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Post by quincannon on Jun 19, 2011 16:07:59 GMT -6
Billy: There is not one smidgen of light between our views here.
And a Happy Father's Day to you. I was tasked with cleaning out the litter boxes but nothing more. Today is a day for playing with my little boats. I received Utah and Nevada on Friday so I have to see about re-arranging my 1898 - 1920 display.
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Post by wild on Jun 20, 2011 5:44:31 GMT -6
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Post by quincannon on Jun 20, 2011 10:23:06 GMT -6
Wild: We disagree. Custer was not snookered. He snookered himself. It was the old game of the rules not applying to me. Rules are only for the other guys. Reaping the Whirlwind.
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Post by wild on Jun 20, 2011 16:01:14 GMT -6
Hi Quinncannon Yes ,the move was totally voluntary.Unforced error. His lofty eminence of this parish refered to this sort of decision as a 50/50 call.Even without hindsight it is closer to a 90/10 call.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 20, 2011 16:40:08 GMT -6
The battle was consigned not to be won when Custer divided the command with no communication set up. He had reason to think that was okay given precedent and reasonable assumption based on what he thought he knew. It's only with hindsight any specific percentages can be applied. For what he knew, 50-50 is reasonable, had the support route been closer as he thought.
The 7th's defeat was probably made sure when he failed to follow Reno and headed north, most likely to take advantage of then notional crossing points that may have been further than he surmised.
Custer's destruction was cemented when his command crossed MTC and its ancillary Deep Coulee, neither attacking as delayed support for Reno nor as a separate offensive action and not even achieving a worthy defensive position. Before he did that, he could have united the regiment under his command in one form or another. But, he crosses an 8 lane highway allowing near complete access to any possible position direct from the enemy camp which he has neither numbers nor time to defend to get organized further north. I don't think Custer would allow that to happen and the land is terrifying to a trained eye like his from Weir or Sharpshooter.
That's one of the reasons I think the rush north was a reaction to a Custer, possibly the Custer, being wounded as they entered MTC. Then a series of firing lines at the last minute to cover the retreat away to provide succor. If Keogh's troops were in the rear, what Gray calls the Separation Point might just have been the general area where Keogh led his men out of the death trap of the coulee when the front buckled or stopped moving, Keogh heard the deployed firing line, and saw them heading north.
Not completely grasping what had happened, being invisible to him, Keogh led his guys across Luce and NC ridges, sometimes providing covering fire. This scenario allows the officer clot at the top of LSH, not in a defensive position, but on the perimeter of a bad place to be.
I find the rationales for a Ford D deeply strained, as I do any suggestion Custer would 'wait' for anything with Reno audibly in combat, and the fact nobody factors in the Cross Dressed Indians, for which much evidence exists, doesn't make them go away. They could provide all the artifacts offered for Ford D, and they were vetted by Weir, Terry, and the Sioux and Cheyenne as gamboling about in the necessary areas. You cannot just pretend that didn't happen and offer a totally explanation for stuff already explained without reason.
Of course Custer cared that Reno not be wiped out, given it was a sizeable portion of the 7th if nothing else, and I think it most reasonable he had tried to get going into the camp down MTC. Till.......... The Wounding.
Always to be capitalized from now on: The Wounding, accompanied by The Suppressed Burp.
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Post by quincannon on Jun 20, 2011 17:38:24 GMT -6
Between crossed dressed Indians and the Suppressed Burp. I think I had better go back and read some more. Evidently there is a lot I missed.
I always enjoy reading Dark Cloud more than Keogh. They both confuse me to the point of drink or distration, but at least DC does not continually quote some hanger on and the after action nonsense they purvey. Unlike our friend Keogh ( My third cousin twice removed said the timber could be defended by 100 men with no bullets for fifteen days, against 9000 cross dressing burping Indians, so it must be true, because they were not in the timber at all but on a burm that nobody can find, because I don't agree with some guy who salted his land to confuse the issue, and the real timber is back a ways where no trees stand now, cause the river changed course in 1880 and John Brown's Body lies moulding in the grave, to the tune of Glory Glory Hallelujha, and it all must be so because my third cousin twice removed was related by marraige to Captain Carter's fourth ex-wife, who left him for non support at Fort Lincoln, moved to Missoula, Montana, married a miner who was formerly married to the August Finckel look alike who escaped from theLittle Big Horn after Keogh told him he was on perminent pooper-scooper duty for Commanche and he did not care if he was in C Company, Tom Custer was a good friend of his.)
