Sometimes there’s no way out.
This is a very dark one. There isn’t really any graphic sex in it. If you’re looking for a happy ending or stroke piece, this isn’t it.
Main Characters:
George A. Custer, AKA “GA,” husband age 37, father of four grammar school-aged children.
Elizabeth B. Custer, AKA “Lizzie” age 35, married to GA for 13 years and a stay-at- home mom.
Boston Custer, age 40, GA’s older brother, and close confidante.
Fredrik Benteen, Captain of Detective Division Billings Police Dept.
James Calhoun, Lieutenant Detective Division Billings Police Dept.
Algernon Smith, CSI Technician, Billings PD.
Isabel Reno, TV reporter
William Cook, TV news anchor
STORY:
George Armstrong Custer, known to all as GA, was sitting quietly, slumped against the low stone wall of the Seventh Cavalry Memorial on Last Stand Hill. He glanced at his watch. It won’t be long now. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders. He loved to gaze out across the grounds in the fading sunlight as often as he could. Sometimes the ghosts would talk to him.
He was alone, had the Park rangers taken a better look at him as they waved goodbye for the night, they might have stayed with him. He was a deeply troubled man, and the pain was clearly etched on his face and reflected in his posture. Most had known GA for years, some since he was a small boy when his father, who volunteered at the park, would bring him. GA was a fixture at the memorial. He even had a key to the gate that his father had bequeathed him. The rangers all pretended it didn’t exist, and as they departed, they spoke a familiar refrain. “Don’t forget to lock up GA! Good night.”
It was GA’s father, who introduced him to Little Big Horn National Monument. George, like his father, had been, was a professor of history at Montana State University, Billings. It was only an hour or so away from the battlefield. GA’s father had passed away suddenly a few years ago, leaving his older brother Boston as his only relative. George idolized him his whole life. Boston was always GA’s confidante, but even he couldn’t help GA with his current problem. He was too embarrassed to talk about it with him, and as far as he knew, Boston was unaware of the turmoil over the past year in GA’s life.
GA’s father loved General Custer. He claimed that they were descendants of the 7th Cavalry commander. GA researched this claim extensively over the years and could find no hereditary connection, but he never told his father. It would have crushed him.
When GA was very young, he was enthralled by the stories his father told of the glorious 7th Cavalry and their heroic deeds.
In truth, there is no glory in battle. There never was a time that there was. Sometimes it is necessary but never glorious. Anyone who speaks of the glory in battle has never been in one. There is only pain and death, accompanied by the horrors it attends, and finally, the nightmares for the survivors. The one saving grace for the members of Custer’s command was, that none had lived to experience the nightmares. Those were left for the survivors of Reno and Benteen’s battalions.
As GA aged, he immersed himself in the true history of what most Anglos knew as Custer’s Last Stand. By the time he was a teen, GA was well versed in the politics surrounding the period and the logistics of the battle itself. For a while, like most individuals with more than a passing interest in it, he was caught up in the what ifs, and the endless twenty-twenty hind-sight opportunities that surrounded Custer’s actions.
He eventually outgrew that. He became weary of arguing with friends and family members who only had the movie history of Custer to base their opinions on. Custer was neither a genius nor a fool. He was what most cavalry officers were back then and still are to this day. He was aggressive and took risks. Cavalry officers are taught to control the battlefield. If the enemy has the initiative, take it away by any means, and then fight until the fight is done. Why? Because the cavalry is usually outnumbered and relies on what now everyone refers to as, “shock and awe.”
Control the Battlefield. Until recently, that was just a phrase GA used when having intellectual conversations among a group of individuals who never had to put it to use. GA now clearly understood its importance.
But by the time GA had finished school and began teaching at the college, he was much more interested in an aspect of the battle that few whites considered. If the native leaders, like Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall, and the others, had the benefit of hindsight would they still have chosen to stand and fight at Little Bighorn?
It was a hollow victory for the Plains Indians. The battle of The Greasy Grass, as it was called by the Native American combatants, was a victory on the field, but it hastened their demise, as was inevitable. The Indian leaders must have known what lay ahead for them. Shortly after the battle they fled to Canada and only returned to surrender. Less than five years later, their day was done. Those years were filled with death, starvation, and other horrors, that are well documented and haven’t improved all that much for them almost a hundred and fifty years later.
Surely the chiefs would have chosen alternatives had they been able to see the ruin that lay ahead for their people; wouldn’t they have? If any of them did, there was no record of their regrets. Did they really believe they could defeat the white man as they had the Spaniards over three hundred years before? Or did they just have no choice? GA believed that life always offered choices. What if the Northern Plains tribes had just left for Canada early that summer when they knew the army was approaching? If they had gone there and waited for the same five year period, would the next several generations of there people’s lives been any different?
GA spent countless hours researching that question from the Native American perspective. There wasn’t much written about the history of the approximately three thousand years they roamed the Great Plains. GA corresponded with experts and historians from around the world, trying to find that answer. He became obsessed with it to the point of distraction. After several years, he had drawn conclusions but didn’t have a definitive answer. GA believed the Sioux and Cheyenne had reached the determination that some things are worth dying for, no matter the cost. GA had no better argument.
A Plains Indian warrior had a simple ethos. It was drilled into them in every aspect of the life from their birth. The highest honor a warrior could achieve was to die in battle. A warrior’s first responsibility was always to their family and village. It was their sworn duty to protect them with their life. The US Military was well aware of this and their doctrine for combating the Indian Wars was based on it. If they attacked the village, the warriors would be on the defensive and the army would have the battlefield initiative. It worked until that fateful day when it led to the 7th‘ Cavalry’s destruction.