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Show The Cache American. Lopan. Cache County, Utah THE BRAVERY OF OUR BUGLER IS MUCH SPOKEN rape Seven OF... The Story of a Forgotten American Hero 'in 1 W. He served on the OomraitfM By ELMO SCOTT WATSON (Reltaaed by Western Newspaper Union. Wyo. These mementoes had been brought here from half a dozen battlefields m the country watered by the Yellowstone river and its tributaries, the Powder, the Tongue, the Big Horn and the Rosebud. There were knives and hatchets and spear-headbows and arrows, beaded belts and a war bonnet of eagle feathers; carbines and pistols and bayonets; cartridge boxes, canteens, buckles, buttons and other ornaments from soldier uniforms. In the midst of them hung what was once a copper cavalry bugle. Its mouthpiece was broken off and it was dented and twisted and flattened out of all semblance of its original shape. That?" replied Mr. Gatchell, 0, that was picked up on Massacre Hill you know, the place where Fetterman and his crew were wiped out back in '66. I reckon the bugler dropped it during that melea and it was trampled on by the cavalry horses. Anyway, thats just the shape it was in when a young fellow from Buffalo found it years ago and gave it to me." s; 40-o- . Choveudes tilled on the field, but after thev encamped M warriors died from their wounds, and of am orheie wounded, hair of them were erpected to die. One Sioux chief waa amoug the killed. They men"trig a man on a w hlte bone who cut off an Indian's head tion with a aiugie etroke of hie ether, and say that when regnlorcenienta left the fort for the battle ground thev (the Radians) retired, haring bud enough ficnjing, There were 3,oo9 Indians eugared iu tbo fight, and the strength of the concentrated tribes ia reported nt 2,800 lodge, which ah now moving toward Yellow Stone tad Miesoun Rivera. Tlie expedition to tlio Iudian connlry, tinder the command of Maiot-GcHancock, left Leaveirwort li n. So we know now who this brave bugler was Adolph Metzger. It is obviously a German name and one which seems a bit out of place among such Paddies as Cuddy and Clancey and Fitzgerald, Maguire and McCarty and Ryan, all so typical of the kind of men who were the g troopers of the Old Army days. But what was his station in life before he put on Uncle Sams uniform of blue and was sent out to the Wyoming frontier to die on the windswept summit which is known today as Massacre Hill? The office of the adjutant-generin Washington gives a partial answer to that question, thus: hard-ridin- hard-fightin- records of this office show that one Adolph MeUger first enlisted May 1855, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 29, for a period of five years at which tima he stated that he was 21 years of age. He last enlisted July 12. 1864, at near Light House Landing, Virginia.: was as signed to Troop C, 2d. Regiment United State Cavalry: and was killed In ac tion with the Indians near Peno Creek (about 7 miles from Fort Phil Kearney, Dakotah Territory) December 21, 1866, while serving as a Bugler. His birthNo adplace is recorded as Germany ditional Information has been found regarding hit personal history. ITie year or so later I was leafing idly through a bound volume of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. On page one of the issue for April 2, 1867, And here the record ends exan item, headed simply The In- cept for this: dians, caught my eye. It read: Undoubtedly he was the bugler corThe St. Louie A Semi-Week- ly Republican' special respondent at St. Joseph gives the fob of account the Fort Phil Kearney lowing Massacre, derived from the Commls sioners sent to investigate the matter, from the Sioux Indians: The Sioux drew our men out of the fort, and killed them all. Our men fought like tigers, and would not have been overcome so easily if they had not kept so close together. The combatants were so mixed up that the In dians killed several of their own party with their arrows. The bravery of our bugler is much spoken of, he having killed several Indians by beating them over the head with his bugle. They say that there were only 16 Sioux and four Cheyennes killed on the held, but after they encamped 94 warriors died from their wounds, and of 300 others wound ed, half of them were expected to die. One big Sioux chief was among the killed. The bravery of our bugler is much spoken of, he having killed several Indians by beating them over the head with his bugle." Those words seemed to leap out from the page. Instantly my mind raced back to a summer afternoon in Buffalo, Wyo. to the sight of a battered bugle hanging on the walls of the little office in Tom Gatchells drug store and his quiet remark, O, that was picked up on Massacre Hill you know, the place where Fetterman and his crew were wiped out back in 66. But who was this heroic musician? His bravery, which was much spoken of" by the Sioux, is not mentioned in any of the books which tell of Fort Phil Kearneys tragic history with one exception. That is the autobiography of Malcolm Campbell, a famous 'Wyoming sheriff who had been a bullwhacker on the Oregon Trad in 1867. He heard the story of the "Fetterman Massacre from the lips of men who were at Phil