Cross dressing and burps. I shall ponder the deeper meaning of this for a while.
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Post by montrose on Jun 20, 2011 18:35:58 GMT -6
DC gets to the point of the issue.
The decision to move north of the East Ridge complex was a bad one. And this is no Monday Morning quarterback decision. Moving North put the enemy main body between him and the rest of the command. This is a high risk move if you outnumber the enemy.
Custer's move meant that the regiment rear would have to defeat the enemy main body to reach him. So there is a logic flaw that Benteen and the trains could defeat an enemy he could not defeat with his own main body.
The other glaring error is that any setback by Custer's force meant he had nowhere to fall back on. He had put the enemy between him and his remaining force. If he stayed on East ridge, a setback pushes him back on the regiment, so he falls back towards strength. His decision meant he would fall back AWAY from any support.
I have struggled for months to come up with another example of a unit consolidating on the far side of an enemy force. I can not come up with any that do not involve air power. (And these include Market Garden and Dien Bien Phu).
Custer's decision is tactically unsound in any day and age. If he wanted to take a risk, he should have instituted command and control measures to mitigate the risk. In fact, he made the situation worse by further separating his 5 companies. Then he placed himself in a position where he had no ability to gain information on friendly and enemy activities, and no ability to control the battle.
It is impossible for Reno or Benteen or Sheridan or Sherman or Grant to influence Custer's decisions after he unilaterally abandoned his main body responsibilities back on Ash Creek. You may as well blame Comanche. Using the lens of individual personalities can not change the mission, enemy, terrain, troops, and weather (METT-T) factors created by Custer's move north.
When Keough was routed, survivors did not flee towards Weir Peak. They fled in the only direction available to them, to the north, and disaster.
Keough's defensive position was set up facing SOUTH. One of the things you look for in the aftermath of a disaster is signs of irrational decision making. A rational defense would face the main threat, which was west. Instead they were defending against main threat in the very direction they were expecting the pack train. SO were the mules to charge where Keough feared to tread. Someone should have questioned this lethally flawed logic.
And explain what role Reno and Benteen had in this bad decision and the faulty disposition of Keough's command.
Custer's decisions in the north sector of the battle are extremely unusual and extremely rare. So to question his tactics is justified and would be justified if his battalion commanders were Moe, Larry and Curley.
The issue is why was Custer so bad this day. The only campaign previously where he had shown such a lack of ability was the 1867 campaign. The 1868 and 1873 campaigns showed a mixture of bravado and caution, and reflect a very different performance than 1876.
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Post by quincannon on Jun 20, 2011 18:52:49 GMT -6
William I think you are spot on, and it is this very thing that I have come to expect from you. I am in a middle of a measuing contest on the other board on this very subject at the moment, and I must say that no attack, regardless of how hard I press it will ever convince those that adore Custer and despise Reno/Benteen that there were one heck of a lot of hostiles between the two forces and as such they had everything to do with Custer's ultimate demise and the absolute futility of trying to break through to him.
None of these guys ever heard of - never reinforce defeat - evidently.
You are quite correct about Custer being able to fall back while he was on East Ridge or anywhere in that neighborhood. He could have recovered. He could not have won after recovering but he would be alive to reconstitute the regiment and give it another try tomorrow. For purposes of this battle though, he lost it when he turned right. It need not have been the disaster it became, but that was the point of loss.
GOOD JOB WILL
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 20, 2011 19:03:10 GMT -6
Suppressed burps. Honestly. Get it right.
I don't think Custer was in actual command after whatever action ended the westward push down MTC. I think it a series of defensive moves to LSH with Keogh's group doing what most agree on. I do think that all five companies initially were attempting to attack the village at that point. I cannot see Custer passing it while looking at the village, or sending two companies with three in reserve or whatever.
