SOTM the Book

[mcaryf]

Not only did I acquire SOTM the DVD, I also acquired SOTM the book and completed it recently. I have to say it was a most enjoyable read and ideal for someone who already has a reasonable acquaintance with the battle. It has a wealth of minor detail and a narrative style that really appealed to me.

I have two questions of fact from it, however, I will raise one now but leave the other for a later thread so as not to confuse any responses.

The book mentions that quite a few men from the 5 companies under Custer's direct command actually end up with Reno on his hill. It then goes on to cite the example of Company F stating that 24 of Yates' men were with Reno.

Now I can understand that some were with the Packs but 24 seems a surprisingly high number. Is this possibly a misprint in my version although the number is spelt out as twenty-four so that seems unlikely? Can anyone throw some more light on how these 24 came to be on Reno's hill?

Regards

Mike

[rch]

Connell may have been working from Hammer's first edition of "Men With Custer," which didn't have a good break down on the the men left at the Yellowstone Depot. Nichol's latest edition lists Sgt. Curtis and 10 privates including Yates' orderly as surviving the battle.

I've wondered about orderlies, strikers and cooks. Orderlies attended on officers, usually commanders, to "carry orders and messages." Strikers were officers' servants. Some officers also had cooks. I think the terms orderly and striker are confused. Benteen's orderly rode near him. The man described as Yates' orderly might have been his striker taking care of the Captain's property, or he might have been an orderly sent back on an errand.

Also some if not all the officers had extra horses. They had to be attended to.

According to Nichols there were 11 F company men not with Custer, 14 from C, 10 from E, 10 from I, and 12 from L.

rch

[fred]

Mike--

No work has ever been done that details exactly who was assigned to the packs. For the most part, that has been relegated to the ashes of history.

Also, the latest Nichols book (the 2000)-- which is the original Ken Hammer book, re-done [I don't even want to get into that]-- is fraught w/ errors & I wouldn't trust it worth a damn. I just bought it at the battlefield & already, on page 1, I am going wild. To Nichols' credit, I understand he is in the process of correcting the 2000 edition, so we will see what happens once that is complete.

As for the packs... The best I have been able to do is as follows:
A-- 7 men
B-- unknown, because McDougall's company was the pack train escort & he may have even called his men back into his company. We will never know.
C-- 8
D-- 7
E-- 9
F-- 10
G-- 7
H-- 7
I-- 9
K-- 7
L-- 13
M-- 8

In addition to this, several companies had stragglers, men whose horses basically just gave out:
C-- 5
E-- 2
F-- 1
I-- 1

Notice, the stragglers all came from the destroyed companies. Any stragglers from the companies on Reno Hill would simply have made it to Reno Hill, so we do not know if there were any from those units.

As for those phantom F Company men Connell talks about, bull! I loved his book, but that's just bad research. If there is any sort of valid attribution for it he should have explained it. F Company had 48 men & 2 officers w/ it on 25Jun76. One man was detached, 10 wound up w/ the packs on Reno Hill. How many were assigned to the packs? I guess 10!! Otherwise, how did they get there? Everybody else was killed. That equals 48 men & 2 officers. Stragglers? Yeah, we know of that one. Orderlies, strikers, cooks, servants? None that we know of. So what does that leave us? Some how, 10 men w/ the packs!

Despite the fact this always seems to add up to confusion, the number of men is very simple. Those who died, those who didn't. And we know their names.

Those 24 guys are like Korn riding through the village, unscathed; Boyer murdering Custer; White Cow Bull killing Custer at Ford B; I just don't understand how Connell could have put it in his book, though he wasn't the only one.

Best wishes,
Fred.

[Gumby]

Possibly he mistook those who were assigned to F Co. but were not killed as all ending up on with Reno, forgetting that many were left at the Powder River, since there were not enough horses for all of the men and some had to guard the cattle and other supplies. I haven't counted them yet so it is just a wild guess.

[elisabeth]

Fred, you're right, the pack train would make an interesting study.

One of the puzzles is the discrepancy in numbers from company to company. Custer's order said six men plus an NCO from each company -- yet your breakdown above gives us at least 6 companies with more than that. There'd need to be good reasons, I should think, or Custer would have had something to say about it ... Some strikers and cooks perhaps; but we know those jobs didn't necessarily absolve men from front-line fighting, as Reno's ended up killed with Custer. And not all officers with spare horses assigned an extra man to look after them: Benteen mentions having two of his own horses wounded in the hilltop fight, yet his is one of the companies with the regulation number accompanying the packtrain.

Would it be reasonable to think that some of the "extras" were men their company COs had identified as stragglers in the making, with failing horses, and that they were detailed to the pack train as the only place they'd be any use? It's hard to think of any other reasons for numbers as high as those from F and L. (Note that L has no stragglers -- which could suggest that they'd all been weeded out earlier?)

[mcaryf]

Hi

Thanks to all for your various answers to my original question. Plainly for whatever reason Connell was wrong in saying there were 24 men from F on Reno Hill.

Regards

Mike

[fred]

Bob--

F Company left 8 at PRD; plus 1 (sick, AWOL, or DS)

That is 20, total. Close. You made a good point there.

Best wishes,
Fred.

[fred]

Elisabeth--

Good point. You might be right. If there were that many stragglers we know of, how many would there be who we don't know about? There is no other accounting for the discrepancies. You have 50 men in a company; 40 die, 7 were w/ the packs, & 3 others show up with those same packs... ?

Best wishes,
Fred.

[Dark Cloud]

Be it said, Connell never made any pretense of original research whatsoever, and objected to even having an index at all till the original publisher made him. He wasn't writing a history book, he was just retelling the various stories about Custer and the battle.

So while it isn't a novel, it makes no attempt to be definitive. Like the marker stones, the false stories are part of 'the' story now as well.

[d o harris]

Connell succeeded in writing an entertainment piece, which he intended, not a monograph which he did not intend. It is really stretching matters to use him as a source, or to hold him accountable for any slight or serious errors of fact, as fact is accepted in 2006. Given the genre Connell used, these errors, so to speak, may have been carefully selected from available choices to enhance the story he wanted to tell. SOMS is a work of faction. No one requires that Capote's "In Cold Blood" be absolutely accurate. I do not say that Connell engaged in deliberate falsification, but that perhaps he was looking to find a different "truth" that could not be surrounded by a repetition of acceptable "facts", and he also wanted to make some money in the process. After all, that was how he earned his living.