I really detest ignorance attacking those who are not around to defend themselves. In a group of the always experts, there was a group discussion board on Gen. George Custer's pet dogs and it was typical in morons saying things just to say things and making things up as they seemed to hate dogs.
One skirt on the site was busy spouting off, and there was posted a dig from a Trooper from the 1974 Black Hills Expedition which General Custer led in the expedition.
The Trooper was "looking in the wagons" that the General had filled with the General's collection of the expedition and then was making a bitchy comment about how the sick men were all in the worst wagons that rode worse than army wagons, while the dogs and things were in the best ambulances".
An ambulance was the name for a specific wagon then and has been transformed to a different term today.
I will now explain what the reality as as readers will also think this is a bad thing, as you of course like the Trooper and the dog hater, are not a General so are clueless as to what was taking place.........again why General Custer was a General and everyone else was taking orders from him, since he was a teenager.
On a military expedition, men are no different than bullets, in being expendable. That is the reality of the quartermaster and of the military. That stated, the General was on a United States Government expedition in hostile territory, surrounded by Sioux Indians, and that expedition was sent for the purpose of ascertaining what was in the Black Hills when the United States annexed them.
In that understanding, the value of the Custer wagon collection was as valuable as the Lewis and Clarke collection on that same voyage of dicovery. It will be assumed that some of the General's own hunting collection was in those best wagons, but that too was collecting trophies which would be on display in railroad stations to peak the interest of Americans in the Black Hills.
A Trooper could be replaced, what General Custer had in those wagons was of national value.
Next, the charge of Troopers in hard riding wagons.
Do you know why General George Patton slapped a wining soldier? Yes to instill manhood into them.
The same reality is in any campaign that if you have "sick" men allowed to ride in nice beds, in wagons with springs, that they will find being sick is really much nicer than fighting Indians, standing guard, doing service and being a Trooper.
Such discoveries spread in a command and pretty soon everyone is "sick" and napping all day in the shade while the Indians show up and murder everyone.
It is amazing that sick people given a rough ride, suddenly find sitting in the saddle is much more comfortable than being in a hard riding wagon, and soon enough everyone is not considering being sick as staying in the saddle is the lesser of two evils.
Any command has malcontents, and the shirkers are always bitching about things they can not understand. They see Soldiers in Vietnam in tents in the rain and build them tin huts, which mortars exlode in like ping pong balls killing everyone like my dad's cousin.
People always think they know better, but Generals in command have an astute understanding of human nature and how to deal with them.
General Custer often would mingle among the railroad workers and walk away laughing as they had no idea it was him, but "Curly" would be ragged upon non stop about getting them up at 3 AM to start work......of course before it was too scalding hot to keep them from not working all day, but they of course just could not see that as they sat in the shade and the General had a schedule to keep.
In reading, the journal of Col. Richard Irving Dodge who was in command of the survey of the Black Hills in 1875, he was not a fan of Custer in the beginning due to the jealousy in the military for the accomplished Boy General.
By the time Dodge though, who was one of the best plainsman in the world, had navigated the Black Hills on the Custer Trail, he mentioned in his journal that George Custer had done a remarkable job in bringing that wagon train through those mountains so effeiciently and effectively............and that with the son of President Grant in tow, who the General put in the stockade for being drunk which started the events of the General's murder two years later.
There is a reason General Custer as a boy was put in command of the Texas ride after the Civil War to remind the Texicans they were Americans and no more revolution was going to be tolerated. It was because he was a General who comprehended how to handle people in thee most difficult of situations of war and peace.
I really detest ignorance and I hate people who as General Nelson Appleton Miles said, "find it easy to kick the dead lion of Custer" but praised General Custer immensely after he was murdered for accomplishing all he did.
It is though the reality, and by placing those realities here in pointing out why people in command do things, while you think they are selfish or hurtful, only exposes the immense ignorance of those making the statements and hanging their Custer bashing hat on those idiotic observations.
nuff said
agtG
