During the fierce assault on May 27 on the whole left wing, Commissary Hill was an essential objective. A battery on the hill stood in front of commissary stores, an arsenal, and an old ginhouse containing small grist mills that did the army's grinding. The battery destroyed a number of field guns, but sharpshooters hidden in fallen timbers made the position untenable by shooting the gunners and forcing them to lie behind the parapet and await assault. The site held a five gun battery that protected the Port Hudson garrison's commissary complex in the creek bottom behind the hill. Manned by artillerists from the Madison Tennessee Battery, Battery F of the 1st Mississippi Artillery Regiment, and the 1st Alabama Infantry Regiment, the guns occupied a towering position overlooking Fort Desperate and the Alabama-Arkansas-Redoubt. Although Union artillery fire disabled all five guns at one time or another and destroyed the commissary complex, the guns on Commissary Hill laid down a deadly barrage on Union forces throughout the siege.