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Post by BrokenSword on Aug 25, 2009 15:35:48 GMT -6
Yup. A beer truck. (read that from a photostat of contemporary newspaper account)
And... it happened during a period of America's deepest dispair, when a dark shadow was cast over the land, called -- Prohibition.
BS
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Post by Diane Merkel on Aug 27, 2009 21:27:42 GMT -6
Didn't you interview the guy from Dark Shadow?
Great dialogue, Crazy! You should be a screenwriter.
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Post by tonypag7 on Aug 28, 2009 15:39:22 GMT -6
Any resonse to my last post concerning the double ford civil war theory?
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Post by Diane Merkel on Aug 31, 2009 9:29:00 GMT -6
Sorry -- we get sidetracked easily.
Everyone, please go back to page six, read reply 85, and give Tony your thoughts.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Aug 31, 2009 10:09:10 GMT -6
All testimony from officers notes bodies in a ravine (about 28). It's generally thought to be Deep Ravine, but there are no markers there because they'd wash away. They put them up on the high ground, and that became the SSL in fantasy. Camp thought they were arranged to resemble a firing line, because they represent no corpse congruent with the marker.
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Post by herosrest on Sept 3, 2009 17:06:25 GMT -6
Hi tonypag7, ln looking at battle events, l keep ending back with DeRudio in the timber. What he heard and saw. Without doubt he was able to hear gunfire and determine its direction of origin. Fighting around him in the timber had ceased drowning out distant events. I trust him on stuff he heard.
What he saw is problematic, if he was as close as he could be to what he saw on the bluffs, it's ½ to ¾ a mile distant, at least. Here images.library.wisc.edu/History/EFacs/SetPerAmerInd/Reno/M/0583.jpg is his mark '7' on the RCoI map.
DeRudio was the eldest officer, sight deteriorates with age, that doesn't mean he's blind but applies. He did not have binoculars that anyone knows of. His observation was made with naked eye. I can duplicate that and did. l worked our a spot l knew to be those distances away, ½ & ¾ mile and went to see what l could make out at those distances. l was able to step into his shoes in that little test and decide with certainty how reliable his observations were.
Here files.myopera.com/herosrest/albums/805954/86.jpg is something similar to what he was looking at. Though he was further away and in timber. DeRudio is important to understanding important aspects of the Custer fight, so it is worth serious consideration.
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jody
Junior Member
Posts: 53
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Post by jody on Sept 5, 2009 15:08:32 GMT -6
Herosrest, Looking at my old FO (forward observer) notes, I see that 500 meters is the distance where a human figure can just be made out - as opposed to the target being a shrub, a rock, or a refrigerator, etc. - with the naked eye. (I also wrote down at the time, that the "maximum effective range" of our M-16 was 460 meters. It was explained to me that the mef meant that it was the distance your average GI could hit a man-sized target half the time. I see that now the M-16's mef has increased to 500 meters. Who says the Army hasn't advanced in 40 yrs. ? ) If, at 500 meters, a figure is just barely discernable as human, any other description as to clothing or enormous sideburns showing that identify the person(s) seen at greater distances is problematical. Jody
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Post by herosrest on Sept 6, 2009 6:24:54 GMT -6
Jody, considerable regard is placed in DeRudio's sighting, Girard or Gerard also. Much of how events are understood, developed and presented flow from those observations. It is worthwhile assessing their reliability.
Lt. Varnum at RCoI stated he spotted the Grey horse troop in motion on the bluffs, l would guess simply a blur of horse movement, as Major Reno's battalion halted and dismounted in the valley to skirmish. That is a significant time discrepency to DeRudios take. Varnum's observation is easier to accept, although their are only a few places where the grey horse troop could be spotted unless they rode the actual rim of the bluffs, which was not the case because they would fall off.
Here lies a basic conundrum of battle study and route followed to Custer's fight, the timing of it all. The difference of time between Varnum and DeRudios observations is the entire duration of the valley skirmish.
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jody
Junior Member
Posts: 53
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Post by jody on Sept 6, 2009 14:32:38 GMT -6
I take it, that the photo shown in your reply #95 (which was taken in 1926 at the Reno retreat crossing point) the figure you are indicating is on top of the ridge. The group in the foreground is about 100 yards from the camera.
Looks like cars or wagons and perhaps a human up there. Though it could also be the front of a car or wagon or horse. Just a small dark spot.
