Cavalry Training

[clansman]

az. I don't think the thought ever entered Custers' head that the warriors would stand and fight. He was too obsessed thinking they would scatter.

[conz]

Nov 2, 2008 7:15:14 GMT -6 AZ Ranger said:

Since the primary plan of attack was to get to the Indians before they ran, how much time was spent on what to if they stood and fought on large numbers. From Custer on down to the last private enlisted were they battle ready for Indians that were willing to fight and had the numbers to be effective?

That's a good point...what kind of combat was the 7th expecting, and most prepared for? Certainly not conventional-type warfare with hundreds, even thousands, of Warriors.

So the officer's and men's thinking, at least, was not prepared for the type of battle they were riding into that day. The tactical skills at the company level are the same, however, as in small unit actions. But the tactics and deployments used, and certain considerations in decision-making, would be different. Running into an unexpected situation is also disorienting to Soldier and leader alike, and causes either delays in making decisions, or in making too hasty decisions for aggressive commanders, ala Cavalry officers.

One of the dangers in fighting insurgencies, we study, is that the counterinsurgency army often gets surprised, and tactically beaten, when the usual low-level insurgents suddenly mass for a conventional battle.

Now that isn't exactly what happened at LBH, because I think they did anticipate, even looked forward to, hitting a large enemy force. But I don't think they appreciated the ability of the Warriors to come out in force and aggressively attack their "invulnerable" cavalry formations.

Clair

[conz]

Clan,

Think of what might have happened had one of your platoon patrols, going into a "bad neighborhood" in N. Ireland on a typical "search and destroy" mission on a suspected strongpoint/safehouse, suddenly was attacked by 200 machine-gun and RPG armed enemy tactical units, using conventional ambush tactics with mines/IEDs, closing off escape routes, blocking relief forces, and willing to engage in close combat. Would be a tough pickle for the 30 or so men so surrounded, even though they had the most technologically advanced, and well-trained, army in the world.

Clair

[clansman]

Clair. I understand what you're saying and I agree. Luckily, the IRA tactics were more hit and run as far as we were concerned. In my experience there was never a willingness on their part to engage in close combat.

[conz]

Nov 2, 2008 12:09:34 GMT -6 @clansman said:

Clair. I understand what you're saying and I agree. Luckily, the IRA tactics were more hit and run as far as we were concerned. In my experience there was never a willingness on their part to engage in close combat.

Right...somewhat like our frontier Soldiers here. Then take that battalion from Belfast, and put it in Basra...suddenly you have a huge, well-armed militia with heavy weapons and heavy explosives willing to come after your bases and ambush your patrols. And they'll stay around and duke it out a while, destroying everything in sight, before you finally bring up reinforcements, or saturate the area with air or artillery, and they withdraw. Then you count the civilian dead.

Clair

[clansman]

Yes. But the difference is that you expect the taliban or other groups to stand and fight and should be prepared for it. In Ireland our biggest problem was to try to catch them before they disappeared. Can you really have a war without civilian dead? I know we tried our best to minimise civilian casualties but unfortunately it happened.

[rch]

The 7th Cavalry was more often assembled in large bodies for service in the field than any other regiment in the years between 1866 and 1876, and Custer commanded those units. Crook never commanded more than 3 or 4 companies in an Indian fight until the Battle of the Rosebud.

Custer operated his presumably horrible pack train from the Powder to the Rosebud and then for four days until Custer's Last Stand. Reno operated with a pack train for the length of his scout. Crook's pack train was one day's march from Crook's 100 plus wagons when he fought his battle at the Rosebud. Crook's pack train was compared, not with Custer's pack train, but with Terry's wagon train which met Crook on the Rosebud about 30 miles from the Yellowstone. It had taken Terry 3 days to march from the mouth of the Rosebud.

Custer, apparently uniquely among officers of the Army, was not entitled to go on leave, and it is held against him that he was not present to prepare his regiment. He had returned to Ft Lincoln in March, and returned East to testify against a crook. Even then he seems to have kept in contact with his command using his goverment and private telegraph accounts to do so.

