Tom Custer: the general's brother was awarded two Medals Of Honor for valor
Written: Jun 25 '06 (Updated Jun 09 '07)
Product Rating:
Pros: The story of Tom Custer, who was awarded the Medal of Honor twice for valor.
Cons: Some dialogue among the book's characters has been created by the book's author.
The Bottom Line: A richly detailed, 300-plus-paged volume, the first book ever written about two-time Medal of Honor winner Tom Custer, brother of General George Armstrong Custer.
Don_Krider's Full Review: Carl F. Day - Tom Custer: Ride to Glory
As I write this on Sunday, June 25, 2006, I give pause to remember another Sunday, another June 25th, in the year of 1876.
130 years ago the U. S. Army suffered one of its worst defeats fighting the native American "insurgency" in the American West when Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer led the 600-men of the 7th Cavalry into the valley of the Little Big Horn River in what was then the Montana Territory.
Custer divided his command, with seven companies of the regiment's 12 winding up fighting on a hilltop for two days before being rescued.
Custer led the remaining five companies to their deaths attempting to charge the village four miles upriver, encountering some 2,000 or more hostile Sioux and Cheyenne warriors with the 200 troopers of his immediate command.
Among those who rode with and died with George Custer were four additional members of his personal family (two brothers, a brother-in-law and a nephew joined him in death).
One of those killed and forgotten by historians and filmmakers was Captain Thomas Ward Custer, the general's younger brother who went by the name of "Tom," who was awarded two Medals of Honor for "valor above and beyond the call of duty."
Tom would often disagree with his older brother about military decisions, and George reportedly would say, "Well, you should have been the general," to which Tom would reply, "I didn't need to be the general, I won all the medals!"
It is the life of Thomas Ward Custer, the general's little brother, that is the subject of the book, "Tom Custer: Ride To Glory" by Carl F. Day.
It's the tale of an Ohio farm boy who lied about his age to join the Union Army in 1861 to fight the Confederates, a lad who would be awarded two Medals Of Honors at the age of 20 for fighting those Confederates, and who followed his older brother to his death at the age of 31 fighting Indians.
This book
In writer Carl F. Day's "Tom Custer: Ride To Glory" the author attempts to shed some light on the brave young cavalryman.
Day reveals a complex man largely overlooked by historians and filmmakers (check out movies like "They Died With Their Boots On" and "Custer Of The West" and you'll find no mention or portrayal of the general's beloved brother, or his other family members, who died at his side).
Originally published in 2002 in hardcover, the edition I'm reviewing here is the illustrated, 300-plus-page oversized paperback from the University of Oklahoma Press published in 2005.
Carl F. Day, the author, has published a number of articles on the Custer family, but this is his first book. He is a high school teacher in Godfrey, Illinois, by trade.
The writing
Day does a good job here, presenting a detailed biography with footnotes that isn't dry or boring. It's a refreshing read throughout.
I disagree with his decision to create some dialogue in the book, but I must admit that what he has created would probably have been the type of converations the Custer brothers sometimes would have had, and that it probably makes the book more enjoyable for the Custer novice.
Family
Day's "Tom Custer: Ride To Glory" is less about a man who died a horrible death 130 years ago than it is a celebration of family.
The Custer brothers, sisters, parents and relatives were something you don't see much anymore --- a tight-knit, happy, fun-loving family who loved, laughed and enjoyed life to the fullest. For presenting that, Day should be applauded.
This was the first full-length book biography of Tom Custer and his short 31 years of life. There is also another book on bookstore shelves now, which I haven't read yet, "In His Brother's Shadow: The Life Of Thomas Ward Custer" by Roy Bird.
Day's book includes a few Tom Custer photos from his youth that I had not seen before despite reading dozens of Custer books. Always nice to find something new in old history.
Tom Custer
Day's portrait of Tom Custer traces the family's history back to Germans who migrated to the New World and settled in Pennsylvania. Tom's own parents chose to raise their family in New Rumley, Ohio.
We learn of the first marriages of Emmanuel and Maria Custer, Tom's parents, which saw both widowed by the deaths of their spouses. Both brought two children each into the new family, lost children in infancy, and raised five additional children who were born to the couple.
Day describes a family that was close:
"The family was so harmonious that 'outsiders knew no difference between full and half brothers and sisters, and they themselves almost resented the question.' In later years, it required conscious effort on the part of General Custer to remember, with accuracy, the exact parentage of his brothers and sisters."
The father was a tough Jacksonian Democrat who was a co-founder of the New Rumley, Ohio, Methodist Church. The mother sang to the children. "Father Custer romped and played just as hard as any of the children," Day says.
This is the level of detail Day brings to the book, details largely forgotten in the logbook of history. We follow young Tom Custer as he begins walking a mile-and-a-half to school every day, becoming quite the prankster in his classes, as detailed by Day.
Tom worshipped older brother George, whom the family called "Autie," according to Day. Both were master horsemen from a young age. Day tells us:
"...Autie rode as soon as he could hold on. His favorite trick was to ride standing up on the horse's bare back. After a few falls, Tom also mastered his brother's equestrian abilities..."
We follow the Custer boys, via Day's narrative, through schoolhouse pranks and a family that was raised on Democratic politics and strict religious values (Day says that Father Custer wanted his sons to be "foremost, soldiers of the Lord").
In 1857, George was appointed to the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. In four years, he would graduate in time to fight at the battle of Bull Run in 1861. He wrote home his tales of cavalry heroics and danger, exciting his brothers, too young to go to war and fight the Confederates.
