dave
Brigadier General
Posts: 1,679
|
Post by dave on Jun 14, 2017 0:56:30 GMT
|
|
|
Post by mlynn on Jun 14, 2017 1:21:46 GMT
I like the sources you provided from both sides, Johnny Reb and Billy Yank.
|
|
dave
Brigadier General
Posts: 1,679
|
Post by dave on Jun 14, 2017 3:33:38 GMT
Mary This a great start of the thread from montrose on another board and many others who commented on the thread and I am sure it will also help build up your LBH knowledge Regards Dave lbha.proboards.com/thread/3892/command-controlPS providing the letters and thoughts from both sides really points out the terrible cost of a war between brothers as both Yanks and Rebs all had the same problems. Homesickness, diseases, loss of morale, poor food and the constant strain of war. It truly shows how foolish men can misbehave and go to far in their greed and pride.
|
|
|
Post by deadwoodgultch on Dec 3, 2017 13:16:35 GMT
This thread started out about whether Reno chose a decent location to defend. There will to this day be a myriad of opinions. I don't think much of it, but it was the first location chosen. If you look around from this spot there in nothing much better.
To the left, is a series of high bluffs from which it would be easy to detect any crawling Indians. In their front was a deep depression with more sloping bluffs on the other side of it. The right side of their defensive position is/was worrisome. Jutting into the landscape are many gullies where hiding Indians could shoot from cover and gather for a massed attack. To the rear were the bluffs that Reno had just climbed that was a no go for an attack.
Digging in here is problematic as they were lacking the proper equipment to do so. The men had to dig with tin cups, pickaxes and their own hands. The earth was and is dry for several inches and below that, hard and less powdery. Sagebrush covers the soil but won't provide the any protection. Having said all of this, none of the officers had considered Sharp Shooter Ridge and if they did they did not expect a NA to take such advantage of it.
The use of the center depression surrounded by horses and mules for a hospital was the best they could do.
Had the NA's continued to bare down on the cavalry in mass as they fell back from Weir Point, this battle would have been a much larger disaster.
Just some random thoughts pertaining to the thread theme. I have walked the area the last 4our years, they were lucky the NA's were risk averse.
Regards, Tom
|
|
|
Post by deadwoodgultch on Jun 21, 2018 10:02:07 GMT
Whether it was a decent position or not they may have died here or on the way back here, from Weir had it not been for Godfrey. This reminder from Jerry Green and The Battlefield Express.
At the 1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn, Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey commanded Company K, 7th Cavalry, the smallest unit of the regiment (and numbering the fewest recruits).
During the withdrawal from Weir Point on June 25, 1876, his rear guard action probably prevented the disintegration of the commands of Major Reno and Captain Benteen that were threatened by warriors advancing from Custer’s battlefield.
“While marching back a heavy fire commenced on the troops in rear,” Godfrey recalled in 1896, “and in looking back I saw Troop ‘M’ coming on the dead jump, and soon afterward Troop ‘D’ appeared over the crest on the gallop; the Indians followed closely.”
In sharp contrast to the rapid retreat of the two companies, Godfrey’s orderly by-the-book deployment of his dismounted company succeeded even though only twenty-two men were on the skirmish line because of pack train, horse holder and other assignments. Despite intense warrior pressure, he ordered his men to maintain proper deployment intervals and controlled their fire. On the other hand, Custer’s battlefield indicated tactical disintegration.
Godfrey detailed his role in the Weir Point episode in his 1892 Century article (reprinted in Graham, The Custer Myth) and elsewhere. He also extolled (in 1896) the battle effectiveness of dismounted, well-trained cavalrymen, adding that “target practice is an immense success.”
We thank retired NPS historian Jerry Greene for sharing this important source on Godfrey’s role at the Custer Fight.
This message may be forwarded or otherwise distributed to all interested persons and parties.
