Joseph Drennan to "Dear Mother"

With T.P. Robb letter March 18, 1864 [illegible] Hospital Memphis, Tennessee Dear mother, I sit down to inform you of how I am. I have got a slight touch of the diarrhea again. It will be a bad thing for me if I get like I was before. If I do I cannot recover again but you must not get disheartened because I write so far if I get very bad I will have you come to me for it would be a hard thing for me to lay sick a long time and at last dye and not have you at my pillow and if I should write to you at any time to come do not

fail to do it. I can not go to the regiment now. I was talking to a doctor yesterday that lives in town here about my case and he said he believed if you would apply to Dick Yates the governor of Illinois your could get me a discharge. He is a fine man. The doctor I took dinner with yesterday. You must put up with a short letter this time. Your son Joseph Drennan