The fear factor.

[yanmacca]

Chuck, I think where I am going with this is that some “battle students” (I have always wanted to say that) think that Custer went straight down MTC with everything he had and was deflected towards battle ridge, but I would say that if this did happen and only one company got whacked at the ford, then the rest would move to the higher ground and dismount, they would then halt any incursion over the ford by the hostiles, in which a lot more evidence of military action would have been left around the ford B flats, plus the Indians would have mentioned such a battle.

Ian.

[quincannon]

Ian: Rational logical folks look at this battle, they have for nearly 140 years and conclude that with some variation, as to pause and interlude that it generally flowed south to north, and that decisive combat was not joined until after Custer split away from Keogh.

It is a shame you have never been there, but had you, I think you would conclude as I have that had the entire body gone to Ford B, they would have never made that high ground, and would have all died in Medicine Tail Coulee, and in Deep Coulee.

Those that dispute the commonly accepted flow of this battle are trying to put lipstick on a pig, to either give credence to their own agenda, or out of hero worship of the divinity in buckskin.

[Beth]

It seems to me that filtering down a coulee to Ford B would be like one of those tragic situations when you have a locked door and a crowd trying to push through. The front gets trampled and everyone jammed up. In the mean time the NA just have to make their way up the bluff through any other place and just shoot away into the chaos. Even if everyone got through the coulee without problems, it would mean they would be exiting the coulee at the river with a very narrow front and a whole lot of NA on the other side.

[yanmacca]

Yes I agree that MTC would be a natural ambush location for a long drawn out column, if we say that a company of cavalry containing between 30 and 40 troops in column of two’s would equate to about the length of a football pitch, imagine how far a five company + HQ would stretch.

So splitting into two would be a natural choice, but that would cut down Custer’s options is he wanted to attack, because according to the men who survived (stragglers and couriers) they went over the bluffs at a fair rate of knots, so he was eager to get to some place.

So after he saw the village and Reno from 3411, he must have decided to approach the village by stealth rather than just rush straight in, this would also allow for any re-enforcements to reach him later.

Back to his approach; to have Keogh keep to the ridge line whilst he went down the coulee would indicate his concern, but also they could have once more split, with E company acting alone while the HQ/F segment moved to the left.

I recall asking Steve about access to the L-N-C ridge line in MTC, and he said that there was ways you could move to gain access to the heights.

Now I have no problem with Custer re-evaluating his tactics after he saw what was going on in the valley and the size of his objective, but all this manoeuvring, splitting and putting any assault plan on the back burner was doing Reno no favours, and Custer should have realised that Reno’s time in the valley was limited, not only in terms of ammunition.

Yan.