Base Hospital near Point of Rocks, Virginia
May 11, 1865

Dear Wife,

I will now try and pen a few lines hoping they will find you well for I am quite well with the exception of a bad headache. Our ward has given us some very good news if it is only true for he told us this morning that our Descriptive Lists was all sent for and that we should get our discharges in less than a month. And he told me that there was no more men to go to their regiments and that when we went from here, we should go to Washington to get paid off and then sent home from there. I hope that it is so for I don’t want to go back to the regiment on duty any more. I shall have to write to the company to see if there is any letters there for me and to get your pictures for I left them when I came here as I was not in my right mind for I was very sick at that time.

I hope that you have not sent that box on to me for if you have, I shan’t get it unless I go to the company for it and I don’t know where they are for I have not heard from them in the last ten days. It may be three months and more before I get home but if you live in Voluntown, I shall stop in Westerly to see Wont, for you may be there. I will go by the way of Norwich to get home for I don’t know anyone there to stay with till the stage starts for Char Coal town.

There is to be a Grand Review of 200,000 men near Alexandria on the 15th of this month and I am glad that I am not to be there on it. There is no news but what I have spoken of so I will close this my with my love to my pet and all kind friends. I can’t ask you to write for I don’t know where I shall be a week from now but if anything is the matter, write to General Hospital, Fever Ward No. 1, Point of Rocks, Va. I will now close, hoping that you are well. From your husband, — Chester