August 21, 1863

Letter from Chauncey Herbert Cooke, August 21, 1863
Dear Parents:

I had hoped never to write you as the inmate of a hospital but I couldn't help it. Day before yesterday 540 from Helena, that is Helena, Arkansas, were landed here in Memphis from the hospital steamer, Good Hope. There were more than a hundred and forty from my regiment. A lot from my company beside myself. I was glad Bill Anderson of Durand was in our crowd and glad that he was sent with me to the same hospital. Bill is a big, rough fellow but he was nice to us younger boys. He often came round and brought me things to eat and drink when he was sick himself. He is looking very bad just now but he says it's a "damned lie, I'm all right." Good hearted Bill.

Well, we got here in the night and in a heavy rain and in the mud. They had a time with their fat pine torches, getting us straightened round and separated into five bunches and sent to as many hospitals.

I carried my gun and belts from the landing but a big negro grabbed my knapsack and four or five others and lugged them to the hospital.

The Gayso Hospital is a big building on second street, looking out upon the river, I am all alone in my ward which is 7. That is there are no other soldiers in it that I know. There are 28 sick and wounded in the ward besides myself. I will finish this letter in the morning.

August 22nd
I had a nice bed, but somehow the gas lights or some thing kept me awake. My nurse, a great big woman with a kind face, brought me a clean pair of drawers and shirt and told me to take off everything and put them on, and sat down on the bed beside me as if she expected me to strip right before her. I didn't know what to do. Presently she got up and said, have your clothes tied up, I'll be back in ten minutes and carry them out to the wash room. When she went out I skinned off every thing quick as I could and got into the clean shirt and drawers and into bed about a minute before she got back. She didn't say a word but wrote out a check with my number, put it into my stand drawer, and pinned a duplicate on my clothes and carried them away.

August 23rd
I slept until about three this morning. A poor fellow about that time commenced calling for his mother, and between his
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moanings there was little quiet in the ward. The nurse after awhile would come again, she would arrange and smooth back his hair and go back to her room. His was only six beds from mine and his moanings kept me awake.

His moanings and cries for mother came fainter and fainter and when the nurse came at daylight he was dead. They wrapped him in a sheet and carried him away and a little later another man was put on his bed.

I don't like my Doctor although he is a Wisconsin man. He don't ask many questions and he smiles at my answers as if he thought I was trying to fool him.

When I told him the cough I had for a week past began to hurt me in my left breast, he looked at me for a moment while he twisted his mustache, then he said, "you ought to have your lung scraped." His answer made me feel that I had said something that I ought not to say. That unless I was in the deepest pain I ought to keep still. In truth I was not in very great pain except when I coughed. And my coughing was recent.

Don't let this trouble you for a moment Father and Mother, I shall be all right again very soon.

Your oldest boy,

CHAUNCEY.