Gumby
Full Member
Posts: 202
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Post by Gumby on Feb 12, 2006 22:10:12 GMT -6
Best book - Little Bighorn Diary Worst book - In His Brother's Shadow; The Life of Thomas Custer This book flew around the room several times before I finished reading it in the hopes that the author would get something correct (He didn't).
Best Movie- Son of the Morning Star because it is still the most realistic, though not very good or overly accurate.
Worst Movie- Custer of the West, 7th Cavalry, they all are inaccurate.
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Post by Tricia on Feb 12, 2006 22:41:05 GMT -6
Bob--
I would have to agree with your assessment of In His Brother's Shadow. However, I love Seventh Cavalry; it's far too hilarious not to like.
Regards, Leyton McLean
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Post by crzhrs on Feb 13, 2006 11:57:04 GMT -6
I agree SOMS is the best LBH/Custer movie . . . though it does have holes in it. Who the Heck is the scout Mr. Rivers, killed during Reno's retreat!?!?! There was Charley Reynolds who was killed . . . and of course Libbie was portrayed as completely breaking down saying goodbye to Custer as he goes off to the LBH.
The Reno fight is fairly accurate and exciting but Custer's fight is one big "car chase"
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Post by michigander on Mar 17, 2006 5:42:27 GMT -6
and of course Libbie was portrayed as completely breaking down saying goodbye to Custer as he goes off to the LBH
She was breaking down in fact. She didn't knew why, exactly, but she did. That's even reported on her book. And on her diary. Sometimes, real love play such jokes...the same sensations some of the actual wives proved in the morning of 11 September, gaving a strangely deep and moved kiss to their husbands while going to work.
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Post by crzhrs on Mar 17, 2006 9:17:08 GMT -6
The portrayal of Libbie breaking down in SOMS was over-the-top . . . she undoubtedly felt sad Custer was leaving on the mission . . . but no more so than on other missions.
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Post by michigander on Mar 22, 2006 15:52:41 GMT -6
You are wrong. I'm sorry. Libbie she said in her diary that she never felt so worry as in that mission, and that she never cryed as tshe was doing that time. This is also reported in Merington, and in Libbie's diary. And other sources.
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Post by crzhrs on Mar 23, 2006 8:15:16 GMT -6
She may have cried but not in public as portrayed in SOMS . . . that was my point. The depiction of Libbie sobbing and weeping in public was not in her make up.
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Post by michigander on Mar 23, 2006 12:59:12 GMT -6
What's the difference? insisting on the fact if she had or not weeped publicly has not importance at all. Also be honest: "but no more so than on other missions. " you said. This was the point, a point in contrast with what you're adjusting now. However, The leaving of the column made "weeping the future widows", this is in Leckie too. Libbie felt strangely worried and she had a "premonition of disaster that she had never known before which weighed her down; she shut into her heart the most incontrollable anxiety"; while the trumpeter's call made her feel "heartsick". She was breaking down, before and after. Few days before she wrote to Custer that she had felt very bad and anxious about the mission. This happens when we're in front of a great love. This is the point Crazy Horse: That you was saying the mission was felt by Libbie as all other missions. This is untrue. We must let all the dramaticity of that event, and let the widow cry her tears.
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Post by Tricia on Mar 23, 2006 13:34:53 GMT -6
The problem with such stories is that when we see what happened afterwards, we all tend to look back at events with a different eye. I think it's human nature. Was Libbie's premonition written down the day she was left at the Heart River camp... or was a misgiving flourished-up and recalled after her husband's death? I don't think this is much different than having the regimental standard blow over in the wind or how Custer's character seemed to have changed just before the battle ... things that seemed a little odd--had nothing happened--turned into prophesies of doom.
I just finished a book where the author tended to give every movement of Custer's in the week before the battle some kind of prophetic significance, when surely, GAC--and his entourage--was only living in the "moment." Hindsight can be a very tricky thing.
