed: to answer the earlier assault against McCall's center, Lieutenant Randol's Battery E & G, 1st U.S. Artillery had changed front to the left, facing his six 12-pounder Napoleon guns southward to rake Jenkins' regiments with devastating enfilading fire but exposing his own right flank to the west. When Wilcox's regiments emerged from the woods, Randol changed fire to the west once more, supported by Captain James Thompson's Battery G, 2nd U.S. Artillery of Kearny's Division to his right, but his supporting infantry units had shifted toward the center. After successfully repulsing with canister shot the first two Confederate infantry charges made upon the battery, Randol's infantry supports (either the 4th or 7th Pennsylvania Reserves) charged the retreating 8th Alabama to the front of the guns but met an unexpected fresh Confederate regiment, the 11th Alabama; they broke toward