Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

Looking squarely in the old Apache-fighter’s eye, he quietly said, “An old file like you what seen so much killing during the war, so much killing since—never took you to be a man what fancied butchering children and babes.”

For a moment the veteran stood there in utter silence, haughtily glaring back at the Irishman. Then Donegan thought he saw an almost imperceptible quake shoot through the man, a quiver crossing his big shoulders that visibly shook the two small and faded chevrons sewn on his muddy sleeves. When he finally spoke, his mighty jaw trembled, but his gaze was steady.

“I had me a family once. So don’t you ever again say O’Reilly’s not a man to protect the little ones what can’t protect themselves.”

The old soldier turned on his heel and crossed the five yards to where Ute John was holding court, shoving his way into the midst of those reveling soldiers, and picked up the body of the dead infant off the soggy ground, all to the stunned silence of everyone, even Seamus Donegan. Like a great white oak sheltering a tiny seedling, the veteran cradled the dead infant within his arms as he elbowed his way from the angry, cursing mob and strode past Donegan, his eyes brimming with tears.

“Cawpril,” Seamus said quietly just as the man passed him.

The soldier stopped. His shoulders heaving once, he finally turned round as Donegan walked up and touched the man’s arm. “This morning when we was going through the lodges, I remember seeing a small piece of blanket what might work nicely.”

With a nod the soldier followed Seamus to a lodge where they found not only a blanket to wrap around the infant’s bloody body, but a basket large enough to serve as a coffin. Only then did the two take the child across the hillside to that small fire where the prisoners sat within a ring of guards. The old soldier laid the basket at the feet of the young women. No one moved. Not American Horse, not Charging Bear, not any of the women. They only stared at the two white men, perhaps unable to comprehend this surprising act of kindness in the midst of the cruelty, barbarity, the utter savagery of both sides of this great Sioux War.

It wasn’t long afterward that Seamus and the corporal went to sit on a grassy hillside above the ravine, there to talk about wives and children and all that the loss of family could destroy in a man—when the attack the captives had promised came to pass.

Chapter 42

9 September 1876

Just past four o’clock surgeons Bennett Clements and Valentine McGillycuddy ordered a quartet of troopers to lock down the limbs of a heavily sedated Lieutenant Adolphus Von Leuttwitz. Because the bullet was still lodged in the bone, this grisly, open-air amputation could be put off no longer.

It amazed those who watched just how much fight was still left in the officer, rambling with fever and groggy by virtue of heavy doses of morphine administered throughout the afternoon, as the huge, serrated knife began to bite into that torn flesh above the wounded right knee. Completely around the limb Clements drew his knife in a long circular motion, the blade sinking through the thick muscles, where it scraped along the femur. Then at just the moment the knife was withdrawn from that deep incision, McGillycuddy was already pushing his handsaw’s blade through the bloody gash, working feverishly to hack through that largest bone in the human body.

Unlike those Civil War surgeons who after a short time became so proficient in amputations that they could remove an arm in eight seconds, a leg in no more than eleven, these two had approached their surgery as a last resort—praying that by sacrificing the limb, they could save their patient’s life.

In moments Clements yelled for the infantry bayonet he had buried in the coals of a nearby fire. With it the surgeon cauterized the severed stump as a steward dragged away the useless limb and wrapped it in a small piece of greasy blanket taken from one of the captured lodges about to undergo destruction. As the lieutenant thrashed and fought, both surgeons sealed off the bleeding vessels and daubed the great open wound with iodine, wrapping it in clean surgical dressings before moving on to perform the same task on Private Edward Kennedy, who had been wounded in both legs during the siege at the ravine.

About the same time, just minutes past four P.M., Sergeant Von Moll’s men from A Troop were turning the damp sod with Lieutenant Bubb’s spades, carving out two graves west of the ravine for scout White and Private Wenzel—when the sudden war cries and the gunfire reverberated from the bluffs to signal the attack.

“Injuns firing into the herds on the front of the Third Cavalry!” came the alarm.