Regards, Leyton McLean
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Post by crzhrs on Mar 23, 2006 13:38:50 GMT -6
Michiganer:
I don't think Libbie was the type to cry and break down in front of people. She held up when informed of her husband's death at the LBH which was far more traumatic than saying good-bye on his mission. What she did in private would be far different than what she did in public . . . that's the only point I'm making.
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Post by alfuso on Mar 24, 2006 0:52:02 GMT -6
what I find curious about her memories of that day is one, she went with her husband overnight so she marched outg with them. And two I have never found a reference to the sky mirage except from *her* You would think someone else would have noted something that spectacular on the march out.
alfuso
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Post by michigander on Mar 24, 2006 3:18:01 GMT -6
Leyton, you're totally wrong. The sadness, worry etc. it's also before that day, through the letters Libbie wrote to Custer. She even sayd that she never felt like that before, that she felt sick and can't sleep in the last days, thinking to the mission, that sounded her particulary dangerous. All this BEFORE the mission started. Alfuso, what is so strange? she had marched with her husband many times previous. Maybe to find references of the mirage you have to read more books, or more attentively. It is also in Utley:"heavy with a symbolism not lost on Libbie and OTHERS who saw it." That mirage was not so strange. I saw too this kind of natural phenomenon, specially in the middle of prairies land, or near a lake, when in the early morning the fog is dissipating and the sun start shining through, if you see an object or a man walking in the right distance and perspective, he seems to be suspended on the sky. Only illusion of course. But that's happens. Also crhs: her tears are also in Wert: "Libbie had tearfully clung to Autie before he mounted". You find it also in Willert, in the Terry letters, in Hunt and Heski. We have not to forget that for Libbie, not only her husband was starting, but in laws and friends too. you say that she held up, and that's not true. She tryed to be brave. The New york herald told her conditions were worrisome. During the religious service, also, she fainted and rested out of conscience for an hour. Still the 23 July, Nelson Miles wrote to his wife that Libbie was depressed and desperate. Last, to see she was feeling that mission not normal with a sort of premonition, it's enough to look through her papers. There is also a symptomatic poem, she enclosed on her diary, while she still have no news about her husband: God may have pity of the wife that wait at home with violet eyes and lily cheeks Dreaming about thast old love dream While her beloved is walking in heaven
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Post by Tricia on Mar 24, 2006 9:51:43 GMT -6
Michigander--
I do like that poem--I use it as an introduction to one of my chapters. It's title is "June 25-July 4, 1876" or something similar ... I'm not so certain Libbie wrote it until after the disaster at LBH; it seems to notate the sad irony about how one goes about normal life whilst not knowing their partner is already dead. But I don't see it as one that gives us an insight into a sense of unease as it occured. I think you (and many others) tend to overly romanticise these events ... and in hindsight, certainly they can lend themselves to it:
Looking at the letter you mentioned in Merington (pg. 303): "I cannot but feel the greatest apprehensions for you on this dangerous scout. Oh, Autie, if you return without bad news the worst of the summer will be over ... (June, 1876)"
But what is so different from this letter (Merington, pg. 77)? "The worst about loveing a soldier is that he is likely to die as to live ... and how should I feel if my soldier should die before I have gratified my heart's desire ... (December 26, 1863) ."
I don't see a profound distinction between one missive or the other ... certainly not one that leads me to think Libbie was walking about feeling any differently in 1876 than how one normally feels whilst their partner is in active service, facing an enemy.
Regards, Leyton McLean
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Post by michigander on Mar 24, 2006 12:11:27 GMT -6
I am not an idiot, with the head full of silly romantic stories and I "overly" nothing. The letters are quite different instead. It's different the contest, and she state personally that she never felt so worry like this time. Last, she wrote that poem in the period she didn't knew nothing about her husband. Add her claims to be so worried as she never felt and all the rest I quoted and you get you're insights! This is not romanticism, this is just the pain of a wife.
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Post by Scout on Mar 24, 2006 12:45:50 GMT -6
Michigander...agree with you completely.
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