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

[72] inquiry for absent ones, and during the early part of the day we became convinced that Benton West, Silas Goodrich, Jacob Christman, John Steinford, and William Weidrick had certainly been killed and Frank Carron, Wilbur H. Champany, William H. Chapman, Tom Marriott, William Coady, Arthur Proctor, Chester Catlin, Andrew Hubbard, Ed Yoeman, Levi Jones and Billy Applegate were wounded, and some were missing from whom we could get no report, but who, as afterwards was found out, were killed wounded or captured; because the wounded we left on the field who were able to be moved were sent to us by their captors, and then we got a complete record of the terrible loss we had suffered, which had seldom been equalled in the records of the Civil War. We went into the fight numbering 453 men and of these lost 104 killed and mortally wounded, a percentage of 21 to the hundred. Our total casualties were 278. That is to say 61 men out of each hundred were placed “Hors du combat.” But we could scarcely realize the terrible ordeal through which we had passed. Our dead and wounded were lying over in the woods where we were forced to leave them, and their terrible plight could only be imagined by us. Our doctors, hospital steward, and assistants were with them and it was only after they were sent back to us in our old camp near White Oak Church, that the full realization of our loss came to us.

It should be noted also that only nine companies of the regiment participated in this disastrous conflict. Company D was on duty on the skirmish line, and a considerable distance to the left, where it suffered no losses, at the time the battle of Salem Church was fought by the rest of the regiment.

In the morning we formed behind a battery of