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Post by fred on Jun 21, 2011 19:57:19 GMT -6
Fred, We had this discussion before, I think. Dark Cloud, Some how I think you are correct... now that you mention it. My mind is like a sieve lately. Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by El Crab on Jun 22, 2011 2:03:12 GMT -6
Fred, We had this discussion before, I think. As I recall, somewhere on Weir's advance to or beyond the Point that bears his name, he thought he saw soldiers in formation with flags and was drawing wrong conclusions when another officer, I think Edgerly who had lenses, corrected him. There are several references to the CD Indians by the Indians, Kate Bighead being the main one who said those who saw them enter the camp were terrified. There are off hand recollections by the participants of collecting horse and clothing and shucking off unwanted items while in the saddle as they rode back to the village. Redhorse, too. So, we know groups of Indians dressed as soldiers, while probably not terribly convincing in calm circumstance, could very well fool people in trauma and agitated in battle. We have them dressed as such on the battlefield and back in the village. And the next day, they temporarily fooled Terry's guys. It strikes me that they could be the basis for soldiers in the village as recalled by someone at the end of the game of telephone in later years, and certainly a prime source for the artifacts found, although many others exist through the years. No, not quite. I'll have to find the account, but Weir, without the aid of field glasses, saw figures on horseback and guidons flying, said it was Custer and was going to head that direction. Sgt. Flanagan said to Weir that he needed to take a look with the field glasses, because those are Indians. Nothing was said about uniforms or anything like that, I believe. Unless you have an account I don't. I'm paraphrasing George Wylie to Walter Camp, from Custer in '76, pg. 129. I could post the exact words if you like, but my paraphrasing is pretty much the gist of it. No mention of uniforms for formations. Just lots of horsemen with flags.
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Post by AZ Ranger on Jun 22, 2011 5:58:15 GMT -6
I don't know about Weir but I believe they saw Indians dressed as soldiers from the timber area and the Ford D area.
AZ Ranger
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Post by montrose on Jun 22, 2011 8:10:18 GMT -6
DC has raised the point that there is no way to establish with certainty what happened after Custer left the bluffs vicinity point 3411.
So let's look at reasonable assumptions.
The bodies show 5 discernible clusters, all by company. Three are at the south end of Battle Ridge: C Co vicinity Finley-Finkle Ridge; L CO at Calhoun Hill, and I Company in a swale several hundred yards NNE of Calhoun Hill. Two companies are at the north end of Battle Ridge: F Co and headquarters personnel at LSH and E Company 600 yards away in Deep Ravine.
So what can we imply from this?
1. Some type of tactical integrity was maintained. Company unit integrity was operational until units broke.
2. Something is wrong with command above company level. Each of the 5 company clusters is out of supporting range of any other company.
3. The wide division between the 2 companies on the north end of battle ridge and the 3 on the south end require some type of explanation. I believe it clearly speaks against any enemy pressure as causing this division. I have little doubt we will be discussing this.
4. The existence of the company clusters show that their was some type of tactical decision making and command and control being exerted above company level. Further, the wide separations shows that this command and control was faulty, and a major cause of the nature of the defeat.
5. At the individual level there is testimony supporting individual examples of panic, and broken men fleeing from defeated companies towards still cohesive companies. Yet I would say that this is not a causal factor of the defeat.
The wide separation of companies is far more important as a causal factor. Each company has a breaking point. Yet I claim that companies fighting together have a higher breaking point than companies fighting in isolation.
William
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Post by quincannon on Jun 22, 2011 8:37:26 GMT -6
William: I agree here. There was a similar incident involving the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry on the march from LZ XRAY to LZ ALBANY in the Ia Drang fight. Companies became seperated during an NVA ambush and were largely on their own. The distances involved though were not nearly so great.
