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From DigitalMaine Transcription Project
�Grant General Hospital Willette Point New York July 3 1864
Dear Wife I will try this morning to pen you a few lines if I can to let you know where I am. I was taken sick with the [direah] which has run me down to a mear skeleton of a man. I kept along with the regiment until two weeks ago when they left me in the wilderness on the James river in [Va] There I laid two days with nothing to eat nor no one to care for me so I crawled out to the river and hoisted a signal of distres and one of the government steam boats come and took me aboard and toated me round tow or three days then put me aboard