Assembling the 7th

[Beth]

It is often mentioned that the 7th had not been assembled as a regiment since it was first formed.  I have tried but I have been unable to find where the different companies were in at least in the time from the Black Hills Expedition on.  When did they finally get everyone in the same fort? 

Which companies had the most time working with each other?

How much time from the end of the Black Hills Expedition to the start of the 1876 campaign did Custer spend away from FAL?

[Deleted]

GAC took a long leave fall 1874 until Jun 75, then took another long leave Sep 75 until May 76.

And remember, his primary activity in summer 75 was working with a reporter to prove that Grant was corrupt.

I call him an absentee landlord for a reason.

[Beth]

Aug 25, 2015 22:49:40 GMT montrose said:

GAC took a long leave fall 1874 until Jun 75, then took another long leave Sep 75 until May 76.

And remember, his primary activity in summer 75 was working with a reporter to prove that Grant was corrupt.

I call him an absentee landlord for a reason.

Wasn't Reno gone for part of that time as well because of his wife's death?  Who was in charge of the 7th then?

[Deleted]

1. Precampaign locations of 7th Cav companies.

Fort Lincoln: HHD, A,C, D, F, I

Fort Totten: E, L

Fort Rice: H, M

Gulf: B, G, K

2. Note the battalion assignments mixed and matched, with no relationship with stations. The normal procedure for the Army was to form Bns as soon as possible, before the campaign stats if possible. This allows the companies to train and operate together. The 7th did not follow this practice in 1876.

3. This means on the day of battle companies were placed in Bns with strangers. Coordinating any action involving 2 or more companies was a real problem at LBH,. The only officer who seems competent at Bn and above operations is Benteen.

[deadwoodgultch]

Beth,
Troops were involved in the Canadian boundary duty, Louisiana, Kentucky/Tennessee, South Carolina, and a number of officers were on detached duty during this time. Also, not mentioned much, is the distribution of the Colt and Springfield, they came to different companies at different times. Training with weapons was not uniform, nor was the overall training in these various locations. Frontier duty was far different than the duty in the south.

Regards,
Tom

[yanmacca]

To commit a full regiment to battle without prior training as an entity was not ideal, the US Army had a similar policy in the early part of ww2 were Infantry Divisions were allocated support units like tank destroyers, anti-tank, anti-aircraft and tank battalions when needed, I suppose the idea behind it was that, why have these support battalions organic to the division when the division didn’t need them in that particular theatre, better to send them some
place where they could be of use.

For an example a US WW2 Armoured Engineer Battalion was commanded by a Lt. Col, in its ranks were;
Two Majors
Five Captains
Ten 1st Lieutenants
Eleven 2nd Lieutenants

That’s 32 Officers who had to work with other divisional units, which they never trained with or in some cases never even served under the divisional commander.


Yan.

[Beth]

Aug 26, 2015 12:52:43 GMT montrose said:

1. Precampaign locations of 7th Cav companies.

Fort Lincoln: HHD, A,C, D, F, I

Fort Totten: E, L

Fort Rice: H, M

Gulf: B, G, K

2. Note the battalion assignments mixed and matched, with no relationship with stations. The normal procedure for the Army was to form Bns as soon as possible, before the campaign stats if possible. This allows the companies to train and operate together. The 7th did not follow this practice in 1876.

3. This means on the day of battle companies were placed in Bns with strangers. Coordinating any action involving 2 or more companies was a real problem at LBH,. The only officer who seems competent at Bn and above operations is Benteen.

Who though decided not to assemble the 7th until the last minute?  Does that fall on Custer, Terry, or higher up?  Did other two columns involved in the campaign have the same problem or is it unique to the 7th?

Beth

[dave]

Aug 26, 2015 12:52:43 GMT montrose said:

1. Precampaign locations of 7th Cav companies.

Fort Lincoln: HHD, A,C, D, F, I

Fort Totten: E, L

Fort Rice: H, M

Gulf: B, G, K

2. Note the battalion assignments mixed and matched, with no relationship with stations. The normal procedure for the Army was to form Bns as soon as possible, before the campaign stats if possible. This allows the companies to train and operate together. The 7th did not follow this practice in 1876.