That he did not attack and that everything they did after MTC is bad suggests to me he was wounded, and the need was to get back a ways to figure it out, and that was a grace not granted them. I have a supplementary theory that the 7th had an actual command structure - based on clique, family, and nepotism - that operated with permission of the official one. No Custer would leave a wounded kin to the savages, and no officer would contest the defense and pickup, nor the decision of the Actual.
In other words, the reason he was bad and unlike the historic Custer is because he wasn't in charge, and they were trying to protect him. Reasonable and the inevitable result of all that nepotism and the clique. It was allowed into Afghanistan where two brothers named Tillman served in the same actions. Pretty damned dumb, and they had to disarm the surviving brother. Well, least of the dumb things there, maybe.
The CD Indians is a phrase not of my own that came to reflect those Sioux and Cheyenne who rode army mounts in army uniforms they had obtained in battle. They fooled Weir on the 25th. Later that day, when they rode into the village, they scared a bunch of women, given their uniforms, horses, and riding in formation with the flags. The next day they fooled Terry's guys coming up the LBH. Not for long, but in battle and exhaustion the image may have remained longer than they did.
Accounts say the Indians would plod along and cutting off stuff they didn't like from boots, weapons, uniforms, and they rode all over the field. That could largely explain the artifacts down towards the river and the accounts of some Indians: some saying the Army never got in the village and some saying they did. It's not like there was a central command or public relations office to consolidate the stories and explain it all to the Indians, and some probably thought the army HAD attacked the village, because they saw the CD Indians at a distance or knew someone who had.
That's not for sure, but you have to remove it as a possibility before installing another tale that just ignores something that for sure happened.
Capitalization is apparently proof positive of regard and belief, as when conz capitalizes warrior or soldier to offset his slanders and innuendo. So, making fun of that. The Wounding, which will always inspire The Suppressed Burp. Although, sounds like a Stephen King novel. Tonight, on Fox! A Television Event! Stephen King's The Suppressed Burp! Starring a Baldwin Brother, Jackie Earl Haley, and Amy Winehouse as The Burp.
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Post by quincannon on Jun 20, 2011 19:14:11 GMT -6
OK: Suppressed.
The Custer wounded story is played out well in the novel by Terry Johnson. As I recall it sounded plausable, and it would certainly go a long way to make sense of why things fell apart as they did. No evidence though, but then again one would not expect any.
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Post by Yan Taylor on Jun 21, 2011 3:36:57 GMT -6
Talking about rubbish on TV I watched a film called the Great Sioux Massacre the other night, I sat down with a bottle of dry white wine and a bag of peanuts and laughed all the way through, what made me a little sad was they spent all this money on hundreds of extras and could have made a good job if they would have stuck to the truth, pity this forum was up and running then you guys could have been executive producers, I dont know if you guys have seen this movie but the Indians look more like Apaches then Sioux. Regards Ian.
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Post by fred on Jun 21, 2011 4:18:21 GMT -6
Lew Fred and I don't agree.And we have had our ups and downs.And he has the vocabulary of a sh1t house sergeant major and can express himself thus when he feels the need.But he also has the cojones to meet you half way and respect your views. ;D Very best wishes, Fred.
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Post by fred on Jun 21, 2011 4:25:00 GMT -6
DC,
I think you are mistaken here... with the "cross-dressing." Indians in "blue" never confronted Weir. The first reports of Indians dressed like soldiers come from the DeRudio-O'Neill-Gerard-Jackson gang when one of them-- DeRudio, I believe-- mistook Indians dressed as soldiers for Tom Custer. That indication seems to me like late in the dwindling daylight.
The next time was-- as you say-- when Ball or Roe-- I forget which-- met Indians to his front while he was riding the western slopes of the LBH valley ahead of the Terry-Gibbon column. That was, what, the 26th? Those were the only reported incidents I am aware of.
Best wishes, Fred.
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Post by quincannon on Jun 21, 2011 9:02:06 GMT -6
Ian: I hope you enjoyed the wine and peanuts. The movie was a stinker.
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Post by Dark Cloud on Jun 21, 2011 10:17:59 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.
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