I hold the work of Dr Fox on LBH to be a real breakthrough in the study of what happened to the Custer Battalion...until I managed to get my hands on some of the Upton manual of cavalry tactics...
Dr Fox talks alot about what he called bunching on the field, for those of us who have walked the battlefield, you see single tombstones then pairs of tombstones (long claimed to be the bodies of "bunkies" these are really mismarked graves of single troopers, the dirt being scooped up from either side to make a mound left two "grave" depressions), and finally you see clusters of tombstones, especially around one of the markers for an officer's grave.
The bunching theory is basically that as command & control breaks down, the troops crowd together, each man inching closer to another as the skirmish line breaks down. Then, eventually, the men start to flee the skirmish line, again moving closer to each in a blind effort to seek mutual support/courage. The end of the bunching theory holds that the troopers fled back to their officers and clustered around the last vestigae of command, shortly before the Indians overran the troopers. This was especially used to explain the rather large cluster of dead troopers found on Battle Ridge around the body of Captin Keeogh.
I'm trying to confirm this by getting additional pages from the Upton manual, but I have found several references to the troops should rally on their officers in the event of the skirmish line being hard pressed. Was the bunching caused simply by troopers falling back on their officer? Or is Dr Fox correct in stating that this is simply a sign of the breakdown of the battalion in the face of heavy pressure?
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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