Custer Moves to Ford D with Five Companies Part A

[quincannon]

Ian: I will give you an example of what I mean by thoroughly examining things that seem to be inconsistent with standard practice, and it deals with your web site.

Go to the American Divisions section, scroll down to the 101st Airborne Division and then to the fifth line in the lineage. That line says that the unit was disbanded, and then reconstituted on the same day. You will not find such an entry on any other lineage in the U S Army. Why then was it done. It is seemingly inconsistent with everything else you may know about the subject.

It took me ten years to find out the reason. I asked the then division guy at the Center of Military History, the guy who wrote the book, and a friend of mine, and he did not know. After years of searching on an off, I ran across an obscure paragraph in the law, that set up the Organized Reserve divisions in 1921, that prohibited those divisions from being converted to anything else while in reserve status. The Army in 1942 wanted to activate an airborne division from the outset and not play around with legal mumbo jumbo that prevented such. There was no limitation on disbanding a unit in the law, SO, in one order, the division was disbanded (removed from the rolls of the Army), reconstituted (placed back on the rolls of the Army as Army of the United States, a different component of the Army), and ordered to active duty, less personnel and equipment.

The same did not apply to the 82nd Airborne Division. They too were in the Organized Reserve, but had been brought onto active duty as an Infantry division, and then converted. The law therefore did not apply.

Although this post is unrelated to the subject at hand, it serves to illustrate that no tale is not worth investigation, and that investigation may be difficult, and the answer may be obscure. Knowing that though, you must fall back in your investigation on the fact that every action has a reason, and that reason is always in line with some existing practice.

[quincannon]

I never though otherwise Ian. What made you think I did?

I am a hard ass with all these accounts. That is as it should be, given the subject, and the plethora of information and misinformation written over the years, mainly by people who range from knowing a lot to not knowing B from a bull's ass. We here are in the business of separating, digesting, and refining those that know what they are talking about from those whose must prominent attribute is looking up a bull's ass hole.

[colt45]

Ian, keep those accounts coming. Each one has the possibility of shedding light on some area of the battle. However, remember the play Rashomon. It is about several different people seeing the same event, but recounting that event in totally different ways. This is true of each account we analyze. The person who related the account saw the event through his limited field of vision and through his own bias filters. If we get lucky, we find several accounts that appear to be viewing the same event, and then we have to work through their filters, and what they could have seen in their limited field of vision. This is where we are fitting pieces to a puzzle, as QC indicated.

[Beth]

Nov 23, 2016 11:03:47 GMT yanmacca said:

Thanks Mac, one of the things that everyone should understand is that when I post up these accounts, that I am being impartial and do not share their views, in fact I do it because if it is an account of the battle and if we can fit these accounts into the JSIT narrative then I will be delighted, but like I said that these are not my views and just because I post them it doesn't mean I agree with them.
But some times I get the idea that people think I am trying to force accounts down their throats in an attempt to change their views, which is far from the case.

I assure you that I don't feel that way. 

I hope I'm not coming across as patronizing but please don't take it personal when someone gets a bit dismissive. Believe me, I understand.  At times it can be hard to have someone just seemingly dismiss something you've taken time to research and post.  Don't let it discourage you, keep on posting.  

As for the NA narratives,  each account has a place in the story of that day--it's just sometimes it's hard to decide where it belongs.
 Sometimes the story though isn't what they are telling us but also what has been left out.

[Beth]

Nov 23, 2016 14:10:38 GMT yanmacca said:

Ah now I see, the trooper had his carbine attached to his body at all times;

That horse looks very unhappy about having a pistol waved in his face.     Or is it a "Couldn't you have at least skipped second helpings last night?" face.

[mac]

Nov 22, 2016 15:35:53 GMT yanmacca said:

Low Dog was there,

I called to my men, "This is a good day to die: follow me." We massed our men, and that no man should fall back, every man whipped another man's horse and we rushed right upon them. As we rushed upon them the white warriors dismounted to fire, but they did very poor shooting. They held their horse’s reins on one arm while they were shooting, but their horses were so frightened that they pulled the men all around, and a great many of their shots went up in the air and did us no harm.