While away he tried to find out how many Indians might be in the field. At some point he is said to have influenced his friend Gen Sherman to return the three 7th Cav companies in the South to Dakota.

Companies A, C, D, F, and I were stationed at Ft Lincoln.

Companies E and L arrived at Ft Lincoln 17 Apr.

Companied B, G, and K arrived at Ft Lincon on 1 May. All but one of the Mar - May enlistees were assigned to these companies, and only 11 of these men rode with the regiment from the Yellowstone. I believe these are the men referred to by Culbertson in his testimony at the RCOI.

Companies H and M arrived at Ft Lincoln from Ft Rice on 6 May. It was in these companies that 1st Sgt Ryan and 1st Lt DeRudio served (DeRudio had little experience with Company A until the regiment marched from the Yellowstone). I can well believe that Capt Benteen, the best field soldier Gen Hugh Scott ever served with, was a bum and a drag when it came to training his men.

Reno apparently ordered 1 hour a day of target practice in early March and reduced it to one half hour early in Apr. I don't know if this order applied to companies at Ft Totten and Ft Rice. This is about what Custer ordered in 1868 when the 7th had daily 1 hour practices for almost a month. The fact that X number of rounds where allotted for target practice per month does not mean that those rounds were fired on a monthly basis. Ordnance officers might have accumulated the rounds over time and might have released them where needed most.

The fact that the horsemanship sections of Cooke's manual were left out of Upton's manual is meaningless. The drill regulations almost certainly exited independently of the manuals, and I have seen a reference to cavalry drill regulations.

rch

[rch]

Re: The hiring of packers

Assuming that the following dates where not renewals of prior employment:

The Chief Packer was hired on 1 Mar 76, 10 days before the Master of Transportation.
One packer was hired on 26 Mar.
One on 1 Apr.
4 on 17 Apr.
1 each on 2, 13, and 16 May.
Churchill was hired as a teamster and and then as a packer. Nichols gives the date as 22 Jun, but how did he get from the Powder to the Rosebud.
Edwards was also hired as a teamster and may also have been hired as a packer before the march from the Rosebud. His employment record is confusing, but Nichols has him present at the LBH.

rch

[AZ Ranger]

I find it hard to believe that anyone would think Custer was a better at packtrains then Crook. I have never read anything that atated Custer was to be modeled for his use of pack animals and the narratives of the packs, packers, and animals of the LBH mission is comical.

How many times did Custer have all 12 companies together in the 1870's on a mission to go after thousands of Indians with no other units along and without support of wagons?

The reason horsemanship was removed from manuals was because it was thought unncessary which is significant. A good book on it and the details is American Military Horsemanship.
Eventually horses were removed from the manuals also and is also significant. No more mounted cavalry.

AZ Ranger

[AZ Ranger]

In April 1866, the 3d Cavalry was once again ordered to New Mexico to campaign against the Indians.In Aril 1866, the Regiment was again moved to the Southwest, this time to subdue an uprising of the Chiracahua Apaches led by Geronimo. In April 1870, the Regiment was ordered to Arizona for operations against the Apaches and, in late 1871, was transferred north to the department of the Platte, which included what are now the states of Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska. During the summer of 1876, the Regiment participated in the Little Big Horn Campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne. On 17 June 1876, ten companies of the 3d Cavalry fought in the battle of Rosebud Creek. This was the largest battle between the Army and the Indians in the history of the American West, with 1,400 friendly Indians and soldiers opposing more than 1,500 hostile Indians.The final surrender of Geronimo to elements of the 3d Cavalry signified the end of the Regiment's participation in the Indian Wars.

["Hunk" Papa]

Colonel William Addleman Ganoe, U.S. Army, wrote a book 'The History of the United States Army', first published in 1942. He breaks his book down into time periods, 1812-1820 for example and his Chapter IX, covering the period 1865-1880 is headed, signifcantly, "The Army's Dark Ages".

