Fort Warren May 2^d 1862

After "taps"    

 

My dear Major

            My excuse for writing so soon is that you intimated that I might not see you on Sunday next, but my real reason is that I can perhaps tell you on paper what I could never say if we were together as in hours that seem so long past. The room looks very lonely & desolate to night & I feel as if we had just had a funeral in the family. I write to thank you again for your kindness in procuring for me the commission that I hold & for all your other acts of friendship toward me & to express the feelings of attachment & love to you which have grown up during the months in which we have roomed here together, & in which it was my pleasure to be one of your military family—to act as a poor staff, but perhaps as a fairly good pupil.

 

I really did not know, until the parting came, that the life we lead here had made such a deep impression on my mind & heart as I find that it has. It certainly is not necessary for me to say that it will be a lasting one.

 

            I could not stay long upon the wharf this morning. The music of "Auld lang syne" and of "Home sweet home" was too much for me & I / walked off through the ditch & postern gate to avoid showing feelings that I could not entirely control & did not like to display. But I found afterward that I might have remained & looked no worse than all the other officers, for hardly one of the twenty came back to the fort with dry eyes. It would have made a capital picture for a comic monthly, but it was, & is anything but comic to us who formed the group! I can hardly account for an attachment so strong between men who have known each other for so short a time, but I am still a raw recruit & have many phases of a soldier's life & characteristics yet to see & feel.

 

            Your resignation leaves a void here which will never entirely be filled—certainly not filled in any measure by an officer of whom I have heard more to day than I knew before.

 

            We will probably never be together again under the old relationship but I trust that our friendship will not fade as years pass away.   I am Major

                                                                                               

Affectionately Yours

Cha^s K.Cobb

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