| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| bhist |
Posted - January 26 2004 : 05:43:18 AM
Hi All:
I'm conducting a poll on the Friends of the Little Bighorn Battlefield's website with the question, "Was Custer to blame for the defeat of the 7th Cavalry at LBH"?
Right now, Custer is getting his butt kicked in the poll. Feel free to vote and when you do you can leave a comment explaining why you voted the way you did.
www.friendslittlebighorn.com |
| 25 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| joseph wiggs |
Posted - June 18 2004 : 9:39:26 PM
Lorenzo, I do not speak Italian. However, I fully understand each and every post you have submitted to this forum, thus far. You are here because you care and, you have something of importance to say. You have been consistant in stating that you feel General Custer has been, unduly, labelled an incompetent fool who got his men killed needlessly. You have, consistently asked us to see the other side of the picture,to be open in our thougts for other possibilities. You have consistently asked us to act like gentlemen and deal with each other respectfully. It is for these reasons that I ask you to continue to submit your posts, we need more "Martinis." |
| lorenzo G. |
Posted - June 10 2004 : 04:29:35 AM
Thank you Joseph: I will follow the call of duty  |
| joseph wiggs |
Posted - June 09 2004 : 10:10:11 PM
Lorenzo, Please continue to express your viewpoint on this forum. Do not be dicouraged. Your comments are of great importance. Your statement, "There is no greatest dumb of the one which do not want to hear", is reminiscent of another adage, "None are so blind as they who refuse to see." |
| lorenzo G. |
Posted - June 09 2004 : 12:52:40 PM
I don't think at all that my english is good. Never told this. But I simply think that can be understandable. The adage don't concern stupidity, just the will to hear someone other opinion: Someone that don't want to listen is more dumb then a real dumb, cause there's no way to make him hear.
I will stay on the field. |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - June 09 2004 : 11:38:05 AM
How in the world would you know they understand?
Not to put too fine a point on it, Lorenzo, but you use 'foreign' as a noun. It's an adjective. I can assume what you mean, but in aggregate, this is a burden to decipher, and to be held responsible if I mistake what you're trying to say is annoying when you don't understand your error or how it prompted the response it did.
That's my point about Benteen and Martin, and why Martin's alleged assurance that the Indians were running - when he'd seen no such thing - aggravates. At the end of it all, I can well imagine why Benteen was furious at him, knowing he was in a lose/lose situation with the public if he's seen as blaming a recent immigrant who tried hard and is so sympathetic. His buddies might understand him and get tired of correcting him, and Martin assumes he's got it down cold, pretty much.
Even in the twenties, Martin's descriptions followed by his conclusions suggest his English STILL isn't very good, because he doesn't seem to connect them and see any inconsistency. This might be attributed to age, but it's apparently the same story he's mostly told all along.
An adage is what you meant to say, adagio is a music piece. Strictly speaking, the quote makes no sense, grammatical or otherwise. I assume you mean to say 'no one is as stupid as he who refuses to hear.' Correct?
You think it's simple, Lorenzo, but you're not exchanging platitudes with friends whose meanings can be safely assumed by key word identification. Much of the LBH controversy is over interpretation of orders and who said what to whom when. Very specific stuff.
I consider your resolute participation a great asset, and I hope your English continues to improve, but you have to make allowances as we do and entertain the possibility your English isn't as good as you think it currently is. |
| lorenzo G. |
Posted - June 09 2004 : 08:49:25 AM
I have a lot of correspondence at the foreign. Lot of friends in the States that never misunderstood a word of what I write.
What I write it's so simple and simple is the sense. Other people understood, you don't.
There is an old adagio here in my country: "There is no greatest dumb of the one which do not want to hear". |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 10:40:17 PM
Of course, Wiggs, nobody equated his knowledge with his language skills. He isn't and hasn't said what he thinks he has, and this ought to be called to his attention, because he sometimes makes no sense whatever.
In your haste to position yourself as a PC hero of the first rank, you are hampered again by not understanding what has been written here, including your own stuff.
Further, it was not designed as a putdown, but meant seriously. If Martini talked as Lorenzo writes, much is explained. After all, he says his English wasn't too good at Reno's Inquiry, which led to confusion on the record (regarding whether he'd gone to the train after Benteen) so it must have been really BBC/Etonian debate quality at the LBH three years earlier when exhausted, scared, and being shot at. God only knows what Martin thought he overheard or what the orders were in addition to his note.
It's an unexciting aspect, but look what Martin is the sole source for. It's potentially quite important, insofar as anything is. |
| joseph wiggs |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 10:12:55 PM
"At least Lorenzo, you have provided a fine illustrative example of how Martini probably confused and misled everyone by thinking his english was better than it was, and that he thought he said things he had not or hadn't said things he had."
