L.J. Robb Home on Furlough

Mr. L.J. Robb, Co. G, 1st Illinois Volunteers, arrived in Wilmette last Sunday evening. His appearance has changed so much since he left Wilmette a few months ago that many of his most intimate acquaintances did not know him. Exccept Mirosky, whose death is mentioned elsewhere, Mr. Robb has probably had the hardest time of any who went from here. He has undergone a siege of yellow fever, mountain malarial fever and after both hada a sunstroke. The wonder is that he is alive, and he says there was more than one time when he never expected to return. He was taken with yellow fever about July 21, and has been suffering more or less ever since. Out of 216, of which he was one, assigned to duty at a certain camp (which afterwards proved to be a yellow fever hospital), 202 were taken with yellow fever. But Mr. Robb has lived through it all, and is on a fair way to recovery. He is now home on a furlough of thirty days which will expire Oct. 2. He left Cuba in a hospital ship, August. 15, and arrived in New York August 24. He can not say too much of his kind treatment in New York, and in the hospital at Camp Wikoff. On the boat, his experience was not so pleasant. Some eight or nine died on [text damaged]...man of Rogers Park a personal acquaintance. One jumped overboard, probably while delirious, and Mr. Robb assisted in an effort to save him, getting near enough to grasp a foot as he went over, but it was too late. He had another nerve-trying experience while coming through Windward Passage. The water was rough and he was thrown from his cot and again back the opposite way, and finally the legs of the cot went down leaving the cot flat on the deck where he lay for many hours with water under him. But with different climate, diet and surrounded by friends, Mr. Robb expects to soon be himself again. He was unable to say much about the other boys, as it has been some time since he saw them. N. M. Engstead was the only one of the Wilmette boys in the same company. The others, with the exception of Mirosky, who was in Co. M., are in Co. F. All, however, were in the same battalion.