Though the parents didn't want to offer up any more sons for the war effort, they finally relented to their sons' desire to enlist by agreeing to allow one of their remaining sons' to enlist. One son, Nevin, enlists, but is discharged for health reasons, making a place for Tom Custer.
Tom was 5-foot-7, blue-eyed and sandy-haired, according to his enlistment papers, but he is only 16. Officially, he couldn't enlist until he was 18 (though younger men did serve in the war as drummer boys, and sometimes as soldiers). Tom solved the problem, lied about his age and enlisted.
A brave soldier
Day's narrative takes us through 16-year-old Tom's Civil War history in detail.
We follow Tom Custer through his first battle at Ivy Mountain, Kentucky. We experience his constant drilling in Louisville. We are with him at the Battle of Stones River, Tennessee, where Confederate forces fell back to after their defeat at the Battle of Perryville, Ky. in 1862.
We find Tom, as an infantryman, with a fixed bayonet on his rifle, facing a Confederate charge at Stones River. His bravery in the fight, described very well here, led to Private Custer being assigned as a personal escort for several Union generals, including U. S. Grant.
Day takes us through Tom's re-enlistment in 1864 (getting a bounty of $100 to stay in the service and a promotion to corporal). He joins the cavalry and winds up as a second lieutenant in the Third Cavalry Division, which is commanded by his brother.
Two Medals Of Honor
In great detail Day takes the reader to the fighting that led to the surrender of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in April of 1865.
In an amazing feat, Tom Custer charged retreating Confederates, seized the regimental flag of the 2nd North Carolina Cavalry from its color bearer, and returned to his lines with the flag and 14 prisoners he had captured at the point of his six-shot revolver.
That won him his first Medal of Honor.
To win the second Medal of Honor, Tom was seriously wounded seizing another Confederate battle flag from its bearer. It seems the standard bearer shot Tom through the face, then Tom shot the Confederate through the heart, grabbed the flag and rode back to his lines.
Still bleeding, he presented the flag to his brother and then turned his mount to charge back into the battle. He was compelled not to do so by his brother, which is detailed in the book.
These are just highlights. The fun is in reading this detailed biography. Day presents at length the complete details of how Tom Custer became the only U. S. Army soldier in the Civil War to win the Medal Of Honor twice.
After the war
Day takes us to Texas, as Tom accompanies General Custer to Texas to enforce the U. S. reconstructionist policies in the former Confederate state, to Kansas and the formation of the U. S. 7th Cavalry Regiment in 1866, through the Battle of the Washita River in Oklahoma in 1868, where Tom is wounded in a controversial "victory" over Cheyenne Indians.
He takes us through 1871-73 when the 12 companies of the 7th Cavalry were scattered all over the South fighting the Ku Klux Klan (General Custer and three companies were stationed in Kentucky while Tom's company was stationed in South Carolina).
Day does a good job describing the Klan-fighting days of the regiment. It's also the tale of Army troopers trying to be win the hearts of a conquered population, helping fight a fire in a South Carolina town where the former Confederate citizens hate the occupying Union soldiers and kill troopers if they get the chance, years after the Civil War ended.
In 1873, the 7th went to the Dakota Territory to protect settlers and to keep the Indians on the reservations where they didn't want to be.
The regiment's encounters with Indians during the Yellowstone Expedition of 1873 are detailed, including a 4 a.m. attack on a sleeping cavalry camp by Indians. Hunting big game. Playing cards. The unusual things of Army life on the plains, like Tom adopting a buffalo calf for a pet, feeding it carrots from the kitchen table, are all detailed here.
In another instance, you'll follow Tom as he captures Rain-In-The-Face by grabbing him in the embrace of his arms in an Indian agency trading store full of armed Indians and taking him into custody for the murder of a white man.
Tom grabbed the Indian, rather than kill him, even though the warrior was opening his blanket to expose a rifle.
The Indian warrior later escaped from jail, vowing to eat Tom Custer's heart one day.
Tom was apparently popular with women and may have fathered a son by one, and Day includes a photo of the Custer-looking lad in the book (something I hadn't seen or heard of before).
The infamous Black Hills expedition of 1874, a scientific trip through sacred Sioux land, is detailed.
In several instances, the 7th encountered small villages it could have easily destroyed, but General Custer instead signaled these tribes he meant them no harm. It was this expedition's discovery of gold on the Indian lands that eventually led to the Sioux War of 1876.
Day will take you to the final Custer battle and afterward in the book.
Final recommendation
I found Carl F. Day's "Tom Custer: Ride To Glory" to be an interesting read. I recommend it.
If you enjoy history, this is the book for you, though some details of how they found Tom Custer's body are very graphic (he had been horribly mutilated and could be identified by close friends only by a tattoo on his body that had his initials, "TWC").
The final resting place of Tom Custer at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: http://www.homeofheroes.com/gravesites/states/images_af/custer_tom.jpg
Books about others awarded the Medal of Honor:
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.: The Life Of A War Hero by H. Paul Jeffers, the story of the son of President "Teddy" Roosevelt, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for valor during World War II: http://www.epinions.com/content_185615486596
Baa Baa Black Sheep by Greg Boyington, the story of the legendary leader of "The Black Sheep Squadron" of World War II and TV series fame, a Sioux Indian who was awarded the Medal of Honor: http://www.epinions.com/content_142122126980
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