A bit of work with the topo map shows that figure on top of the ridge is 300 ft above the camera that's positioned on the river bank.
And that it is about 1,800 ft to that directly on the map. A little trigonometry gives a sight line distance of around 2,100 ft or about 640 meters.
That's 140 meters beyond the point (500 meters) where one can just make out that the figure is a human.
2,100 ft is less than your 1/2 mile. I don't know about you, but I can't make out any detail of that small dark spot on the ridge, which is closer than that.
So, it doesn't appear that DeRudio could see what he claimed.
Doesn't he say at the RCOI that he identified Cooke by his side whiskers and others by their clothing? Check me on this, been awhile since I read his testimony.
And didn't members of the inquiry show some disbelief at his statements?
So if he couldn't see what he said he saw, what does that do to your timing?
Jody
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Post by bc on Sept 6, 2009 15:04:19 GMT -6
Jody, I wouldn't rely on the 500 meter figure to identify people. It is different looking into jungle to identify someone that this situation. It is different looking on something on the side of ridge as well. But look at something on top of a hill or ridge with the blue sky as the background which silhouettes the figures, then things change. Something I and others personally checked out looking from hills north of the Reno fight down into the valley and vice versa being down by the timber and looking up to the hill. People and horses and people on top of horses can be identified. Not sure about the beard, but you can see the difference between a blue shirt and a buckskin shirt and a brown or grey horse.
Herosrest can take his tall building (in an experiment he did) and have someone stand on top of it with the sky behind him to do a better comparison. Or go drive towards any hilltop at varying distances to see how far away cars can be recoginzed. Go out anywhere where some people are standing on a hill and do the same drive and then compare. Post back. A person on horseback will be about 8 to 9 feet tall. As an aside, this summer I looked at lot of realbird's horses out grazing over a mile away and could make them out. I could tell they were riderless. Guess what I'm saying is to go out and look before you leap here. And remember, DeRudio spent over a month riding behind Custer and Cooke and Tom Custer, et. al, and probably at great distances while he was eating their dust. Those three probably rode together quite a bit. Clad in buckskins with different hats, being seen together every day at a distance, not all that incomprehendable that DeRudio saw what he says he saw.
bc
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kenny
Full Member
Posts: 156
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Post by kenny on Sept 6, 2009 16:51:21 GMT -6
You referring to a lone dismounted figure, leading two horses along the top of the ridge in the background?
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Post by herosrest on Sept 6, 2009 17:22:10 GMT -6
The picture was 1886, D.F. Barry. l read DeRudio as some further distance back, down river than the Reno retreat crossing. I worked distance as liklihood from the 1891 map and then Norris one when l discovered it. It's difficult to guage where in truth the guys isolated in the timber were, but they didn't make it out of the defensive position or returned to it.
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jody
Junior Member
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Post by jody on Sept 7, 2009 10:52:42 GMT -6
Herosrest. Yes, Barry, 1886. My error.
bc. You've been on site and seen what you can see, so I can't argue with the facts!
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Post by herosrest on Sept 7, 2009 12:41:12 GMT -6
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Post by Dark Cloud on Sept 8, 2009 8:53:53 GMT -6
On a clear day against a blue sky in the afternoon, you probably can see it as is proposed, best later in afternoon with sun behind the viewer. If the sun is overhead, not so good, and if it's dusty and smoky, good luck. It had to have been very dusty and smoky, something accounts support.
The photos of the battlefield in the years right after show a near desert with grass cropped way down, a few shrubs, lots of that fine dirt in areas devoid of any growth. It was many years of absence of bison and other grazers that allowed the seemingly lush fields there today, which makes recent verification experiments of re-enactors riding to indicate dust on that day so amusing. A huge village near a site known for bison followed by a largish battle on a really hot day when the air was already full of village smolder smoke with a herd of thousands of ponies adding their own must have been a breathing issue above and beyond a visual one.
Further, in a gunfight you're losing , how long would someone stare up and squint for positive ID? How reliable? The beard (hair from face in wind) and buckskin, yeah, but Custer or Boyeur? Be hard to say. Further, what difference does it really make? Whichever specific individual, he wasn't enemy and he was waving his hat surely to indicate position and let Reno know that support from the rear was not happening. At least, that seems the logical assumption of no great moment. Unless the wave was to indicate 'get out and join us here.'
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