I had always been fascinated by the massacre at the Little Big Horn… Custer’s  arrogance … just our whole military’s arrogance… it was the one place I always wanted to visit…  to see the battlefield… to try to visualize what happened there… except…  Philip  never took vacations… he was always much too busy doing  important things... you know… saving the world… making money to solve all of God’s problems in the world… things like that… ad nauseum…

Ellen and I took our first vacation together after we shut down the restaurant in 1994… celebrated her 50th birthday and our 25th anniversary… and spent the summer by driving out West… where… of course… we would end up at the  Little Big Horn... it was a great experience… saw many other things than the Little Big Horn.

We stopped at Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming on the way to Montana.  We discovered that there was  another massacre  10 years before Custer… the  Fetterman Massacre…  Captain William Fetterman  (with the same military arrogance)  led 81 men from the Fort to chase a warrior daring them to come out and fight… the warrior was a very young  Crazy Horse  used as a decoy to bring the soldiers along a ridge where they were surrounded by a thousand Indians… it was all over in an hour.  I enjoyed walking that  battlefield  even more than the Little Big Horn.

The point of all this, is simply background to all the  allusions to  Custer  in the movie  We Were Soldiers…. so many…  Colonel Hal Moore was commanding the 7th Cavalry... their horses were their  helicopters  as they prepared to bring their 395 soldiers into a trap where they would be surrounded by 2000 VietCong regulars…

Tomorrow, I will also let you know about how  Fetterman  appeared as well…  amazing how that military arrogance just continues on and on… well… not really  amazing …  just my natural man  showing itself off.

Glad I finally learned that the only way out of all my disasters is by His divine interference….  so many stories…

More details tomorrow…

🙂