And less than a hundred years later we were on the Moon.
There was a TV movie called The Trial Of General George Armstrong Custer.
They totally dumped on Custer as an impotent vain glorious fool whose mind was gone after he survived the massacre.
To the prosecutor’s withering questioning, Custer just kept answering “Command decision”.
One big disadvantage for Custer was that the Indians had better rifles than the troopers.
Custer had three Gatling Guns at his disposal. But Custer thought they would slow him down, so he left them behind at the fort.
This guy at the link below says Custer was right in declining those guns. They were completely unsuited for the terrain. As for me, I’d have taken those guns, and just moved a little slower (20-20 hindsight, I know. And there is no glory in slow-moving forces.)
https://www.historynet.com/guns-custer-left-behind-burden.htm
Somewhere in there is lost the possible strategic move by Custer to save Terry’s force. Who the indians were really gathered there to fight.
I believe the author is wrong on that point.
Custer had faced Indians in many previous battles, where he was almost always outnumbered. The numbers were not what he misjudged. What he did not account for was that the Indians had changed their battle tactics, shifting from a hit and run mode to a full assault mode.
Custer could have survived The Battle of Little Big Horn, if he had....
1. properly conducted reconnaissance
2. rested his men and horses
3. NOT broken up his fighting force into smaller units
4. NOT underestimated his opponents
These are fatal mistakes for any combat commander
Had Custer won, it would be just a footnote in Western History books like so many other battles most don’t know about.
UNLESS some eastern group, of what back then were called “Indian worshipers” publicized his victory as a “massacre” as a group of Bostonians did Sand Creek and the Washita, an attack on Cheyenne who had just had a 200 man war party come back from raiding in Kansas.
The story would be changed to reflect that Custer hit the tribes at LBH when the happy Indians were doing all happy things and all the warriors were conveniently out “buffalo hunting”, a common excuse used today.
Today’s movie makers, make it look like Custer woke up one morning, looked out the window, and said...”It is such a nice day I think I will go out and kill me a bunch of Indians!”
For all you Custer and Gatling Gun fans out there, here’s a novel that supposes that Custer did bring his machine gun battery to the Little Big Horn.
(I don’t have the book. So I don’t know how it ends. Maybe Sitting Bull captures the guns, and retakes Chicago. Now that would be an ending with a twist.)
https://www.amazon.com/Custers-Gatling-Guns-Machine-Little/dp/1926585011
what frantic thoughts raced through George Armstrong Custer’s mind
One surely must have been “Damn...thats a lot if Indians....”
I’ve often wondered if Custer’s 210 men, had they been armed with Henry repeating rifles and plenty of ammo instead of slow-loading trapdoor Springfields, would have been able to survive.
Superior numbers facing them, yes... but repeaters in the hands of men who knew how to use them effectively might have made a difference.
We’ll never know.
BFLR
In Harry Turtledove’s alternative history novels Custer is a war hero who is about as well loved as Jerry Nadler.
Maybe if he had a tank...
-PJ
Sometimes it is best to have a little patience, Miles, Terry and Gibbons were in the tactical plan. (???) Custer minus his bravado, could have lived and attained his political ambitions if he was a team player. IMO.
The best study on this I’ve read is by Richard Fox, an archaeologist who after the big fires in that region in the 1980s took teams of students with metal detectors and mapped every remaining cartridg3e on the battlefield. He then assembled a story that looks nothing like the “Custer’s Last Stand” circle-of-men fighting Indians riding around them.
According to the story of the shell casings, Custer’s five troops came under steady, but not whithering, long range fire for about 20-30 minutes upon reaching the ridges. Keough with about half the men was some distance from Custer’s half (”Custer Hill” and “Keough Hill”). Meanwhile, the Indians were crawling through the grass, getting extremely close. When they rose up all at once, the cavalry was immediately overwhelmed and fell back down the opposite side of the hill.
Fox’s research shows there was never a circle, and that Custer’s men were in such disarray and retreat that they never even formed a single skirmish line. He found carbine casings all down the back side of the hill as troopers fired, then ran and reloaded.
Moreover, the Sioux had Winchester repeaters. Maybe not a lot, but “some” of the Sioux were better armed than the soldiers they fought. While Fox agrees that some carbines may have jammed, he discounts this as a major factor as the soldiers never fired enough rounds per weapon to come close to jamming.
It is possible, based on Fox’s description, to envision a scenario in which Custer kept all 700 men together, including his ammo. If he had consolidated them into lines, with adequate ammo, he might have done enough damage to the larger force that by the time they figured out how to outflank him, they would be significantly “attrited” to use Gen. Schwartzkopf’s words.
What if Custer would have had close air support during the battle of the Little Big horn...???
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