Part 34: Last Stand Hill

we are on Last Stand Hill this is the monument to the soldiers the obelisk and right below is the mass grave of the soldiers burial pit all the soldiers were reinterred at this location in 1881 and if we spin around here to the west you will see the markers 52 markers representing 42 individuals we have 10 spurious markers in the group and let me give you a quick pan of what we have here the terrain features we have Cemetery Ridge back here where company he had the 'scrimish line you see the National Cemetery and all the trees on the ridge and if we move down to look at to the west a little bighorn valley you can see is in here with the treeline that's the Little Bighorn River and you have the bench land on the horizon see deep ravine right here which comes up and makes several branches and to the right of deep ravine is an area called the flats if we continue to go south you can see greasy grass ridge along the river and all the way south you have where point in the distance calhoun hill and battle ridge in this area Callie and Cooley would be back in this area and Calhoun ridge Calhoun Hill now before I start this segment I want to just show you some of the markers on the battlefield most are not named but there are some individuals that are named mainly George Armstrong Custer right here in the middle and to the right you have Captain George W Yates a Company F and you have Captain Thomas word Custer Company C over to the left we have second lieutenant William Van Wyck Riley and right behind him is first lieutenant Algernon Emory Smith Riley's from Company F Smith is from Company E continuing over the marker faced sideways here that is for First Lieutenant William winter crook of the headquarter staff he's the regimental adjutant and if we pan further over you have I can get to them areas that is a second lieutenant Henry Moore Harrington probably a spurious marker though I don't think he died on the hill other individuals have died on Hill the markers here just say US soldier but they were found on the hill would be Sergeant John Vickery who carried the headquarters or the main regimental standard flag Company F as well as sergeant Robert H shoes who carried the regimental standard or the Custer's personal headquarters flag if corporal William teaming company F as well as sergeant Frederick nurse C have company F and private Timothy Donnelly private ignites tongue wince the only individual from Russia with the cavalry as well as first lieutenant George Edwin Lord the regimental surgeon and corporal John J Callahan the hospital orderly attached with him and you have Boston Custer and Harry Armstrong read their markers are actually right down here these two markers and you have some other individuals mainly from Company F and from headquarters chief trumpeter Henry balls of the headquarter staff you also have sergeant major William Henry Cerro of the headquarter staff and I'll move over here to the north so you can see it we have a car coming up the road so let that go by and as we pan around you will see the paired markers right there to the north of Last Stand Hill that is for sergeant major William Henry Sherrow of the headquarter staff one of the markers is spurious if we look further north you have the Indian memorial here and right next to the Indian Memorial you have two markers for Indians closed hand and limber bones they were both killed in that area let's go back to the battle now following company's retreat after the suicide warrior attack on Cemetery Ridge they went back down into the deep ravine south skirmish line here and met up with Company F and the headquarter staff Custer then saw the right wing collapse and soldiers fleeing to the north so he had everybody move up here to Last Stand Hill to facilitate contact company up and headwear staff still had their horses so they moved up here quickly and took this part of the hill the top part come to e lag behind because they had lost most their horses and ended up on the southern or lower part of the segment here lower part of the hill and at that point they hunkered down most individuals shot their horses to hide behind because as you can see there really isn't any cover here they accepted the few right-wing survivors about 20 that brought up the number of the group on the hill to about 105 soldiers they were quickly surrounded by the Indians on all four sides now the group is too strong for the Indians to assault directly so what they did was they crept up got very close to the hill and started lobbing arrows into the position and this thinned out the group and once the fire started to slacken as people became incapacitated and killed and things like that the Indians finally rushed into the area and took out whoever remained there were some people that were still alive that were able to get up and run some did run down toward the south skirmish line others ran to the south along battle ridge here they tried to get away but nobody escaped there was a bugle call at the beginning of this episode and the episode would only lasted a couple minutes maybe 10 15 at the most but a couple minutes in in the episode there was a trumpet call the Indians did see soldiers shoot their horses and get behind them use them for breastworks and there were no skirmish lines this was an all-out defense the cavalry offensive has been lost at this point and it's all about trying to survive now and that's what these soldiers are doing complete defense here so there is no organized skirmish lines or anything like that it's more of a disordered defense but it's the best thing they could possibly do at this point they're on high ground but they are exposed sometime toward the middle of the episode probably a couple minutes into the episode after the trumpet call several soldiers probably about 40 from come to II left the hill and move down into the South skirmish line and other people that still add horses probably six or seven guys actually started to leave last nan hill and go to the south and we will discuss that more in detail when we get to the next episode which will be the South skirmish line and it's pretty much all we have to this show here so we will move on to the next episode which will be the northern segment of the south skirmish line

Channel: CusterApollo

Views: 425,477

Keywords: Custer, Little Bighorn

Id: fkVla_9ajak

Length: 7min 1sec (421 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 15 2009