Worst error?

[quincannon]

I take everything that Hunk says very seriously and I do not think that his post above disappoints. It puts the finger on a very big problem.

Steve: I think you hit on a good portion of the answer also. It is a fundamental mistake to conclude that your enemy will always do this or that. Therefore you go in expecting that he will do what is necessary for him to prevail. If he does not then you defeat him. If he does you are in a tough slugging match, but you are prepared for it. Attitudes about your enemy matter.

[rosebud]

Boy, oh Boy.

This is probably going to cause a big ruckus. I keep hearing "most" of you guys say that they miscalculated how the Indians were going to react and they made a big mistake thinking the Indians would run.

That is just so wrong. The Indians did just exactly the things that were expected of them. The problem is the Cavalry are the ones that deviated from the expected to the unexpected and that let the Indians use the same tactics.......OPPORTUNITY....

Indians are opportunistic fighters and they only used opportunistic situations to win this battle. Custer won at Washita. Did Elliot win at Washita? Elliot gave them an opportunity. And that is the same opportunity that Custer gave the Indians at the LBH.


Custer's plans were to charge the village. Yet no one charged the village. Reno did not charge the village, he pulled up short and dismounted. That is the end of the pressure on the camp.
Custer heads north to charge the village, but instead of charging the village he deploys his troops on a ridge.....End of pressure on the Indians. No one is charging the village they are all sitting on hills.

So do you think Custer miscalculated the Indians or do you think that Custer over estimated the capabilities of the 7th? To me there is a big difference.

[Dark Cloud]

Not really; this has been well plowed before. The Army DID miscalculate and assume the Indians would run as they 'always' had, etc. That's the Ariadne thread that runs through all Army correspondence that still exists today to look at. You exemplify the current faddish desire to discover something new others have missed, which is impossible at present.

The issue is the size of the 'village', which is a term used here to include six tribal circles - each of which are what would normally be called a village - and odds and ends. In a big village there are one or two very big horse herds. There is no command structure with one guy able to order this or that to happen. Small villages, like the one at the Washita separated by necessity from many others, can react pretty fast, and move and defend. But it takes comparatively forever with the bigger villages, relatively speaking, who have to flense out their mounts with a thousand others doing the same. These big gatherings were not common, and they had rarely been attacked, and when attacked behaved differently and SLOWER than the smaller camps, as at Kildeer Mt. and the LBH.

Because of the time issue the larger villages HAVE to put on a defense of more substance than pack up and run and the warriors fight a rear guard. The dust and confusion would be incredible.

So, the Indians did not act as the Army expected because the Indians could not react as the Army expected.

Reno did not choose to put his iffy unit within a huge village with pistols and poor horsemen, and chose to attack on foot, which worked till numbers obviated it and he had to retreat. Custer neither supported, nor attacked, nor chose a defensible position, nor communicated with the other units with useful info. This suggests that the movements and actions of his units were not proactive beyond MTC.

[quincannon]

Rosebud: Mine above was generic not specific to this one battle. Underestimation, regardless of circumstance or application is to be avoided. If that underestimation is based upon some phony idea of cultural seperiority, or if it's based on you thinking your enemy is armed with slingshots and it turns out they are armed with machine guns it does not matter. It is equally bad, and the guy who does it most times will turn out to have lost.

[rosebud]

Quincannon.

All I am saying is that the Indians acted as expected and did not do anything unusual.
Did they stop Gibbon and Terry while the Village escaped to the South?
Again....nothing unusual.

Custer underestimated the size of the villages. Thus making Custer do the unusual.

Rosebud

[wild]

Hi Hunk
Nicely argued post,very plausible'
What immediately came to mind were Brave,Warrior,savage.Not exactly the nomenclature of Mother Teresa's band of little sisters .Add to that a rap sheet the envy of the IRA, Taliban and Hammas combined.
Harmless these tribes were not.
I'll accept "despise" and "contempt" as the atitudes permeating army thinking.What I won't accept is that these attitudes excused the operational shambles which was Custer's effort on the LBH.
The regiment was a military system,a delivery ststem in fact.It's strenght lay in it's organisation,it's command and control,it's leadership.It was designed as an all weather,all seasons all eventualities fighting outfit.
Emotional feelings towards the enemy should not have influenced the operational systems of the unit.
You hold that Custer dissipated the strenght of the regiment in a burst bravado brought on by emotional considerations?You could be dead right but it's no way to fight a battle.
Best Wishes

[quincannon]

Rosebud: I think the point is that the Indians did what you or I would have expected them to do. I don't believe George shared our convictions.

