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Show Echoes of the Custer Tragedy y ; hf kilufe giSk AUUU CVU thL h (I IVs 44 A 27ze Custer Battlefield Today .-. CxdetHenrLMooreHarrington By ELMO SCOTT WATSON m v,IFTY-SIX years have passed since the ' I career of Gen. George Armstrong ' f Custer came to its dramatic close, ItfM yet the glamor of his name has laV-i' kept alive for more than half a P"r Jl century the memory of that tragedy L C. J while other battles much more im- SSjy portant historically have been all I j"'"tys but forgotten. Scarcely a month : Passes without there appearing In lfcj?) the news of the day some echo of : 3s "Custer's Last Battle" to recall to our minds what took place on the , Little Big Horn river in Montana on that fateful fate-ful day in June. 1S7C. It may be an item referring to one of the "last iurvivors of the Custer battle" who have bobbed up with such regularity during the last five decades and who have so easily been proved to be fakes. Ai a matter of fact there were many "survivors" "sur-vivors" of the Custer battle if the term "Custer battle" Is interpreted to mean the whole action which took place on the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876. Those were the officers and men who were in the detachment of the Seventh cavalry, commanded by MaJ: Marcus A. Reno, Capt. Frederick W. Benteen and Capt. Thomas McDougal, when Custer divided his command to attack the Indian village. They were the members of Troops A, G and M under Beno; Troops D, H and K under Benteen; and Troop B, which was guarding the pack train, under McDougal. But of Troops C, E, I, F and L, which were tinder the immediate command of Custer and ' which were so quickly surrounded by the Indians, In-dians, there was one and ONLY ONE survivor sur-vivor of "Custer's last stand" and that was not a man, but a horse. That authentic "sole survivor" sur-vivor" was Comanche, the claybank sorrel which was ridden into the battle by Capt. Myles W. Keogh of Troop I. Two days after the battle he was found wandering about the battlefield, pierced by seven bullets and so weak and emaciated that at first it was decided that the only humane thing to do was to kill him. But Lieut. H. I. Nowlan, field quartermaster on General Terry's staff and an intimate friend of Captain Keogh, prevailed upon the soldiers to epare Comanche's life. His wounds were dressed and he was so well cared for on the steamer Far West, which carried the other wounded of Custer's command back to Fort Abraham Lincoln, Lin-coln, that he pulled through and lived to the age of twenty-eight years. When he died In 1S92 the Seventh was stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., and Professor ' Dyche, a naturalist connected con-nected with the University of Kansas, mounted the skin and today there stands in the Dyche museum at the University of Kansas the lifelike life-like form of the only authentic survivor of "Custer's last stand." Or It may be an item about some one who "fought with Custer" and who "escaped the . massacre because he was detached from the regiment at the time." In nine cases out of ten such Individuals weren't within several hundred hun-dred miles of the Little Big Horn on that day and have no more right to claim that they "fought with Custer" than have several hundred hun-dred other men who were in the armies in the Held against the hostile Indians during the campaign cam-paign of 1S76. Then again it may be an item referring to some one who asserts that he was a "Custer scout," although the name of every man who has a legitimate claim to that title is well-known and all of them, with the possible exception of some of the Arikara Indian scouts who accompanied Custer on his last expedition, are now dead. Considering the amount of publicity that has been given from time to time to all these "last survivors," "Custer fighters" and "Custer scouts," it seems all the more remarkable that so little attention was paid recently to the passing of one important and genuine actor In the Custer , i 4, , Zieut to x 4 Henry H Moore L Harrinqton. w'fi s h V iH V u ' JA 1 sms rlj i .- K 4l Comanche ! J J tragedy. For when Brig. Gen. Edward S. Godfrey, God-frey, U. S. A., retired, died at his home in Cooks-town, Cooks-town, N. J., last April, it marked the end of the last of Custer's troop commanders. On the day that Custer perished. General Godfrey was Lieutenant Lieu-tenant Godfrey, commander of Troop K of the Seventh cavalry, and Troop K was a part of the battalion commanded by Capt. Frederick W. Benteen, the senior captain in the Seventh, when Custer divided the regiment to make his attack on the Indian village strung along the banks of the Little Big Horn. Not only did General Godfrey play an important impor-tant part in the fighting which took place after Benteen's command joined forces with the detachment de-tachment commanded by Maj. Marcus A. Reno, but in later years he became known as the leading lead-ing authority on the Custer battle and the chief defender of Custer when the question was raised as to whether or not the disaster on the Little Big Horn was due to Custer's disobedience of the orders of his superior, Gen. Alfred H. Terry. Not the least of General Godfrey's services to the memory of his dead commander was In refuting re-futing the slander that Custer had committed suicide when he saw that the destruction of his command was inevitable and not the least of his contributions to the truthful history of the Custer battle was his part in showing up as Impostors the various, "last survivors" and "Custer "Cus-ter scouts" who sought notoriety through the reflected glory of Custer's name and who enjoyed for a little while their spurious fame. General Godfrey was born In Ohio and enlisted enlist-ed in the Union army at the outbreak of the Civil war, serving in the Twenty-first Ohio infantry in-fantry from April to August, 1S61. He became a cadet In the United States Military academy at West Point July 1, 1SG3, and was graduated in June, 1SG7, being immediately appointed a second lieutenant in the Seventh cavalry. He was pro- . moted to first lieutenant February 1, 186S, and while holding that rank took part in various Indian campaigns of the Seventh cavalry which