Finding out the reason for this seperation, south to north, is the key element in discovering why all this occured as it did. Some, as you know, speculate that Custer was off on a reconnissance to either Ford D or to find better defensive ground. It could be that Custer did not wait for a junction between Yates and Keogh on what became Calhoun Hill, expecting Keogh to just follow his lead and move north. It could also be that no junction took place in that Custer took the most direct route north bypassing Calhoun Hill alltogether. All this of course speculates that Custer was down at Ford B with Yates. There could probably be several other reasons as well.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 22, 2011 9:03:05 GMT -6
Crab, I think, is correct, and in that instance I didn't mention uniforms but flags and formations as supported. I would suspect that the process of dressing up was in progress or done and not noticed, but they were pretending to be soldiers, and at distance they fooled both whites and Indians who were also fooled by closer looks when they rode into camp. Red Horse and others support that.
My only real point here, is that we know they did this, they did this all over the general area, and they did ride down towards the Cheyenne camp at the north end, arguably the hypothesized Ford D area, and it makes small sense to attribute artifacts and sightings to events not actually seen rather than to the one that WAS seen, at least without explanation. It's like using all the evidence of combat in the area to prove the small Crow-Army action that took place a few years later on the field.
Montrose,
I've not ever known exactly where 3411 is or its significance. My point is that we don't know, and cannot 'know', what happened after they crossed MTC and kept going.
There are five general clusters of markers, but I'm not sure they're at all by company, but diluted with members from several. There were horses and men from near all companies on LSH if I recall, and finding, say, two members of a company positively identified isn't sufficient to assume all about them were of the same. Most bodies were naked and unrecognizable.
Even if so, I don't know how separate sites of bodies indicates anything of high command. If they start out in column by company and the column is attacked and the companies disperse to different areas and they're killed in place (not suggesting that's what happened) it's a big assumption they were ordered there or it's anything but panic run till blunted, stopped, and killed in place.
Not to be picky, but there are accounts, not testimony, of broken men fleeing, but the Indians - the only ones who could give those accounts - did not say they broke from "defeated companies towards still cohesive companies." Did they? It's a reasonable assumption, but I suspect they could run towards the most cover in the form of dead horses as well, which might suggest the opposite.
I tend to lean towards Benteen, that there was no indication of much command, and suspect this was based on the coagulation of officers on LSH, at the perimeter, not with their companies in defined defensive posture. It speaks to them being in motion and shot as they topped the ridge.
NO proof, of course, but what has always struck me is imagining 210 in motion, things happen, they divide and HAVE to keep moving. It blends in well with the general marker spots, requires nothing not known about Custer or the 7th.
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Post by wild on Jun 22, 2011 9:30:38 GMT -6
If Custer's battalion was in line astern it would stretch 500 metres.From LSH to Calhoun hill measures 1000 metres. These figures show that the battalion was not seperated beyond what could occur if it is attacked along a number of points.
I saw a film 50 years ago --"Sink The Bismark".I was not familiar with the details of the ending other than the great battleship went to a watery grave.I was expecting a great naval shootout, a last stand.But I was to be disappointed for the Bismark being mortally wounded from an air attack and steaming in circles got off no more than 3 salvos before it was a battered blazing wreck. I think what we are doing here [His lofty eminence excepted]is trying to provide Custer with a last stand.Anything but the disappointment of an anticlimatic collapse.
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Post by quincannon on Jun 22, 2011 9:45:03 GMT -6
DC: 3411 is a topographical bench mark located at the border of the western boundry of the Reno-Benteen Battle Site, very near the road. It is supposedly the location of where Reno or his people saw Custer on the bluffs.
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Post by markland on Jun 22, 2011 10:03:00 GMT -6
That entire discussion on the other board is pretty good. Clair actually abandoned his Hussar persona and contributed some valuable information as Steve and that old grump, Fred.
Billy
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Post by quincannon on Jun 22, 2011 10:29:21 GMT -6
Billy: He has been doing more and more of that of late.