Kearney the previous year and refers to the incident thus: The Indiana mutilated every body In excepFetterman's command with the tion of the bugler who fought so couraungeously that his remains were left touched but covered with a buffalo robe. But what was this buglers name? Although the dull, dry pages of the Report of the Secretary of War for the Year 1867 gives the names of the officers who were kdled near Phil Kearney, it does not identify any of the enlisted men who were victims of the Sioux scalping knives. So, back to the New York Tribune and there on page one of the issue for January 17, 1867, appears an item headed The Massacre at Fort Phd It reads: Kearney.LARAMIE. Jan 14 The folSemi-Week- ly FORT of the cavalry lowing are the namesmassacre at Fort killed in the recent Phd Kearney Lieut Horatio S Bingham, Second killed on the 6th of December, SerJames geant James Baker, Corporal saddler Kelly, bugler Adolph MetzgerThos AnJohn McCarty, and privates S Bugbee derson, Thos Brogdin, Wm Wm L. Cornog, Chas Cuddy, Patrick Hugh B Clancey, Harvey S Denning, M Doran, Robert Daniels, Anderson John Foreman, Nathaniel Fitzgerald, Gister. Daniel Green, Chas. GampeL Ferdinand Homer, Park Jones, James P Maguire. John McCarty, George W Nugent, Franklin Pavne. James Ryan, Oliver Williams. aU killed December 21. attars Nawapapar Untoa. VALE VIRGINIA By Tie Si. I.oitit Bepnllkan't special correapoudent at Phil. Kearney mAssac re, derived from the Coaaraissiou-St- . Joseph gires the following account of the Fort era sent to investigate the matter, from the Sioux In diaus: The Sioux drew our men oat ef the fort, and killed them all. Our turn fought like tiger. and would not have been overcome ao eawlv if they had not kept ao dote The combatants were ao tnixad up that the Indiana killed oerer&lof their own part with their arrows. ' onrlwrlcr l much aroken of, ie haring ian br Kii f p.r iimni over the huad witn Ina bugle. Tlievaavlkat tlioia wcie omy lBtoux ami funr Gatchell, (DIO Kiase4 TIIE INDIANS. youd better talk to Tom they told me in He knows more about such things than anyone else around here. So I went to see T. J. Gatchell, druggist, historian and Industrious collector of Wyoming lore. He led me to the rear of his store, where the walls of his little office are covered with relics of the days when the troopers of Carrington and Custer and Crook strove mightily with the painted warriors of Red Cloud and Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. tlieDIairirl aud Printing. T F ITS Injun war history I youre wanting, then Buffalo, on of Columbia. Piivate Land Claim, Manufactures, I Boots and Sadwho sounded when the message, Indi- dles! of death drawing closer and closer around them. We can see them now as they threw themselves down behind the boulders which formed an irregular circle at the end of the bleak, ridge, resolved to sell their lives dearly. We can hear the whooping braves as they came surging up the slope and see them rushing forward . , . right in among the d rocks, where a handful of men, their white faces streaked with blood and blackened with powder stains, struggled to their feet to meet the onslaught. There was a brief moment of fighting, of crashing blows dealt with clenched in the hands of men who flailed about them desperately to ward off the slashing knives and smashing It was a dreadful mix-u- p there in the dust and smoke and flying snow the kmd of fight to which the Sioux give the vividly descriptive name of stirring gravy. The fight there couldnt have lasted long. But in that last dreadful moment of slaughter, in the midst of that swirl of struggling, swearing, screaming men, there was one who went berserk. It was Bugler Adolph Metzger who lashed out madly, blindly, with the only weapon he had left, and he laid more than one of the pamted enemy low with his strange bludgeon before they, like a pack of gray wolves attacking a buffalo bull, pulled him down at last. We know that his was one of the 81 bodies, stripped naked and frozen solid (for the mercury dropped to 25 below zero that afternoon of December 21), which were brought in by searching parties from the fort the next day. So bitter was the weather that the at Phil Kearney were forced to work in short relays and it was not until three days later that a great pit, 50 feet long and seven feet deep, was hewn out of the frozen ground inside the stockade to receive the victims of Fettermans tragic disobedience. There these doughboys and troopers shared one tomb, buried, as they had fought, together thus, Colonel Carringtons official report to his department commander until several years later when a national cemetery was established on the Little Big Horn in Montana. Then their bodies were transferred to this new resting place where their dust now mingles with the dust of the victims of another famous frontier tragedy, Custers Last Stand. And today the wmds come sweeping down from the snowcapped peaks of the Big Horn the same mountains range which once echoed to the haunting strains of Taps, blown at old Fort Phil Kearney by Bugler Adolph Metzger to play a wild requiem over his grave. His name is carved on the simple headstone that gleams white in the bright sunlight of that