As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Let Bacchus' sons be not dismayed
But join with me in each jovial blade
Come booze and sing and led your aid
To help me with the chorus
Instead of spa, we'll drink down ale
And pay the reckoning on the nail
No man for debt shall go to jail
From Garryowen in glory
Everyone has heard the sharp clarion notes of the march associated with General Custer's 7th Cavalry, in the happy tune of Garryowen. Few know the words though, and it is now a thing covered in the past of what a Cavalry was, for it was so many things, and it worked according to Elizabeth Custer, the wife of American Hero, General George Armstrong Custer, on the clock not of time pieces, but upon the clock of the trumpet.
In America, the bugle was the instrument of the Infantry with it's high tenor notes, and the trumpet was set aside for the Cavalry.
It was the first order in Troopers or Soldiers could always hear those notes, and keep in contact with each other in camp, battle or disorder. The notes always commanded the order of the regiment.
The marker or visual sign was the Guidon, which was the Flag of the regiment, and having a point on the end, was sunk into the ground to mark the piece of ground which was to be advanced from and held.
As the names mean nothing in this era, Bacchus was the tyrant of Syracuse, who you might recognize the name of Dionysis, in the Greek. He fought the Carthaginians of Africa.
The song is one of liberty, and it is of the foundation of all society, that no armed man would ever be placed into prison for being in debt.
The morning in a Cavalry started very early in summer, at 3 AM, in Reveille. There would be 3 roll calls in a 24 hour period, the first at Reveille, and the other two at Retreat, which was sundown, and Taps, which was lights out in the camp.
A Cavalry corp literally was a musical sound 24 hours a day, in that is how the order was maintained from Mess to Recall.
Something which Hollywood has never recorded, as it was hidden from the world, and known to only those who lived camp life, was the reality that not only were the Troopers conditioned to the Trumpets, but the horses knew the notes better than the people who were obeying them.
Mrs. Custer, relates that reality in her story of Following the Guidon, which is an insight into camp life on Big Creek in Kansas, in her first plains outing.
Elizabeth Bacon Custer was a remarkable Lady, in she really was the first "feminist", but would be loathe to even associate with the word, as this pioneer was like all the pioneer women, in just being there and living life.
While women of urban areas, sat in parlors and strolled under umbrellas, this woman of Michigan was a camp follower in the Civil War. She would follow her husband into Texas and almost die from malaria. She would almost die of flood and tornado in Kansas, and be stranded by snow in Minnesota.
She would ride race horses and that was one of the greatest pleasures the Custer's had, in they would take their horses out for a blow of miles of racing across the Great Plains, in Indian territory, and the horses loved the run too.
The horses were the Cavalry, and for being the stock acquired from Government purchases, they would be the campanions of the Troopers, until death of either one, or until no longer enlisted. The animals would in typical western mindset, take great chagin at some greenhorn appearing on their backs, and promptly throw them from their backs.
Mrs. Custer reports though, that upon bucking a Trooper off, the Cavalry horse would return to ranks in line as orderly as any human.
In that, Recall would sound to bring the animals in from grazing, and the horses would often assemble, before any Trooper had stirred to bring them in.
Boots and Saddles was the order which both Trooper and Horse, knew as the transformation of men and horses into Cavalry, for it was then a Trooper was to be in boots and have saddles ready, for the order to mount.
There was great competition in this assembly, for in battle, that unit which presented itself first, was the one which would lead into combat that day.
It is of historical reality which is lost by for Mrs. Custer, in all of the propaganda for the "poor Indian" or the "white man", there was one real reason for the Indian wars in America, and it had nothing to to with lands, aboriginal savages or civilization advancement, but had to do with one thing. That thing was the kidnapping, gang rape and murder of white women.
That is what drove the Indian Wars, in the Indians would go into frenzy over a woman in getting at her, and the whites would go into frenzy in arming themselves to avenge or try to gain their rescue.
I have related previously as Mrs. Custer noted, in her protectors were also her executioners. There was a standing order in the 7th Cavalry, that if something were to go wrong and Mrs. Custer was to be captured, that one of her protectors in the officers if it was not her husband, was to shoot her, to save her from being gang raped by the Indians.
That is why there is no mystery in the two bullet wounds of General Custer at the Little Big Horn. The Indians had no idea this was General Custer nor any respect for any white person. At the end of the battle when all were dead or dying, the General being wounded, being abandoned by his treacherous underlings in Benteen and Reno, put a bullet in his head, as he would have had his lips, eyelids, nose cut off while staked down. His tendons cut and pulled out of arms and legs. He would have been shot with arrows not meant to kill him, a fire kindled on his feet, and then one on his chest, and before he expired, he would have been scalped, and then his head bashed in with a rock club.