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Post by fred on Jun 22, 2011 18:30:20 GMT -6
Quincannon and Dark Cloud, About three years ago (my, how time flies!), I wrote an article titled, "From A Different View to the Same Kill" for the LBHA's Research Review. After mucho cajoling and browbeating by some guy from a town in Colorado named after a large rock... let's see, what was this guy's name... er... something about a black nimbus... er... oh, sorry DC... it was you... well anyway, DC convinced me-- in some of the best advice anyone has ever given me about this fiasco-- to read the RCOI. This article was based on testimony I read and from it all I figured out that Custer never viewed Reno in the valley from either Weir Peaks or Sharpshooters' Ridge. If you read that testimony very carefully you will hone in on DeRudio and Martini. From what they said-- independently of one another-- it was clear Custer watched from the edge of the bluffs. They both gave reasonably definitive distances, both tempered by references to other terrain features. I took those narratives and applied them to my old, trusty topo map. Adding a ruler and a calculator I discovered that if I backed off Martini's approximate distance (from his reported terrain feature) and then forwarded DeRudio's distance (from his reported terrain feature), they intersected perfectly. Checking that location on the map, that intersection was absolutely spot on an elevation marker, "3411." To make matters even more interesting, Weir Peaks is 3,413 feet above sea level, making the two high points almost identical. Then, to make it even more interesting, DeRudio was asked-- specifically, mind you-- if this high point where he saw Custer was the same high point that CPT Weir went to, and DeRudio said, "No!" it was much closer to Reno's entrenchment area. I do not know if I was the first person to have ever figured that out, but I now consider "3411" as a true "fred-ism." So... 3411 is my invention and I brought this out in that article. Blame me. As to its location, it is north of Reno Hill, about mid-way between the entrenchment area and the head of Cedar Coulee. It is off a shoulder that juts out from the southwestern corner of Sharpshooters' Ridge. A friend of mine named Dale Kosman sent me a picture (much better than any I had subsequently taken) and I am going to attach it here. That is what DeRudio saw when he looked up from his position in the timber. And that is where he saw George Custer, LT Cooke, and one other (probably, in my opinion, Tom Custer). My plea is guilty. And by the way, Sharpshooters' Ridge is that ridgeline off to the right, above the roadway. Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 22, 2011 20:20:04 GMT -6
Okay, got it. That was during the period, I'll bet, when I was back using Windows 98 on a 98 computer that still had a dos button for certain commands. And Prodigy, I think. My newer one died and I just burned down to the last computer before upgrading. I had to burn incense before the monitor so things would go well enough. Ack.
Makes sense. I recall being surprised how much was blocked from Weir back to Reno field. From Reno Field you can't see squat except SS and Weir and I guess this. Have to look at the video again.
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Post by fred on Jun 23, 2011 6:02:59 GMT -6
My daughter found this and sent it to me. Thought some of you-- "benteen," AZ, "montrose," "quin"-- would get a kick out of seeing an old man in his youth. And no, DC, those are not the guys DeRudio saw from the timber!This was taken-- probably in January, 1967. We had just returned from some multiple-day convoy, either to Cu Chi to bail out the 25th Infantry Division, or from Lai Khe in the Iron Triangle. Fun in the sun! The guy on the left is one LT Hamilton, and the fellow in the middle was my second driver, Wayne Bagula, who replaced the utterly brilliant soldier, Danny Pue. Never knew what happened to Hamilton and Bagula. Enough snickering... back to the real world! Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by quincannon on Jun 23, 2011 7:08:53 GMT -6
Fred: And you unit is now (drum roll please) Headquarters and Company A, 101st Support Battalion an organic element of 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division. Who ever painted your sign got the color of the motto (FORTONS LES PARDEAUX) wrong on the unit DUI.
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Post by benteen on Jun 23, 2011 13:54:28 GMT -6
Capt Fred, Sir, you look like the only one who was working and sweating, your driver has an awfully salty looking cover, hope you straightened his butt out,and your Lt is having his picture taken with a cigarette in his hand. You have a look like you have your work cut out for you with this outfit Just kidding sir, I'm sure when it counted they rose to the occasion Be Well Dan
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