Word: custer
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...been itching to, so Boston-born Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, 39, bought a mountain - a small one - in the Black Hills of South Dakota and laid his plans. He was going to chip it down to a 300-ft.-high monument : Sioux Chief Crazy Horse, who wiped out Custer's cavalry at Little Big Horn...
Stabbed by Pygmies. Dr. Paul R. Hawley, a major general in World War II, now medical chief of the Veterans Administration, arrives at the question: "Did cholera defeat Custer?" By psychoanalytical deduction, Hawley concludes that Custer's Last Stand can definitely be traced to a cholera epidemic at Fort Riley on the Kansas River in 1867, nine years before the battle...
...Custer's wife was then at Fort Riley. When Custer, leading an Indian-hunting expedition in the field, heard of the cholera outbreak, he promptly rode off from his cavalry regiment and hastened to the fort. That led to a court-martial and thorough humiliation of the high-strung young officer. His trial brought out other charges. He had once abandoned a detachment of his troops to annihilation by Indians (an unpardonable sin in the Army's Indian-fighting code). Custer was sentenced to loss of rank and pay for one year. Dr. Hawley's analysis...
...Custer's chance came in the fatal expedition of 1876. Commanding a regiment in one of three columns advancing against an encampment of thousands of Sioux Indians at the Little Big Horn, he was assigned to a scouting expedition. Instead of joining the other columns before attacking, as ordered, Custer decided to redeem himself and win undying glory by putting the Indian horde to rout alone and unaided. Custer's attack, Dr. Hawley implies, was one of the worst-botched jobs in the annals of Indian warfare. The General split his small force...
Stolen Spurs. Reviewing Dr. Hawley's account, Psychiatrist Karl Menninger diagnoses Custer as a psychopath marked by extreme vanity, inhumanity, ruthlessness and a complete lack of loyalty to any friend or cause. Dr. Menninger notes some glaring symptoms of severe neurosis: Custer was noted for gaudy uniforms and bad manners; during the Civil War he stole a pair of spurs given by General Santa Ana to the father of one of his friends who was a Confederate officer; he often exposed his troops to unnecessary danger and slighted their medical care; in his attacks on Indian camps he habitually...