The Indian savage never scalped a white man who would kill himself in front of them, as that terrified the Indian. It is why Tom Custer was brutally butchered in he was wounded, and incapacitated, and not able to perform the final shot.
The last years of the General's life, saw two horses carrying him. The first was Dandy, out of a Government purchase order out of the midwest and appeared in camp, November 1868, during the Washita Campaign, and the second was Vic, a thoroughbred out of their station in Kentucky.
There was a 3rd horse acquired in the war, in Phil Sheridan. A race horse, which Mrs. Custer rode with delight as the horse took "good care of her".
Dandy, was a homely horse, that looked like a mule, but was one of those rare equines who was trained better than a dog. He would recover from wounds at the Little Big Horn and be presented to Father Custer to live out his days in Michigan.
Vic as reported here, was chased off by Indians at the Little Big Horn and captured by a Squaw Man in North Dakota, and lived out his life there, in no one ever knew the identity of this horse.
The horses were cared for, but covered with saddle sores or healed with white hair scars. They were the first indicators that trouble was coming and numbers of them enjoyed battle.
It was not the battles, but the hourly necessity of being on alert, finding water, grass, wood and camp, which was the 7th Cavalry. These notes of a Kansas summer campaign in the order of march, serve to record what life was in real form.
"troops encamped at night without water, and all the men and horses had to drink was got by digging down into the dry bed of a stream; or where, at another time, they found a "stream impassable," and " halted to build a bridge," together with such hints of experience as these: " struck an old wagon trail"; " marched over cactus-beds and through a deep ravine "; " made camp where there was standing water only"; "banks of stream miry—obliged to corduroy it"; "grass along the stream poor, sandy soil"; banks of next stream "forty feet high—great trouble in finding a crossing"; " obliged to corduroy another stream for each separate wagon"; "took four hours to cross twenty wagons"; "timber thick, grass poor"; "struck what is called by the Indians Bad Lands, being a succession of ridges with ravines fifty feet deep between"; two wagons rolled over and went down one ravine"; "passed four ranches destroyed by the Indians and abandoned "; " left camp at 5 A.M.; so misty and foggy, could not see a hundred yards in advance;" "distance of march this day guessed, odometer out of order"; "marched up a cafion with banks fifty feet high "; " Company E left the columns to pursue Indians"; "all this day marched over Captain S ''s old trail"; "this was a dry camp, poor grass and plenty of cacti"; "found water-holes, the head of the river"; "total distance of march, seven hundred and four miles."
Elizabeth Bacon Custer. Following the Guidon
It was all extremely hard work as horses and men were in constant battle for daily needs, against insects, against injury, and against the weather.
It was a work where Elizabeth Custer, like all women were camp followers, and had absolutely no place, if their husbands were dead. The moment, Mrs. Custer became a widow, she was put out of Fort Abraham Lincoln. There was not some grand pension for her, nor did the Custer's on that Lt. Colonel's salary have any money saved up.
It was one of thee most dastardly and petty jealous things the old guard of the United States Army ever did, than to make a Major General of the Michigan Militia in George Custer, a war Hero, and only offer him the rank of Lt. Colonel, after the Civil War and keep him there from 1865 to the time of his murder in 1876.
Yes the incompetent George Crook, in Civil and Indian war could be raised to General and kept there, but not George Custer, as as were Ulysses Grant, William Sherman and Phil Sheridan.
Mrs. Custer, was forced to make her way, by lecturing and writing. In what was not amusing, she had to fight to maintain the honor of her husband's name, which was smeared to cover up the mass murder of his command, as much as jealousy was smearing him before he died.
The lengths this went to was the old guard, even put a horrid statue over the grave of General Custer, and as Libby related, she "had to cry it off it's pedastal" in getting that thing removed for one which was proper.
The Custer command of the 7th, attracted numbers of the children from ranking officers, who were slaughtered on that field, along with friends. This group could not do a great deal about that mass murder instigated by the powers that be, but they did in time retaliate on Benteen and Reno for their part in bringing court martial.
The only one true friend the 7th Cavalry had was General Nelson Appleton Miles who was a friend to the Custers, before, during and after the Little Big Horn. The rest just seemed to hide away in guilt and malevolence.
The 7th Cavalry passed over a remarkable part of America from Texas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana and Wyoming. It was all done on horseback and the latter part with pack mules, and all done to Trumpet ordering the day.
"A white woman has just come into our camp deranged, and can give no account of herself. She has been four days without food. Our cook is now giving her something to eat. I can only explain her coming by supposing her to have been captured by the Indians, and their barbarous treatment having rendered her insane."
November 1868- Washita Campaign
Our hearts so stout, have got us fame.
For soon tis known from whence we came.
Where'er we go they dread the name.
Of Garryowen to glory.
agtG