barren land and lone where sleep the dead of Custers command. It is also written in the dusty records of the adjutant-general- s office and it is printed on the yellowed pages of an old New York newspaper. Except for these, there is little else to remind his that he once lived. But there is something to recall to them the manner of his dying. On the walls of a druggists office in a little Wyoming city hangs what was once a cavalry bugle. It is the bugle which blared out its summons to the 81 members of Fettermans doomed command to keep a rendezvous with death one cold December morning more than 70 years ago. It was carried by one Adolph Metzger and it is a symbol of and a monument to the stark courage of an American soldier. snow-covere- d blue-coate- hand-to-han- d gun-barre- ls war-club- s. grave-digge- Fort Phil Relics from the Kearney Massacre in the collection of T. J. Gatchell of Buffalo, Wyo. At the right is the bugle carried by Adolph Metzger of Troop C, Second U. S. Cavalry. ans attacking the woodchoppers camp on Piney Island!, came to Fort Phil Kearney that morning. We know that he was one of the 26 troopers who accompanied the force of 50 picked men from the Eighteenth infantry and two civilian volunteers, led by Lieut. Col. W. J. Fetterman, Capt. Frederick H. Brown and Lieut. G. W. Grummond, who were acting under these orders from Col. H. B. Carrington, commander of the fort: Support the wood train, relieve it and report to me. Do not engage the Indians at its expense; under no circumstances pursue them over Lodge Trail Ridge. We know that Fetterman disobeyed those orders and allowed himself to be drawn into an ambush. Then more than 2,000 Sioux and Cheyennes came boiling out of the ravines and coulees beyond Lodge Trail Ridge and, like a red wave of destruction, engulfed the 55 doughboys and their officers. Then the Indians swept up the icy slope of the ridge to which the cavalrymOT retreated, leading their horses and shooting back at the savages as fast as they could load and fire their singleshot carbines. When they reached the end of the ridge and saw the hundreds of warriors swarming up the other side, sudden panic struck them. They let their horses go, and with them went their last chance to cut through the circle fellow-Amenca- rs bf Vt F THE LADY EVE Is as good on the screen as it is on paper, itll be a knockout. 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Just send 50o and two label from Van Campe Products with this order blank. Joan Crawford will have Melvyn Douglas (whos Just signed a new contract with Metro) and Conrad Veldt as her leading men In A Bette Davis deserves new laurels for her performance In The Letter. She does some superb acting In a difficult role. Perhaps you remember the story Jeanne Eagels made It In 1929, after Katharine Cornell bad appeared In a play versed on the Somerset Maugham story. It Is the story of the wife of an English rubber planter In the Malay States; she kills a man, but an Inletter exists, wblcb criminating mast be recovered. The entire cast James Stephenson, Herbert Marshall, Gale Sonder-gaar- d is excellent, and William Wylers direction could not be Improved Rooms wartd-fomo- l Womans Face. which originally was made in Sweden with Ingrid Berman in the leading role. . e - See Your Triiilcr : f 50? AND TWO VAN CAMP'S usas 7ttAUOUttANRMAWFHIS,iPtDIKtaiAMlCjf01Af , . - Van Camp's Inc No. 144, Now York. R V. Fnclosed are SO ernts and two labels from delicious Van Camps Products. Please send sne the lastly SUid Sterling Silver Ring as illustrated. DvpL W,So MAMS ADDRESS TATf CITY RING SIZE SCALE A suss, eiil4misl Wrap around f!ner ond chock your sire IT TAKES AiV ORANGE neck in snow, figuratively speaking. The first winter snows are blanketing upper reaches of the San Bernardino mountains and as of president Southern Skis shes resuming active direction of the organization. Among Its members are Claudette Colbert, Norma Shearer, and Galll-Cur- d King Vidor. And incidentally, speaking of the charming Claudette, her latest picture, "Arise My Love, deserves the avalanches of praise that its been receiving. Of course, In her role of foreign correspondent, she does dress better than any real newspaper woman. But who cares? Shes delightful, she plays her big emotional scenes d expertly, shes convincing. Ray makes you thankful that Don Ameche had differences with Paramount just in time for Milland to get the role opposite her. Mil-lan- Some of Americas greatest musical talent is scheduled to come to you on that new radio program, Music That Refreshes, heard on Sunday afternoons over 92 stations of the Columbia Broadcasting System. John Charles Thomas, Helen Jepson and many other top notch singers will appear. Albert Spalding, the violinist, is a permanent fixture on the program; with him Is Andre Kostelanetz, the conductor, and husband of Lily Pons. Miss Pons will drop In as a guest star from time to time. Spalding attributes his success as a violinist to a monkey. At the age of seven he was first exposed to one which, gaily dressed, was passing his home with a wandering fiddler. His family wouldnt buy him a monkey, but settled for a violin. 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