3. This means on the day of battle companies were placed in Bns with strangers. Coordinating any action involving 2 or more companies was a real problem at LBH,. The only officer who seems competent at Bn and above operations is Benteen.

montrose
Was this the army standard of the day to strew the companies all over the country? or was this just the action of the 7th?
Was Custer the only Lt Colonel who took that much leave in 1874-1876? It seems like an excessive amount of time to be away from the regiment and hardly conducive to good discipline and order. Did Custer ever have the opportunity to train the whole regiment or was it always split up? 
Should he have set a standard or requirement for the companies to train on their own at their stations?
Did any other regiment ever train their soldiers in this time period from 1868 to 1876?
I am enjoying your posts and learning so much. Please keep up the good work and share with us your ideas and expertise.
Regards
Dave

 

[quincannon]

Ian: A bit off topic directly but your post does address people who did not ordinarily work together, but by design. McNair's design.

The typical Infantry Division in the European Theater had the same tank and tank destroyer battalions attached to them for the duration of their combat experience. It was soon realized that in theater attachment of strangers did not work so very well. There are some exceptions but not many. McNair wanted to pool all of these assets, plus cavalry squadrons, and all the above the line engineer, field artillery, and AAA, at army and sometimes at corps levels, and parcel them out as required by mission. In theory it looked good. In practice it failed, just as Custer bringing together a legion of strangers failed. Thank goodness we found this out in North Africa, and stopped the process in practice, if not by table of organization. By the way above the line is another way of saying non-divisional asset.

Plug and play works with electronics, but not with military units who must establish a level of mutual confidence before they enter a fight.

Ironically when we did the light divisions back in the 1980's they were supposed to be reinforced with what were called corps plugs, when required. Among these plugs were tank battalions, engineers and the same things McNair envisioned in 41-42. Again the concept looked good on paper but when they tested in at Hunter Liggett it was a goat rope. Armies must constantly relearn the lessons from the past. All armies.

One of the reasons nearly all divisions were organized into regimental combat teams was because you would have the same FA Bn., engineer company, and companies or platoons from your logistical assets supporting the same regiment att the time.

In the 29th ID for instance the RCTs were set up at follows

115th Infantry RCT with 110th FAB, A/121 ECB, A/629 TD
116th Infantry RCT with 111th FAB, B/121 ECB, B/629 TD
175th Infantry RCT with 224th FAB, C/121 ECB, C/629 TD

I forget the tank battalion designation. Much of the time it was held together along with an Infantry battalion from one of the regiments as a division reserve/strike force, but when it was parceled out it followed the A-B-C format that the engineers and TD's did.

Units must train together to enable them to fight together as a fully coordinated team, and then ultimately as a team of teams. Try fielding a baseball team sometime from nine strangers walking down the street.

[Deleted]

Aug 26, 2015 12:52:43 GMT @Deleted said:

1. Precampaign locations of 7th Cav companies.

Fort Lincoln: HHD, A,C, D, F, I

Fort Totten: E, L

Fort Rice: H, M

Gulf: B, G, K

2. Note the battalion assignments mixed and matched, with no relationship with stations. The normal procedure for the Army was to form Bns as soon as possible, before the campaign stats if possible. This allows the companies to train and operate together. The 7th did not follow this practice in 1876.

3. This means on the day of battle companies were placed in Bns with strangers. Coordinating any action involving 2 or more companies was a real problem at LBH,. The only officer who seems competent at Bn and above operations is Benteen.

Again I come late.

The Army was spread out as a whole across the whole of the United States.  US Army Europe was spread throughout central Germany mostly in brigade, but sometimes battalion sized posts, and in a couple of instances, V Corps Units (2/11 ACR) were actually living across the Corps Boundary in the VII Corps area, which caused some problems.  In the US, they are largely concentrated in Division sized posts with Fort Hood being the only one with most of the Corps located there.

Custer and/or Terry requested the detached companies join the Regiment (-) for the campaign and they were delivered before the campaign started.  There was little, if any training, after the Regiment assembled, while Reno was in command.  I can imagine he was consumed with the logistics of getting ready to go, but without any evidence, I think he made a mistake by not concentrating some attention on marksmanship.

I must poiont out for Desert Storm, the 1st ID stopped almost all training except for New Equipment Training, for example we received the 9mm Beretta (a POS in my opinion) for our .45s.  We were consumed with painting the vehicles and loading.  But once we arrived in Saudi Arabia we trained as much as we could prior to moving to our attack positions.  We also continued to train intensly after the cease fire.

We sometimes seem to forget, the 7th CAV Regiment was divided into 4 3-company battalions when it left FT Abraham Lincoln with Reno and Benteen each commanding a "wing".  The battalion assignments he made at the divide were similar to those at FAL, with the exception of the rear guard being independent.  Benteen and his 3 company battalion had quite a time with the train when he was the rear guard commander and modified his initial approach and told Custer who apparently directed the other commanders to adopt his method.