Post by elisabeth on Nov 23, 2007 10:37:12 GMT -6
That's a nice analogy, professional athletes. And the Custer kids didn't have much of a role model for growing up, either, by all accounts, as "Father Custer" was just as bad on the merry pranks. (According to Boston's letters, even Maggie, who generally comes across as a bit more normal than the rest, was a complete hoyden: going around boxing Boston's ears, beating up Calhoun, and so on. A Custer home was not a peaceful home ...!) In a way -- Fred, Conz and others will kill me for this -- army life may have compounded their innate infantilism. Loads of responsibility in certain areas ... but in others, quite sheltered from things they'd have had to worry about in the civilian world. Keogh touches on that in one of his letters, when he says that "army life unfits a man for all other occupations". And the eminently sensible General Alexander and his wife talk of weighing up the advantages of the army over a civilian career, opting for it because so much is taken care of for them; I haven't the quote to hand, but it's something along the lines of not having to worry about things like rent or housing or insurance. Prosaic, but one can see their point. Either GAC or Tom, thrust into the civilian world, might have had to grow up a little sooner.
[By the way ... I've been tempted to wonder if J. M. Barrie could have read any of Libbie's books before inventing Peter Pan! It sounds daft -- and therefore probably is -- but there are so many points of contact. The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up ("Oh, the cleverness of me!") for GAC ... Wendy the den mother for Libbie ... the brothers for the brothers ... the assorted Lost Boys for the Clan ... Nana the faithful dog for Eliza the faithful servant ... even an Indian princess, in Tiger Lily. ---------- Well, just an idle thought, and definitely in parenthesis.]
Agree about the "system in place that allowed for flexibility". Several writers have argued that the final pre-LBH battalion assignments were by the book (though one wonders then why it took GAC and Cooke so long to figure them out). However, those last few minutes before battle was joined give a fair indication of how far flexibility was the prevailing ethos. First we have the Wallace business -- "don't hang back with the coffee-coolers" -- with GAC perfectly happy to let his official itinerist go off and join in the fun; and then we have Keogh going with Cooke to Ford A. His mission may have been official -- but Edgerly, for one, had no trouble believing that he was there purely "to get into the first of the fight". (Custer in 76; can't cite page ref with book packed away.) And then we have Custer's own penchant for wandering off from the command earlier in the march: sometimes to scout, usefully, but sometimes just to hunt or to play tricks on Boston. In this atmosphere, it's not hard to believe that Tom was with HQ simply because he was Tom, and not with any official role ...
[By the way ... I've been tempted to wonder if J. M. Barrie could have read any of Libbie's books before inventing Peter Pan! It sounds daft -- and therefore probably is -- but there are so many points of contact. The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up ("Oh, the cleverness of me!") for GAC ... Wendy the den mother for Libbie ... the brothers for the brothers ... the assorted Lost Boys for the Clan ... Nana the faithful dog for Eliza the faithful servant ... even an Indian princess, in Tiger Lily. ---------- Well, just an idle thought, and definitely in parenthesis.]
Agree about the "system in place that allowed for flexibility". Several writers have argued that the final pre-LBH battalion assignments were by the book (though one wonders then why it took GAC and Cooke so long to figure them out). However, those last few minutes before battle was joined give a fair indication of how far flexibility was the prevailing ethos. First we have the Wallace business -- "don't hang back with the coffee-coolers" -- with GAC perfectly happy to let his official itinerist go off and join in the fun; and then we have Keogh going with Cooke to Ford A. His mission may have been official -- but Edgerly, for one, had no trouble believing that he was there purely "to get into the first of the fight". (Custer in 76; can't cite page ref with book packed away.) And then we have Custer's own penchant for wandering off from the command earlier in the march: sometimes to scout, usefully, but sometimes just to hunt or to play tricks on Boston. In this atmosphere, it's not hard to believe that Tom was with HQ simply because he was Tom, and not with any official role ...