Posted by Beecher on November 11, 1999 at 06:39:51:
In Reply to: Re: Custer's posted by Don on November 06, 1999 at 10:00:52:
His CROW scouts said "attack now" or lose them. So you are telling us that these same Crow scouts who were advising Custer not to attack because it was "so big" were meanwhile going in and taking Sioux ponies. They were hungry to count coup on many Sioux.
This is why Custer had CROW scouts -- this was their land, taken from them by the Lakota (who killed a significant amount of Crow in doing so). They knew the area intimately. Custer had the intelligence as to size and location. They had to report to him every half hour and no trail was to be passed by. Which is why there was a FOUR hour halt on June 24 while the scouts examined a canyon to the left.
Custer had done the impossible, gotten an entire regiment to within attacking distance of a "hostile" village in the daylight, in the summer.
Where would Custer's career had gone if he returned to Terry to tell him: "Well, Sir, I decided to pull back because the scouts told me there were just too many Indians for the 7th Cavalry to handle." Since Sheridan himself considered that each column was capable of handling anything they found, GAC would have counted himself lucky to command a pack train after that.
Custer came upon the village, and had eight companies in range of it at one point, because he moved rapidly during the previous 12 hours.
He was approaching the village with 8 companies, why should he consider that he was in any trouble whatsoever? None of his officers protested, save Benteen, who was noted for hassling Custer for any reason that would call attention to Benteen.
Callwell: "The division of force, often necessitated by the circumstances, is less often objectional in small wars campaigns than in regular warfare."
And "Purely frontal attacks are a mistake because the enemy gives way befiore them and the hostile line of retreat is left unthreatened. Frontal attacks (Reno) combined with flank attacks (Custer and Benteen) are infinitely preferable if circumstances permit."
Custer had no choice but to move forward as soon as he could if he was going to have any chance of arriving at the location of the villages while the lodges were still standing and the pony herds still mostly uncollected. In these situations, despite what many novice historians think, reconnaisance was helpful if time permitted, while a lack of it was not as serious as it would be had a conventional force been the object of the attack. Lack of reconn might lead to delays due to difficult terrain being stumbled upon, with or without sniping going on nearby or it might lead to finding more Indians than expected, but these were not considered to be the problems they would be had both sides been coventional forces. Most people still cannot grasp this after reading a number of books by people involved in these campaigns. Nobody wrote a book on how it was done, as a textbook. Indeed, West Point never instituted any kind of curiculum on Indian warfare. Fighting Indians was OJT.
Custer's "tactical mistakes" are only tactical mistakes if you are looking at this operation through the eyes of someone who has not yet seen the differences between campaigning against conventional and unconventional foes. Many of these are subtle, others slightly so, a few are obvious. What may appear to be a classic military mistake had Custer been fighting English, or Austrian or Russian troops, may actually be completely defensible and proper when the object of the attack is a village or villages of unconventional warriors who did not even have the discipline and organization that other unconventional forces, such as Zulus, did.
This is what you need to look into. I suggest Calwell's "Small Wars" a history of regulars against "irregulars" (Zulus, Afghani's, "Red" Indians, etc.) written in 1886 so it is contemporary with Custer's and the Army's tactics -- SOP -- against the the plains Indians.
Cavalry tactics do NOT "rely" on reconn. The Cavalry IS reconn!! And their decisions wer often made on the fly, to paraphrase Lt. Edward Godfrey: "An attack against indians must be made with celerity, and generally without other knowledge of the numbers of the opposing force than that discovered or conjectured while following the trail. The dispositions for the attack may be said to be made in the dark and successful surprise to depend on luck."
A good Cavalry commander could be compared to a "Top Gun" pilot -- fluid, flexible, decisions made on the fly. And possessing the confidence to carry it off and direct hundreds of men to do it.
To quote Callwell: "Vigour and decision are at the root of effective conduct of irregular warfare operations."
Callwell: "To the commander thrown on his own resources, who sees a great chance open should he risk all in one single throw, the accepted cpode of strategy and tactics is of no avail, and the maxims of the academic school of military thought have small significance."
What basic principles of "warfare" can you violate when there aren't any save EXPERIENCE!?
Callwell "It cannot be insisted upon too strongly that in a small war the only possible attitude to assume is, speaking strategically, the offensive. The regular army must force its way into the enemy's country and seek him out. It must be ready to fight him wherever he may be found. It must play to win and not for safety."
Calwell's book is still used today in seminars on guerrilla warfare and fighting "irregulars" at the Army's Command and General Staff College. I have corresponded with one of the instructors there and he requires it be read as homework for his seminars.
Beecher
: : What "worked well" on the Washi-ta was slaughter! What a horrible way to express what you were trying to say! I think we can rule out the possibility of you having American Indian relatives, right? (No, in answer to your question, I'm a white boy.) Cavalry tactics, whether on horseback or in the cockpit of a Huey Cobra, rely on accurate intelligence (info), and then USING what intelligence you have to make wise decisions. No person who has never seen battle conditions can say for sure what he/she would do, but Custer was NOT being attacked nor pursued, and he WAS being advised by all those with him, both red and white, NOT to attack. His men and horses were fatigued, and he was being told that there was a greater number of "enemy" on his front than previously reported. Bearing all this in mind, he chose to not "let them scatter", by jumping headlong into the enemy's face. He knew of other cav columns approaching (even though one of them had been turned back at the Rosebud), but his sense of invulnerability and desire for glory ruled the moment. Yes, it could be argued that certain things Custer did would have been considered standard operating procedure for cav units in 1876, but ignoring reliable intelligence in favor of personal gain is not SOP, nor indigenous to the 19th or 20th Centuries. Even though we can find examples of that kind of behavior in any century in which history was recorded, it was, is, and always will be, foolish and potentially deadly. Obviously not being able to prove my next op/ed comment, I will still say that the vast majority of cav officers, subordinate or superior to a Lieutenant Colonel, would NOT have taken Custer's steps. So it can not be successfully implied that my view of his actions are biased by 20th Century thinking. They are biased by rational thinking.
: : I do agree, however, with your last comment. The root of all evil is greed, which is manifested by increasingly hurtful levels of behavior through covetousness, theft, and murder.