The breach was not successfully reinforced, and the attackers not killed or wounded, along with members of supporting units, were forced back as darkness fell.
The following report is of 22nd Iowa Adjutant concerning the frontal assault of the Railroad Redoubt, on the morning of May 22, 1863:[1] The enemy were on the alert and, as our colors rose above the crest of the hill, a thousand bayonets glistened in the sunlight above the parapet at Fort Beauregard.
The regiment succeeded in reaching—under a concentrated fire of grape and musketry—an almost impenetrable abatis, forty yards from the works, where it became necessary to reform the line, the men having become separated in crossing the obstructions.
A few officers and about fifty men, succeeded in reaching the ditch surrounding the fort, but, having no scaling ladders, they were unable to enter the works.
Sergeant Joseph E. Griffith of the 22nd, with some fifteen or twenty men, succeeded—by raising one another up the wall—in gaining an entrance and capturing a number of prisoners, but the fire from the enemy's rifle pits in rear of the fort, and the lack of reinforcements coming to their aid, rendered the place untenable.