added so much luster to Custer's reputation as an Indian fighter. Appointed a captain of the Seventh in December, Decem-ber, 1S7G, Godfrey took part in the campaign against Chief Joseph and his Nez Perces the next year and at the battle of the Bear Paw mountain on September 30, 1S77, he won the brevet of major and the Medal of Honor for "most distinguished gallantry in leading his command into action where he was severely wounded." At the time of his death he was not only the only surviving troop commander of Custer's regiment, but he was also said to have been the oldest living graduate from West Point Mention of West Point recalls the fact that another echo of the Custer tragedy was heard recently when President Hoover reappointed 11 ISS - . il J , r&jr Gen. . S. Godfrey BO (Pictures of Lieutenant Harrington, Courtesy United States Military Academy.) S S Miss Grace Aileen Harrington as postmaster at the United States Military academy. Cadets at the academy know Miss Harrington as the diminutive dimin-utive lady on whose kindly face there Is always al-ways a smile as she passes out their mail to them. But to others, familiar with West Point history, she is the symbol of one of the most tragic episodes In the greater tragedy of the Custer battle. For she is the daughter of Lieut. Henry Moore Harrington, a subaltern In Capt. Tom Custer's C troop of the Seventh cavalry, who died on the Little Big Horn. A native of New York, Harrington was graduated grad-uated from West Point In 1868. His first duty was in North Carolina, but desiring more active service he was transfererd to the Seventh cavalry cav-alry in 1872 and joined that regiment in time to participate in several minor Indian fights. He was on leave in 1876 when the Seventh cavalry was ordered to join General Terry's army, which was to be sent into the field against the hostile Sioux and Cheyennes. Upon hearing of this, Harrington immediately telegraphed that he was giving up his leave and rejoining his troop. So he was one of those who rode away from Fort Abraham Lincoln in North Dakota and took the trail which led to the Little Big Horn, to death and to utter mystery as to his end. For Lieutenant Harrington was one of the three officers (the others being Lieutenants James E. Porter of I troop and James R. Sturgis of E troop) whose bodies were never found, at least, not identified after the battle. Of them a noted authority on Indian history, E. A. Brinin-stool, Brinin-stool, in his book, "A Trooper With Custer," writes: 'Nothing was ever learned of their fate and while it has always been supposed that they were killed, but possibly not Identified, yet, it is not beyond reason that all or one of them may have escaped, badly wounded to die in some out-of-the-way place. Some writers have insisted that they were doubtless captured alive and tortured tor-tured to death that night in the Indian village which was flushed with its bloody victory over Custer. The Sioux, however, always have maintained main-tained that they took no prisoners on the occasion occa-sion of the Little Big Horn fight." Not only is the ignorance of her father's fate one of the tragic incidents in the life of the woman who Is postmaster at West Point, where so many of Custer's officers were once cadets, but there Is another tragic memory which she has carried through life a memory of her mother, moth-er, who suddenly disappeared several years after the Ouster battle. "Amnesia if would be called nowadays," Miss Harrington says, "but at that time it was ascribed to grief and the uncertainty uncertain-ty of what had happened to my father. Several times we heard from Indians that a lady dressed in black had been seen on the battlefield. Other reports came from Indian Territory. We Investigated Investi-gated all these rumors and finally after two years we found her in Texas where a severe attack at-tack of pneumonia had served to bring back her memory so that she knew who she was. But she was never able to give any account of her wanderings while she was gone or why she was there." Tragedy also stalked through the life of Miss Harrington's great-aunt, Miss Blanche Be-rard, Be-rard, who was postmaster at West Point for almost al-most 50 years. Appointed by President Polk In 1847, she served in that post until 1897. As a young girl she was engaged to an officer. "One afternoon this officer brought his horse to the pest office to show my great-aunt," Miss Harrington Har-rington tells the story: "While exercising him .and demonstrating his good point's, the officer was thrown and killed. This aunt never married, remaining true to the memory of her first and only love. One big thrill did come to her in her later life. While on leave of absence from the post office, which she spent in Europe, Miss Be-rard Be-rard had the honor of being presented to Queen Victoria." The war record of the Harrington family dates back to the birth of the United States, for among the family papers In Miss Harrington's possession Is the honorable discharge of her great-great-grandfather, Niles, who was a soldier sol-dier in the Continental army. This historic document' doc-ument' is signed by George Washington. In the Civil war members of her family participated in many engagements as volunteers. Over Miss Harrington's desk in the postoffice hang two pictures. There In the busy turmoil of mail distribution for the 1,200 cadets at the academy and an equal number of regular officers offi-cers and soldiers, is a constant reminder of devotion de-votion to duty, the cornerstone of Miss Harrington's Har-rington's life and that of her distinguished ancestors. an-cestors. One of them is a picture of her father as a cadet and the other a picture of him as an officer in the regimentals of the Seventh cavalry, cav-alry, the uniform worn when he disappeared forever. The picture of him in cadet uniform is enclosed in a frame made of beads and these beads were obtained by her mother from Indians In-dians in Dakota perhaps from members of the same tribe whose warriors rode over the troopers troop-ers of Custer and his captains and his lieutenants lieuten-ants in a red wave of savage triumph that fearful fear-ful day on the Little Big Horn fifty-six years ago! ( by Western Newspaper Union.) |