Lee & Michele Noyes, Past Editors
CBHMA Battlefield Dispatch
Dear Lee and Michele--
I ran across the following quote recently while searching for another officer’s obituary in The Association of the Graduates of the United States Military Academy, Annual Report of June 9th, 1932, pp. 64-65. The paragraphs come from the obituary of Brigadier General Edward Settle Godfrey, who died at Cookstown, New Jersey, at age 88 on April 1, 1932.
The selection deals with Godfrey’s well-known withdrawal from Weir Point back to Reno Hill on June 25th at the Little Bighorn battle. I had never encountered this particular reference before, and I suspect that many of your readers will find it not only interesting but revealing about Godfrey’s significant role during this particular part of the fighting. It was written and submitted to the Association by Colonel Charles Francis Bates, as part of Godfrey’s obituary, and I thought that your readership might find it of merit. The selection from the obituary appears as follows:
“Late in the afternoon after the heavy firing had ceased, Major Reno started a movement of his troops down the river. After they had gone a mile or more, they were seen by the Indians who had annihilated the troops with General Custer, and who now rushed to attack the new enemy. Godfrey’s troop was with the advance, so that it became a part of the rear guard when the troops were ordered back to their former position. The other two troops of the rear guard retreated very rapidly, leaving K troop [Godfrey’s] behind. Godfrey saw that the Indians, firing wildly, were closing in on him in great numbers.
“Lieutenant Luther Hare, subsequently a brigadier general in the Spanish[-]American War, was the second lieutenant of K Troop, but at the time acting adjutant of the forces under Reno and Benteen. Seeing the perilous position of the troop, he rode up and joined Godfrey, declaring an intention to remain with him, 'adjutant or no adjutant.' The following is an account in General Hare’s own words, signed by Hare and given to the present writer [Bates].
‘Lieutenant Godfrey said to me, "These Indians are closing in on us too fast. We have got to stop and hold them." He then gave orders for his troop to dismount and deployed and caused the Indians to stop their advance there at that time, and the led horses got back to Reno Hill without difficulty. K troop then made an orderly retreat by alternate files to Reno Hill. This was the first real check the Indians received on the 25th of June. I have always thought that this movement saved the command, as, had they been able to charge in on the troops on Reno Hill without being delayed, the result would have been the same as on Custer Ridge. This delay enabled B, D, and M troops to select and get into position, the other troops having already got into position.’
“General Hare also told the writer that there was no field officer or any other officer except himself in sight when Godfrey decided to make his stand.
“Lieutenant Winfield S. Edgerly of D troop, in his testimony before the Court of Inquiry in Chicago in 1879, says, referring to this same retreat in which his troop had passed Godfrey’s, 'Captain Godfrey had turned back and covered our retreat in the most brave and fearless manner.' Lieutenant Edgerly and Lieutenant Godfrey were the only two officers with the Seventh Cavalry on the 25th who subsequently attained the rank of brigadier general in the regular army.
“At the same Court of Inquiry in Chicago, Second Lieutenant George D. Wallace, who was made adjutant of the regiment on the 27th in place of Lieutenant Cook[e] who was killed on the 25th, said, 'I know that Captain Godfrey’s company acted as rear guard when the command fell back and they got a heavy fire.'
“Captain Benteen, in a written account, said of this same retreat:--
‘This didn’t finish as well as I had hoped and expected it would; however, from the fact of the Indians not making the most of the opportunity and Lieutenant Ed. S. Godfrey carrying out his instructions more faithfully and in a more soldierly manner, we had time sufficient to get some kind of a line formed.’
“A private of Godfrey’s troop, speaking of this retreat to the writer at the Fiftieth Anniversary of the battle near the Crow Agency in Montana in 1926, said, 'Thousands of Indians shooting at us, thousands of Indians shooting at us, and not a man hit!' The soldier may have exaggerated the number of Indians, and perhaps overestimated their skill as shots, but it is true that Godfrey did not lose a man in that slow, deliberate withdrawal, and his action, as General Hare said, undoubtedly saved Reno’s command from the fate of the rest of the regiment.”
Best wishes, Jerry
|
|