Lorenzo, you are quite correct. The entire mission was planned, developed, and enacted for the sole purpose of punishing the Indians who were viewed as recalcitrant. Punishment of Indians, during his era, did not consist of a spanking or being sent to ones room.
To equate ones knowledge with his ability to speak a foreign language is reprehensible and crass. On behalf of the majority of the members of this forum, let me be the first to apolgize. |
| lorenzo G. |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 11:56:07 AM
That's your opinion that don't agree with mine. I agree with Hutton version instead, that show how Custer was compelled etc. as I explained in my previous posts. But of course I respect your opinion. |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 11:07:48 AM
If I understand you, you're incorrect. Custer had several options. He was neither compelled nor ordered to attack but to use his head. He chose to attack of his own free will; he was not channelled into it by circumstances beyond his control. |
| lorenzo G. |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 10:45:13 AM
what I told right up here? |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 10:40:11 AM
You stated as fact he had been ordered to attack. |
| lorenzo G. |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 10:34:53 AM
Well, it means really that we don't understand each other. Attack was not an option. Where and when attack could have been an option. From all the circumstances explained right up in the last post, Custer was compelled to attack; from the orders, what they expected from him, from the circumstances.
Of course, I don't pretend to have the truth, this is my own opinion. |
| Anonymous Poster8169 |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 10:22:07 AM
quote:
Originally posted by wILD I
I made the point about Cooke carrying the message because generally this was the practice in most armies.Young officers were attached to HQ and were well aquainted with the situation and the wishes of the commanding officer.
Benteen would not as easely have dismissed an officer as he did Martin.
Regards
It wasn't really the practice in frontier armies. Officers were too important to be used as errand boys, especially when they had several competent people available around them. Sergeant Major Sharrow, Chief Trumpeter Voss, Trumpeter Martin, Sergeant Kanipe, Private McIlhargey, and Private Mitchell were all used as messengers by the various commands during and shortly before the battle. All, with the exception of Martin, were experienced soldiers. All, with the exception of Martin, were given oral orders to relay.
Martin is the anomaly here, and the things that make him anomalous suggest that his message might very well have been considered, at the time, the least important of the day. If Custer was anxious that Benteen be "well acquainted" with the situation he might just as well have sent Sharrow, who probably had nothing better to do, but he did not.
R. Larsen
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| Dark Cloud |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 09:43:43 AM
Easy for you to say, whatever it was you just said.
You've gone from "order" to "compel" and now we're admitting attack was an "option." Which was my point, oh, some time ago now. |
| lorenzo G. |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 08:29:14 AM
Dear Dark, you have not called me stupid, but you have dealt to me like such in your last message, however does'nt matter, cause I am not the kind to carry rancor or to be sulky.
What with my last message I wished to demonstrate is that in order to estimate the 25 of june events and the decisions of Custer, it must hold account of the circumstances that influenced them. Beyond to this I meant to demonstrate which it was the thought of the protagonists while they planned the orders that then would have been given to the three columns. The backstage is important. In fact, must not consider just the order in himself, but also the war council that kept the 21 where the greater protagonists had the occasion to express verbally just their point of view - that Terry resumed in the final written order. And such point of view, mistaken or correct that is, comes clearly expressed in the letter of Sheridan that I have brought back, and in which letter he claim that Terry agreed with him. backstage of this order, is the explosion of one war: the campaign of the 76 was an action of war against the Indians who were themselves refused to enter in reservations and therefore, all what follows must seen in the optical of such war, that had the precise goal to tame the " hostile ones " forcing them to enter in the reservoirs. The phrase of Terry, that it hopes one of the columns will meet the Indians and its affirmation that evry one of the columns in motion could take care of itself confirm too my idea and shows as was considered an option too that one of the columns could engage with indians alone too, following needing circumstances. The orders of Terry, approvals in this optical assume one various and more complete valence. "Pursuit the indians" cannot have but a only meant. That meant it's obvious.
I have brought back the phrase of Sheridan then, in order to make to understand as still fluttered the prejudgment (or the ignorance) about the abilities or the behavior in battle of the Indians. The historian Hutton , with better shape, expresses in this regard my same thoughts and it is not a Custer supporter.
As far as the support of Custer to Reno, it was not timid. The soldiers they testified to hear for a long time an intense shooting. That wants to say that Custer (or its men, if he already were died) were not to collect daisies. I do not have sure answers. Nobody has specially about movements of Custer. But right away I think that if Reno had given the time to Custer to enter in the village, resisting on the positions that, to said of those famous officials already named was still possible to hold, the fates of the battle would perhaps be changed - not in Victory, but at least even in a less bloody end. Who knows?
