h end of the
grave, carved his initials on the trunk of the tree and left there one of
our beloved comrades and one of the best soldiers in the regiment.

The expression on his face I shall never forget, it was so changed and so
painful. Had we not been searching for him and turned him over, for as he
lay his face was partially concealed, and so got a good view of it, I
should not have recognized him. He had probably died soon after we left
him as we started on the advance into the cornfield, for he was entirely
cold. The face of Pat. Martin, as I saw him after he was killed at the
Battle of Newbern, was entirely expressionless; he was shot through the
brain and probably never knew what hit him. The Confederate who died while
I was gone to get him a canteen of water, the morning after the Battle of
Bethseda Church had a rather peaceful and happy expression on his face.
Many of the men I helped to bury after the Battle of Fredericksburg had
drawn, distressed, painful expressions on their faces; some of them gave
one the impression that they had suffered the most intense agony just
before death. I never watched a man die who was killed in battle--the
private soldier is too busy to watch his best friend die at such a time.
In this Battle of Chantilly, the losses in killed, wounded and prisoners
in the regiment were 140, the heaviest loss we had sustained, in a single
battle, up to this time. Three of our finest officers were killed;
Lieutenant-Colonel Rice, Captain Fraser and Captain Kelton. We felt the
loss of these men very deeply; but the worst thing about the whole matter
was, we felt we had been sacrificed to no purpose. Every one felt that had
General Reno been with us it would all have been different, but he was
sick back to the rear in an ambulance off duty, and with him absent
everything went wrong. General Kearney seems to have been entirely off his
base that night; the way he ranted and swore around there was disgusting.

The fault in the wood seems to have been that the officers of the 21st did
not keep in touch with the 51st New York, and wandered off no one knew
where.

At roll call the next morning, September 2, there was but a shadow of the
21st present. After a while we started for Alexandria, moving very slowly,
marching and halting by turns, the roads being choked with artillery and
trains. During one of these halts, as we lay beside the road, a thing
occurred which showed the stuff at least one boy of