Just to be clear about my meaning let's look at the account.

As we rushed upon them the white warriors dismounted to fire
I am sure the training points made are correct. The situation though is that they were dismounting as the charge began. I would think that for cavalry the most vulnerable time is the dismount because you have limited mobility and have not yet brought your weapons to readiness. So despite training I can see being hit, at that moment, might lead to odd results. I do not for a minute think he is suggesting that a line of men stood holding horses and shooting, just some he noticed. It was unusual and so was noted. The chaos of the dismount timing is the reason that they were able to make the charge with relative impunity.
Thinking on it this account could also be fitted to the charge into Company C on FF Ridge. 
We may never know exactly where any piece fits in (my money here is still on Company I right now) but the main thing is, we can see that this account may in all likelihood fit into this C,I,L part of the battle.
Cheers

[colt45]

I would agree with your assumption that Low Dog's account probably refers to the charge on I company. I company would have been caught mounted in a confining area, and since they had no sabres for mounted fighting, they would have had to dismount to shoot. You are correct about the dismount time being very vulnerable. At the close quarters of the Keogh sector, catching them at that exact right moment would have produced the marker pattern we see today, especially if they were hit from the south, east, and west at about the same time.

[Beth]

Nov 23, 2016 16:02:41 GMT quincannon said:

The Low Dog account does not fit the Cemetery/LSH area as far as I can determine.

I am not at all sure it would fit the Keogh Area either. Mac makes a good case, but I don't believe he accounts for that whole swale area, some perhaps but not all.

Ian: You must not be discouraged. You find a snipit of information, and it is just like finding a piece to a jigsaw puzzle. Before you can place it in the puzzle, you must thoroughly examine the piece, judging its size, shape, and coloration, to determine just where the piece fits, before you place it. That is what we do here, and it would be irresponsible to do anything else. If upon examination you cannot find where the piece fits you put it aside as either an outlier, or in the too hard now pile, and come back to it later, Once in awhile, there is a piece in the puzzle box that belongs to another puzzle. Eventually you identify it, and deal with it.

Training: I have touched on it as has Steve and the Gunslinger. Everyone must realize, implant it in your brain, kept there forever. Training matters. Training once done is instinctive. That is what you do. It is your hope and your refuge. It represents your ability to overcome. The difference between a good unit and a bad unit is the amount of hard, realistic, focused training they have done. They both have done some. The good do more, the bad do little. There is no middle ground, you are either good, or by definition bad.

When any account you see is inconsistent with known tactics, techniques, and procedures, it must become instantly suspect. If the tale is a guy holding his horse shooting, that is inconsistent with TTP. If some guys are said to be spread out about five yards apart, either standing, kneeling, or prone, shooting carbines, that is consistent with TTP. Try to put yourself in the place of a reasonable man in the same circumstances.

What is more important, the frigging horse or me defending myself?

I am holding the horses of others. I am responsible for those horses, as I am responsible to those I am holding them for. I must defend them.

I am standing still doing nothing but holding a horse. Everyone else in my unit is standing holding their horses too. I am doing nothing else. Why am I there? What is the reason I stand holding a horse, while battle rages in other units around me?

If you do not look at any tale told and ask Who, When, What, Where then you are doing yourself a disservice. You throw that tale in the too hard for now pile. Someday, examining something else that tale may yet make some sense, but not today.

I love your example of a puzzle.  Clear and concise.

Think of this board as the box to keep the pieces we don't know what to do with though so we can all have a chance of assembling the puzzle. 

Shouldn't a horse holder though have some right to defend himself at least with a hand gun or does he expect his unit to defend him?  After all if he is killed, the horses he is defending are lost.    Horse holding is a key job in a battle field because if the horses are lost, so is mobility.

[dave]

Yan
I enjoy and learn quite a bit from your posts so keep it up. If others are not pleased so be it and they can roll their little red wagons around the corner and play in another flower bed.
Regards
Dave

[quincannon]

Why would anyone be displeased at what Ian posts? Were it not for him we would have never brought up the JSIT narrative way back when that we have center upon this last year.

