Reno and ammunition

[mac]

When Reno charges away from the enemy he is low on ammunition. I believe each man carried a total of about 150 rounds. My question is what would their likely rate of fire have been in the valley action?
Five rounds a minute would mean about 30 minutes of ammunition.
I would think Custer and his other officers would be aware of the sort of time Reno's ammunition supply gave him. Is this another reason to send for the packs? Although the order implies bring them to Custer.
Or is it, as someone once suggested, that Custer doesn't care what happens to Reno?
Cheers

[Yan Taylor]

Hi Mac, Fred gives a good description in his article, he relates to Officers like Wallace, Moylan and Varnum indicating that men started to run low, and sending half of A Company to retrieve Ammo from the saddle bags.

Ian.

[quincannon]

Three things Mac

1) If memory serves the average ammunition readily available to each soldier was forty rounds of carbine on the soldier's person, sixty in the saddle bag, along with twenty four per revolver.

2. The expectation of controlling fire in the middle of a firefight, is like the expectation of finding a virgin in a house of dubious reputation. You might find it, but the finding will be few and far between.

3. Yes he cared about Reno. Reno remaining a force in being was essential to any and all plans that Golden Boy could dream up. That says nothing about Custer's humanitarian instincts, only that he needs Reno to continue to draw attention away from him. Another instance of providing too little to do the job that would require many more.

[Yan Taylor]

He may thought that Reno and the Indians had reach the stage called ‘’A Mexican Stand Off’’ and his advance may have stopped but he was still holding the warriors in place whilst their families moved back.

Ian.

[quincannon]

Custer would not have cared if Reno was doing a clown routine,- a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down the pants, - as long as he was holding them, that would be all that mattered to Custer. To do this though you had damned sight better insure that the holding force has sufficient resources to do the holding.

[Gatewood]

MAC, that is something that fogs up the situation for me, in several respects. First of all, the ammunition carried by each trooper was the standard "combat load", or what was generally deemed necessary for sustaining a soldier for the duration of most missions. Think of it in terms that, not just with Reno or Custer, but, in just about any situation, soldiers would not have the opportunity to resupply with ammunition during the middle of a fight, so they carried with them what it was felt would be necessary to get them through most situations they might find themselves in. Having said that, most soldiers would always prefer to carry more, but they are constrained by weight/bulk considerations, and sometimes in limitaions in what they were able to obtain through issue. Along those lines, when he cut loose from his supply train, Crook instructed his soldiers to carry as much extra ammunition as possible by stuffing it in their pockets, etc., but that was a somewhat different sittuation in that he was actually leaving his means of resupply behind, while Custer was not (Crook had wagons that he left behind, while Custer had mules that he took with him).

All of this is a long way of saying that, although it doesn't seem like a lot, the ammunition carried by Reno's men should have been sufficient to sustain them for a considerable period. Custer knew that he was going into a battle, and, if he didn't feel that the ammunition carried by the men was enough to get them through it, he could have instructed them to carry more, as Crook did, or at least kept the ammunition mules more closed up and readily available. The fact that he didn't seems to indicate that he was not overly concerned that the amount carried by the men was not enough, and it probably was. That's why this business of, when faced with imminent battle, his suddenly deciding that he needed the ammunition packs and sending for them doesn't quite make sense to me, and I tend to think there was more to it than that.

Along those lines and to get back on track with your question(s), one of the arguments in the debate about whether Custer's note to Benteen (including the notation about the packs) meant to come to Custer personally or just to the battle in general is that, at the time that it was written, Reno had already been engaged, while Custer had not, so it would make logical sense that Reno was in greater need of resupply and that is where the "packs" should have gone. However, there is disagreement about how much ammunition that Reno's men had actually used and how badly that they needed more. Some individuals indicated that they had used up most of their supply, while others said that they hadn't used much at all. Also, several Indians claimed that they recovered almost full ammunition belts off of dead soldiers, and at least one person testified (don't recall who it was off hand) at the RCOI that, when a couple of ammunition boxes were opened on the bluffs, not many took advantage of the opportunity to replenish their supply, likely because they didn't need to. It might also serve to explain why no more casualties were inflicted upon the Indians than what there were, as it may be that Reno's men simply didn't fire as many rounds as we tend to think that they did.

[quincannon]

In the All Well and Good Department: A prudent commander thinks not only of the ammunition on hand, but also about what do I do when it's either gone or has run to such low levels, that he has also run out of or is left very few options. The first is an advanced form of bean counting, the latter is the mark of a sound tactical decision maker.