He cites various justifications for that title, including how few CW vets joined the regular army post-war, poor pay and conditions deterring the better elements of society from enlisting so that 'too great a proportion of offscourings of the community went west to make up the companies' quotas.'

To those reasons he adds the Army's poor organisation in the early post-war years, the high percentage of desertions, the scattering of regiments to perform policing duties and the loss of enthusiasm of officers who having been brevet generals were now obliged to return to their regular rank.

Now this is an army man writing this history, not a civilian or non-military historian so he has no agenda other than to tell it like it was. In my view, it is against this background of difficulties that the army of the time, including the 7th Cavalry, has to be measured, when considering what training they might have had, or indeed, what opportunity for regular training they were afforded when the constant shortfall in their full complements put training at the bottom of their list of priorities.

Hunk

[conz]

Nov 6, 2008 15:11:50 GMT -6 AZ Ranger said:

The reason horsemanship was removed from manuals was because it was thought unncessary which is significant. A good book on it and the details is American Military Horsemanship.
Eventually horses were removed from the manuals also and is also significant. No more mounted cavalry.

What cavalryman ever used, or needed, a "manual" to learn horsemanship...care or riding. It is useless, except as an academic exercise for officers.

WE, today, try to use such books to try to figure out what they did back then...THEY didn't use them. The only good books were the ones that tried to copy what the Sergeants were doing in all those companies, and put it down on paper. IOW, the books tried to learn from the Sergeants. But they never did that very well, because officers from Samur kept getting involved.

And very few American cavalry Sergeants spoke French. <g>

Clair

[conz]

Hunk,

All that about the post-Civil War army is fine, but what do you think it is really saying?

Does it mean the Army of the late 19th Century was no better trained than militia? That is was nothing more than a social club? That it was a disgrace to the American military?

Do you think the officers and NCOs of that army were not doing their jobs?

BTW, we say even WORSE things about the post-Vietnam War army...so how bad was THAT?

And the post-WWII army...remember "Task Force Smith?"

Yet I recall that we won all the wars that those "bad" armies later went into, eh? And all our enemies lost...so how good do you HAVE to be?

The great Gen'l Pershing was class of '86, after all. Couldn't have been too bad an army...even in our "darkest days." Soldiers learn to deal with the dark.

Clair

[AZ Ranger]

Nov 6, 2008 18:05:15 GMT -6 @conz said:

Nov 6, 2008 15:11:50 GMT -6 AZ Ranger said:

The reason horsemanship was removed from manuals was because it was thought unnecessary which is significant. A good book on it and the details is American Military Horsemanship.
Eventually horses were removed from the manuals also and is also significant. No more mounted cavalry.

What cavalryman ever used, or needed, a "manual" to learn horsemanship...care or riding. It is useless, except as an academic exercise for officers.

WE, today, try to use such books to try to figure out what they did back then...THEY didn't use them. The only good books were the ones that tried to copy what the Sergeants were doing in all those companies, and put it down on paper. IOW, the books tried to learn from the Sergeants. But they never did that very well, because officers from Samur kept getting involved.

And very few American cavalry Sergeants spoke French. <g>

Clair

My point is not the whether someone looked at manuals or not. The decision that horsemanship was not needed by troopers was prevalent at the time. Explains soldiers being shot as buffalo. A proficient horseman could fend for himself. In a charge it is every man for himself when contact is made.

The manual is just a indicator of the times.

AZ Ranger

[AZ Ranger]

What cavalryman ever used, or needed, a "manual" to learn horsemanship...care or riding. It is useless, except as an academic exercise for officers.

Just because you enlist in the army and they put you in the cavalry does not make you a cavalryman does it? If you are a proficient cavalryman then you would not need training.

William Slaper upon joining in 1875: “At the time, any young man wearing the Uniform of the United States was looked upon as and idler—to lazy to work. Being in my own hometown, and well known, I felt somewhat ashamed of being seen in uniform."

This is a cavalryman, period correct since he was there, highly proficient in horsemanship?

AZ Ranger