We have a duty to those that read this board to bring all this stuff up, tear it apart, test it, fit it, perhaps mutilate it in the process. At the end of the day if it stands up and fits, include it in the overall picture. If it does not reject it and throw it away.

If Ian misinterprets doing just that as an attack on the person posting it, he is mistaken. It is an attack on the substance of the material itself. We have accepted much, and thrown away a lot, but none of it should be included or rejected until it is torn apart and examined.

As I said, I am a hard ass on this stuff. There is nothing here that my name is associated with, that is going to come back and bite me in the butt because I did not look at it carefully enough. I still may be in error, but it will be one of commission, not omission, and it will not be one of carelessness.

Beth it is a puzzle, with at least a third or more of the pieces missing and probably lost forever. That does not mean we should not, or can not build as complete a picture as possible. To do that it takes work, and absolutely no acceptance at face value. Everything and every source should be vetted as thoroughly as possible.

Just so you all know, I war game everything all of you say, before I concur, disagree, or comment upon. I expect all of you to do the same, especially to me.

Beth: On the horse holders. I don't know if there was some standard procedure to support the horse holder. They, like any other soldier defend themselves but at the same time they are so vulnerable, that I would expect some standing procedure that would allow the dismounted skirmishers to offer as much protection as they could to them, be it limiting the distance away from the skirmish line or some other measure.

The closest to a horse holder today is the mounted crew of an Infantry fighting vehicle or Infantry wheeled carrier, a Brad or a Stryker, after the dismounts depart and go about their business. We can't draw any conclusions from the modern era though in that once the dismounts depart, the vehicle itself becomes a base of fire to support those dismounts, and as such moves in concert with them.

[Beth]

Some of us would have to know how to war game. The closest I can come is playing D&D which often has surprising benefits or at least with the club I used to play with-it was a lot of history majors who liked to bring actual history to the table and I met my Hubby when I tried to kill him.

[quincannon]

You war game everything you do in life Beth. You just don't realize it.

Never be fooled by the aura and mystique that supposedly surrounds the military profession. We don't do anything that everyone else on planet earth does not do every day. We apply reason in problem solving. Same thing you do when you go to the grocery store or plan a trip home to Iowa. We just get paid for it, and make up a lot of fancy terms for things, that when the mask is pulled away turns out to be very ordinary. We just want to keep the mask and mystery in hopes that Congress will be impressed and give us a cost of living increase once and awhile.

[chardvc]

Another key factor for the horse holders was the training conditioning for the horses themselves. I'm betting that they were way apart from the type of conditioning that police horses, for example, get now. They may have been familiar with shooting and even a certain amount of yelling but things hitting them, whooping noises and the skittish nature of other animals would have been alien to them, meaning that the amount of control that the horse holders had was far less than they themselves would have expected or been trained for. I would have thought that on exercise that horse holders would be calmly holding 4 horses and a pistol in their other hand. My betting is that at LBH they would have needed both hands to control the horses and if, by chance, they held a pistol it was little wonder that they were firing wildly into the air.

To go back to a comment QC made regarding the officers (and Custer in particular) believing themselves to be in charge of a regiment of experienced regulars. There are numerous issues (horse holding included) that point to a vastly unprepared force expected to do an impossible job.

[yanmacca]

I agree with what Mac said about the dismount phase leaving them vulnerable, and when Beth mentioned about wargaming, it made me think back to my Napoleonic wargaming days and how when an infantry column was vulnerable when caught moving from column into line or square, as the men are in a transitional phase and have very little organisation at this point.

There was another Indian at the battle called Crow Dog, he caught three loose horses and decided to take them back to his lodge in the village and when he returned the fight was over, hmmm…seems like he had his priorities right.