[shan]

DC

An excellent post, concise and to the point, which maybe more than mine will be.

When one look at the number of topics that get discussed ad infinitum on these boards, posts that tend go on so long because people feel have various corners, or maybe theories they need to defend, which in turn tends to lead them to try and describe this or that individuals actions on the day as if those men had had the luxury of sitting back and taking time out to decide which was the best course to take. Likewise, those debates that are often about the main actors states of mind can never really be untangled because we have a totally different mind set to them, besides, I suspect the men themselves wouldn't have had a clue what they thought, being far too busy trying to survive rather than worry about whether history would judge whether they had made the right decision or not.

It is often the simple things that get overlooked in these debates, your example of the problems that the warriors in a large village would have simply trying to get a mount is an obvious one, but it tells us far more about the way the battle unfolded than worrying about Reno's lack of courage on the day.

Likewise your summery of Custers failure to act either quickly, or decisively enough. We can string together all the theories we like as to why he ended up where he did and when, but stand back and look at it objectively, if he was indeed making decisions after MTC--MTF, then they weren't very good ones given that they led; not only his own death and the men under his command, but to the death of those one would think he had a special interest in saving, namely family and friends.

Shan

[rosebud]

Likewise your summery of Custers failure to act either quickly, or decisively enough. We can string together all the theories we like as to why he ended up where he did and when, but stand back and look at it objectively, if he was indeed making decisions after MTC--MTF, then they weren't very good ones given that they led; not only his own death and the men under his command, but to the death of those one would think he had a special interest in saving, namely family and friends.

Shan


If I understand this, I come to the conclusion that you think Custer is dead before these decisions are made.

If we keep it simple as you suggest, we will have someone leaving Calhoun on a ridge while they carry Custer's lifeless body on to Custer hill. Yup that sure works for me. Why didn't I think of that.

Rosebud

[wild]

LSH makes no sense with a living Custer.How much less sense does it make with a dead Custer?

If Custer was trying to break contact with the Indians,trying to shake off skirmishing Indians, direction might not have been so important.

[shan]

No Rosebud, I didn't say that you did. All I'm saying is that it doesn't seem to me, repeat me, that Custer acted decisively and with speed after he left the bluffs. The movements that followed, meanderings that ultimately led to his demise on LSH seem to me to have largely dictated by the Indians, however unwittingly.

Shan

[rosebud]

All I'm saying is that it doesn't seem to me, repeat me, that Custer acted decisively and with speed after he left the bluffs. The movements that followed, meanderings that ultimately led to his demise on LSH seem to me to have largely dictated by the Indians, however unwittingly.

Shan


OK....I think we will disagree with his meanderings. But thats OK with me. I think he was tooooo busy with the Indians near Blummer ridge to do much meandering.
Rosebud

[quincannon]

Rosebud: I don't recall ever reading how you think this thing played out. Perhaps I missed it somewhere along the line. I would like to see what you think happened (only the Custer portion), so I can get a better handle on what you are saying here and in the future.

[El Crab]

Nov 14, 2011 9:14:43 GMT -6 quincannon said:

I take everything that Hunk says very seriously and I do not think that his post above disappoints. It puts the finger on a very big problem.

Steve: I think you hit on a good portion of the answer also. It is a fundamental mistake to conclude that your enemy will always do this or that. Therefore you go in expecting that he will do what is necessary for him to prevail. If he does not then you defeat him. If he does you are in a tough slugging match, but you are prepared for it. Attitudes about your enemy matter.

I'd say that at least part of winning a fight is getting your opponent to do what you want them to do. I've never fought in combat, but every other competitive activity seemed to be about that. Anticipate their moves and get them to do what you want them to do.

Am I wrong?

[wild]

Anticipate their moves and get them to do what you want them to do.That's defence not offence.