[mac]

Thank you all!
My first thought is that it is interesting that despite large numbers of warriors presenting, Reno's men in some cases had not fired that much in return. I have never faced this situation and I know there are psychological factors in play but it surprises me. Having said that, I am a shoot back person. This clearly speaks to quincannon's control of fire point.
The suggestion that Reno could have held longer in the timber is then not an issue of low ammunition (?).
Cheers

[Gatewood]

In a real sense, there may have been enough ammunition to hold longer, but it may have been Reno's perception that there was not. The normal course of things would be for the 1st Sgts to take a quick inventory of their company's ammunition status and report it to their company commanders, who would in turn report it to Reno. However, the situation was so jumbled up and confused and things happening so rapidly, that there was little opportunity for that, and Reno may have just felt that more ammunition had been expended than really had. However, to expand your question further, I am of the school of thought that says "Why would Reno want to hold the timber longer?". His was, after all, a cavalry unit whose chief asset was its mobility, so why would he want to hunker down and defend a piece of worthless ground just for the sake of defending, if he felt that he could extract himself, regain his mobility, and regroup and possibly attack again under more favorable conditions? Of course there are those that point to the fact that he lost the majority of his mean during the retrograde and contend that he would have been better off staying and defending. Perhaps so, but that is hindsight, and, at the time that he left the timber, Reno undoubtedly felt that he would incur more casualties by staying than leaving. His detractors also contend that he was supposed to stay and "fix" the Indians, while Custer enveloped them. I don't agree with that either, as, first of all, his orders in no way called for that, and secondly, by staying he would not have actually "fixed" anyone, and the Indians would have retained full freedom of movement to do as they pleased.

[quincannon]

Gatewood: There is no way on earth that Reno with a 130 odd soldiers could fix anything the size of what the hostiles could oppose him with. Hold can mean a lot of things, hold ground being one, but the ground, the position was worthless in and of itself. It can also mean hold the attention of, a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down the pants. Those that don't get the meaning, it means present a threat that the hostiles must address or at the very least pay attention to, lest they get their boxers in a bind. So we are in complete agreement.

[Yan Taylor]

Good Morning guy’s, it’s a lovely late summers day and I have only a few light jobs to do and then I am going to enjoy it.
Going back to Reno, Col. Custer’s verbal orders to Maj. Reno (delivered via Lt. Cooks) were as follows;

‘’To move forward at as rapid a gait as prudent, and to charge afterward, and you would be supported by the whole outfit’’

So Reno moves forward, averaging a speed of 7 to 8 mph and later increasing to 10 or 12 mph, maybe at a gallop***, so Reno had completed part one of his orders, now when he halted, he and some of his Officers saw that the Indians were pouring out of a ravine, so any charge would not be a good idea. So I think that the orders given to him earlier had gone out of the window, he could not charge and there was no sign of any support. So he does the next best thing and defends the area and this is where the notion of ‘’fixing’’ comes into play, he was in one way fixing but he was also deploying his men to stop the Indians from advancing.

***info from an article by Mr F Wagner.

Ian.

[Gatewood]

Ian, I don't think it was the Indians pooring out of the ravine as much as it was the ravine itself and what might still be in it that gave Reno pause. From his position he could only tell that there was some sort of terrain feature in front of him, from which Indians were pooring, but he could not detect how significant it was in terms of depth and width, whether it had a stream in it, how many Indians were still concealed in it, etc., so to have gone blindly charging up it would have been folly. There are also some indications that some of the horses were becoming excited and unmanageable at this time, with two or three apparently bolting ahead into the Indians. Reno therefore did not only, I think, the prudent thing, but what prescribed tactics called for, by dismounting and forming his skirmish line. He then, by some accounts, advance another couple of hundred yards on foot, again in compliance with prescribed tactics, still on the offensinve and fulfilling his orders. However, Indians were still comining from the ravine and beginning to swarm around his exposed left flank, so his line was forced back upon itself and transitioned to the defensive. It is at this point that they were no longer serving their original purpose and it was logical, if not incumbent, for Reno to think about extraction. In that sense, I tend to think that there was never any serious thought given to defending the timber and that they went there only to get the horses and get out.

[Yan Taylor]

Hi Gatewood; yes I knew about the ravine but because I only had a limited amount of time I kept my post short.

The skirmish line did advance on foot, I think they needed to bring their Carbines closer to increase the effective range before engaging the Indians.

I don’t think they went into the timber just for their horses, some men had stopped on a brow to fire at the warriors and reports were filtering through that Indians had reached the timber, and the natural course of action would be to draw men off the line to counter this threat.

Ian.

[Gatewood]

Ian, I didn't elaborate far enough. While you are correct that the first element of men that went into the timber did so for the purpose of 'protecting' the horses, when the general withdrawal into the timber ocurred, I perceive it as being for the purpose of getting the horses and getting out and that there was never any intnetion of defending in that location.

[benteen]

Gentlemen,

Could it be that at times we tend to over think things. In the case of Major Reno could it be just simply, he was given an order or mission to attack the village. Do to enemy forces he was unable to do it. His concern was know for the lives of his men. He went into the timber with no other reason or intent other than providing his men with cover and concealment. As any good Officer would do.

Be Well
Dan