Twenty-six page manuscript entitled, , written by Curtis to be read at a Union Veterans' Union meeting, probably about 1900. The text recounts the movement of Curtis and his regiment, the 51st New York Volunteers down Chesapeake Bay to North Carolina as part of General Reno's brigade in Burnside's Expedition, describes the entry of the fleet through Hatteras Inlet into Pamlico Sound, and tells his experience of the Battle of Roanoke Island. Curtis speaks fully of the hazardous passage from the ocean into the sound during a violent storm, the difficulty of getting the fleet through the channel of the Roanoke marshes, and the landing of U.S. forces on the beach at Roanoke Island. His account of the assault on the Confederate field work on the island is written from the personal perspective of a private soldier engaged in battle, and not from that of a field officer surveying the whole scene. In his manuscript, Curtis also briefly describes the Battle of New Bern and mentions an April 19, 1862, expedition against "the town of Camden", by which one assumes he means South Mills and the Dismal Swamp Canal lock located there.

Accompanying the manuscript is a printed obituary, , of Chauncey W. Curtis, 1843-1914, published by James Bryant Post (No.119), Department of Minnesota, of the Grand Army of the Republic, on a sheet folded to make four pages.