Isaac O. Best, History of the 121st New York State Infantry

[78] and desperate battles with little experience and slight training, and no encouragement of example and precept from old and experienced comrades. Of this mistake the 121st is certainly a good example. Raw men in companionship with veterans and under experienced officers become efficient soldiers much more quickly than can be the case with new officers and new men learning new things by hard won experience under unfavorable conditions.

To resume Comrade Beckwith's narrative.

Our Brigade now reorganized and reformed consisted of the 5th Maine, the 95th Penn. (Gosling Zouaves), the 96th Penn. and the 121st N. Y., commanded by Joseph J. Bartlett.

More than thirty years have elapsed since the battle of Salem Church, yet some of its incidents are as fresh and vivid in my memory as they were on that bright Sunday afternoon when so many of our fellows were shot near that little brick church, which bears today the marks of our rifle balls. All our dead it has been claimed were gathered up after the war and laid in that beautiful national cemetery near the city of Fredericksburg, but when I went over the ground and through the cemetery a few years ago, I failed to find any of the 121st recorded on the headstones, and except near the city from where the Light Brigade charged, I did not see one familiar spot. At home here I often see reminders of that awful five minutes, in the persons of men who were there, and whose shot scarred and crippled limbs attest more plainly than words can the effect of the enemy's fire.

As before stated, the troops opposed to us were Herbert's and Firney's Alabamians, composed of four regiments, commanded that day by General Herbert, who afterwards was a member of President