[yanmacca]

I don't know if I should post this account or not, as it is a bit long winded and heavy going in places, I have left out the first portion of the original account because it will take you till Christmas to read it.
I suppose if this was a TV program you would be itching to reach for the remote control and switching over to antiques roadshow or something, but please try to read it as it has its high points;

The women and children were about 1/2 mile, and Custer stopped about straight across from the camp. There were four companies. Custer was in the 2nd from the north. The Indians see the women folk, and they stayed between the troops and the women.

White Bull was on the east end and White Bull took a center run, but they did not hit him. The 2nd time, he said he was not going to turn back, he charged on the last company. When White Bull start, the rest of the Indians start, and the 2nd group of soldiers runs to the 3rd, and all the soldiers get on their horses, and when they were between the two companies, White Bull pulls a white off his horse.

When the 1st reached the 2nd group they don't run straight. Some run toward the river and they were all killed. White Bull killed a man before he pulled the man off his horse. The 4th company went to the 3rd Company in the draw and they don't go any further. Between the 2nd and 3rd after he pulled the man off his horse, White Bull had two coups.

The 4th company had lost their horses. They had white horses, that was the grey horse troop. White Bull was chasing horses, and an Indian came in front of White Bull and cut him out. This 3rd company had bay and white horses at the time, but they soon lost them. Sorrels, bays, and whites were in the 3rd company from the 1st and 2nd. Before the 3rd company turned their horses loose they ran south and all except one was killed, but the horse was shot from under him. This might have been the man where the man fought from the hill. Butler must have been from the 2nd or 3rd company, but White Bull did not see him.

Down at Reno there were two soldiers got away and the Indians killed one and the other killed himself, according to 'Did Not Go Home,' who chased them. The white men from the 1st & 2nd company were on horseback. They still had their horses when they got to the 4th company and then they run from the 3rd company and were all killed down the draw. The last one killed was close to the river. This made White Bull feel good, and he was picking up head feathers right along.

The 1st company was charged by White Bull and his band. The 4th company start to run toward the hill. Most of them don't get to the top, and they lay down and start shooting, and White Bull was on the east side, and Crazy Horse wanted to charge. But Crazy Horse backed out, but White Bull went on the run. They were about the nearest horses when Crazy Horse was talking. They were on level ground. He was on the same horse as when Reno came.

When he rode through the space was about as close as cross this house. After he goes through, he joins the group of Indians on the other side, and the 3rd company started running down the hill, and White Bull ran over a soldier on horseback. The Indians got as close as from here to White Bull's house. The boys keep encouraging each other, saying, "Try!" After he ran over the soldier, White Bull's horse was shot down and White Bull was on foot. Then he saw Bear Lice coming, leading one of the soldier's horses. It was a bay, and Bear Lice gave White Bull this horse, and start again but the soldier was shot before White Bull got there, but White Bull struck him.

After he struck the soldier another was stand, protecting himself; so he jumped off the borrowed horse and started for him on foot. The soldier was shooting, and White Bull got close and the soldier threw his gun at him, and White Bull started to fight. White Bull had a gun in his right hand and whip in left hand, and the soldier was trying to knock the gun out of White Bull, but White Bull hit him in the neck; and the soldier had on a coat. White Bull was yelling, so Crow Boy and Bear Lice came over to hit the soldier, and they hit White Bull also. This was when the man was about to get White Bull's gun. It was the custom to call out when they struck a man.

After he shot this soldier, White Bull gets his pistol and belt and starts for the enemy; all that were left were in the draw, and White Bull and group got in front of the enemy. White Bull saw two soldiers coming, so they got down and waited for them to get closer, and shot one and at the same time a Cheyenne shot the other one. So they both went up and both got first coup on the one they shot and 2nd on the other. White Bull got soldier's gun and went up the hill and when he got up the hill he could not feel his leg; it had been hit, but the flesh was not broken, but was swelling, so he laid in a ditch and laid there until the battle was over and the Indians were going.

With horses brought, White Bull on his horse. There were about ten soldiers that chased White Bull up the hill. These were the last ones to live. The fight lasted about an hour.

I thought I'd better add the horse colours in case you need to use them for reference;

C Company: light sorrels
E Company: Gray horses
F, I and L Companies: bays