February 6, 1864, Battery E was ordered to cooperate with a 7000-man cavalry column led by General William Sooy Smith, moving south from Memphis to link up with General Sherman's forces engaged in the Meridian Expedition. By this point, it had been equipped with six 12-pound Napoleon guns. On the 10th of February 1864 it fought in a skirmish at Wyatt, Tennessee, on the Tallahatchie River, but five days later the Battery was ordered back to Memphis and took no further role in the campaign. Back in Memphis, Battery E camped at the head of Main Street, near the city's Navy Yard. In April 1864 they went to Bolivar and Ripley, Mississippi in search of General Nathan Bedford Forrest; but their supplies soon ran out and they were forced to return to Memphis to refit. On May 5 the battery was attacked by local Confederates; these were beaten back, according to Rice, with "one of them [receiving] nine balls in his carcass." Disaster at Brice's Crossroads June 1, 1864, Battery E marched to Guntown, Mississippi, where it took part in the disastrous Battle of Brice's Crossroads on June 10. Together with the 9th Minnesota Infantry, the battery initially formed a reserve force deployed near the crossroads itself. Attacked by Confederates under General Forrest on both flanks at once, Colonel William McMillian, commanding the infantry on that portion of the field, ordered Battery E to sweep the Guntown Road with grapeshot and canister. Despite heroic efforts by the 9th Minnesota and other Federal units the Northern army was pushed back, with Col. McMillian ordering Battery E with Battery B of the Second Illinois Light Artillery to hold off the Rebels until the infantry could escape. The fleeing Federals became bottled up on a bridge just north of the crossroads, where they were raked by Confederate artillery as they struggled to cross the narrow structure. The retreat degenerated into a rout, and Forrest won one of the greatest victories in his career. Battery E, which had been ordered to hold the crossroads itself at all costs, found itself stranded amidst the advancing Southern attack, deserted by all infantry support—but still firing without letup. Captain John Fitch, commanding the battery in this battle, describes the scene amid the tangled underbrush and forest: "I could not see the enemy, but judged from their firing that they were very near. I immediately gave them canister