The delay of Custer probably had had to the fact that was being attempted the ideal point in order to come down in the valley. This to my warning. |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 08:17:40 AM
If we're going to continue predicating conversation on the assumption that there was a winning combination available to Reno and Benteen allowing Custer's salvation and possible victory, I remind everyone I've asked to see such. If there isn't any, than en masse a plea for forgiveness is needed from generations of Custerphiles to the principalities of the cosmos. Or at least the need for, if not silence, respectful considerations for the horrors of choice available to those two officers.
Of course, a conclusion suggesting there was jack that could be done renders all the theories mute, and we are once again drawn to the decision to advance north from MTC. |
| El Crab |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 07:59:55 AM
I see your point, and it makes sense. But Cooke was the regimental adjutant. He did go with Reno for a time in the valley, but so did Keogh, and he was a company commander and possibly in charge of a wing of Custer's battalion. Custer sent back a sergeant and the orderly of the day, who was also a trumpeter (seems to be common to send trumpeters as couriers). I just don't see that Cooke should have been sent, given his position. Another lieutenant? Sure, but even then, with the lack of officers in the regiment (several lieutenants leading companies, and officers transferred for a variety of reasons, sending off a non-com and a trumpeter made more sense than sending a commisioned officer, especially regiment's adjutant. |
| wILD I |
Posted - June 08 2004 : 03:03:08 AM
I made the point about Cooke carrying the message because generally this was the practice in most armies.Young officers were attached to HQ and were well aquainted with the situation and the wishes of the commanding officer.
Benteen would not as easely have dismissed an officer as he did Martin.
Regards |
| El Crab |
Posted - June 07 2004 : 9:58:53 PM
quote:
Originally posted by wILD I
Cooke should have carried the message.
No, he shouldn't have. Maybe Martin(i) wasn't the best choice, but it, in a way, might prove something. If the message was a matter of life and death, it would not have been sent with a trooper with a limited grasp of English. And it seems the only reason the message was written was for this reason, to make sure Martin(i) got the message to Benteen. Important enough to make sure it was properly received, but not important enough to be entrusted to a man who spoke English well. It almost as if Custer realised after sending his first message to the pack train, that Knipe might not encounter Benteen, so he wanted to make sure Benteen got the same message. Or maybe he saw, from a different vantage point, Benteen returning to the main trail. |
| benteens brother |
Posted - June 07 2004 : 8:05:10 PM
The order from General Terry is rather ambiguous and I'm sure when the dust had settled Terry wished he had been more specific and forceful. He is basically letting Custer have his head. Pursue the hostiles and attack if you think the conditions are favourable. The other option was to wait until the rest of Terry's column was in position and proceed from there. Custer took the first option and initiated unilateral action and failed. It was his decision, his responsibility for the final outcome. |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - June 07 2004 : 6:09:14 PM
No, Lorenzo, you don't understand everything I write. I certainly don't understand all of your writing. I never called you stupid.
An 'order' is a very specific thing in the military. Your quotes contain no order at all, much less one to attack. They clearly grant decision making ability to Custer. If you understand that, it is not reflected in your postings, because you continue to say Custer was ordered to attack.
How late could Custer have gone into action and still be 'support' for Reno in a cavalry battle? He descends MTC an hour or more after Reno is in a gunfight after a relaxing, wind swept walk along the bluffs. He waves. He's polite. Can't complain.
That's 'support' for Reno's charge?
If Reno had kept the charge up, and the Indians all developed glaucoma and fondness for interior decorating and allowed Reno to race through tribe after tribe uninterrupted, killing at will, where would he be when Custer timidly sticks his toe in the water at MTC to cross?
Having raced to the north end of the village, Reno would be heading south again (if at 7.5 mph as configured by Burmese manuals on Peruvian llama racing applied under observation to ducks in Holland in winter while chased by anacondas on prehensile feet: see Michno's "Because I Say So! I Have A Master's Degree!", page 45).
That's just an extra point question to those still configuring the winning combination that Benteen failed to make when he took over from Marcus "Frackngzot, fella? Bartender!" Reno just an hour later, and five before Reno and Benteen decided not only to leave the wounded but leave them with a list of the things each guy was most scared of to enhance torture pinned to his forehead after deciding they couldn't sell them. Custerphiles suppose worse, but this is a family forum.
Remember: a list of what Benteen could have done in what order that would have saved Custer. Lorenzo, this quiz has your name all over it. |
| lorenzo G. |
Posted - June 07 2004 : 4:53:28 PM
I understand very well what you write Dark Cloud, I am not a stupid. It is instead not so gentle that you remarking always on my unperfect english. Oh yes poor me the dull italian... |
| wILD I |
Posted - June 07 2004 : 3:42:12 PM
Cooke should have carried the message. |
| Dark Cloud |
Posted - June 07 2004 : 3:10:22 PM
At least, Lorenzo, you have provided a fine illustrative example of how Martini probably confused and misled everyone by thinking his English was better than it was, and that he thought he had said things he had not or hadn't said things he had. |
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