This day 150 years ago in Rebel Raiders’ History  - Custer and Rebel Raiders

-Dedicated to Civil War episodes, battles, people and ships that also appear in GMT’s Rebel Raiders on the High Seas.

Custer and Rebel Raiders 

Today, June 25, is the 137th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.  While neither Custer's Last Stand in 1876 nor the flamboyant boy general himself are represented exactly in Rebel Raiders on the High Seas, the link to the Civil War is undeniable.   Custer was Gen. Phil Sheridan's favorite, his "go to" for bold action, and in that sense when any Union gamer plays US Card 11 - Sheridan ...they are in effect playing Custer.

Sheridan (standing, left) and Custer (seated, right)

Sheridan on horseback (the illustration used for Rebel Raiders Card 11)

Custer, wearing the stars of a brevet major general of volunteers on a uniform of his own design - complete with the distinctive red scarf tie that, as much as his perfumed yellow hair, would be his trademark.

Custer, of course, made his name 150 years ago next week, leading the Michigan Brigade in a series of desperate charges that brought to a halt J.E.B Stuart's attack on the rear of the Union lines at Gettysburg.  That battle is represented in Rebel Raiders by CSN Card 77 - Lee Moves North....

This day 150 years ago in Rebel Raiders’ History

-Dedicated to Civil War episodes, battles, people and ships that also appear in GMT’s Rebel Raiders on the High Seas, my next game.

April 30, 1863

            Historical Events:  The Camerone, Stoneman’s Raid and Porter at Grand Gulf.

            Game Connections:  Three big events for one day.

  While the epic last stand of the Foreign Legion at The Camerone is beyond the scope of Rebel Raiders, the French intervention in Mexico is not – as Card 61 Maximillian  (see below), which gives the South a free blockade runner and a bonus to its Supply roll each turn it is in effect attests.

Stoneman’s Raid in which 10,000 Yankee cavalrymen were sent by “Fighting Joe” Hooker to disrupt Lee’s supply lines in Virginia, should have been a huge success, considering how well Colonel Grierson did with a single brigade in Mississippi (see Card 42 The Horse Soldiers – and the blog posts from April 18 and 19 commemorating it – and the John Ford-John Wayne movie based upon that ride).  It was not, however, in part because half the Union cavalry lolled about Rapidan Station celebrating a minor victory and Stoneman, who suffered from piles (perhaps the worst affliction of all for a horseman), failed to push the other half to action.

On the Mississippi, on April 29 Acting Rear Admiral  David Dixon Porter silenced the lower batteries around Grand Gulf in a five-and-a-half hour slugfest, then sent the Lafayette and Carondelet (which appears in the game as Card 15 ) back in an action that continued on into the morning hours of the 30^th to pound the upper batteries.  This opened the river to Grant’s transports.

 

John Wayne in John Ford's The Horse Soldiers

Inspired by my own posting yesterday, late last night I watched The Horse Soldiers - a great John Ford cavalry movie starring John Wayne and William Holden.

Yesterday I noted that "this day" in Rebel Raiders history (April 17) was about Grierson's Raid, a famous incident depicted in the game by The Horse Soldiers card, which as I explained was named so in homage to the great 1959 movie and the historical novel of the same name.

I first saw The Horse Soldiers when it came out in 1959 (I was five).  I got the 45 record from the local record shop and learned the theme song (which I still know and, I admit, sang while watching the opening credits last night).  I have seen this movie many, many, many times and know the dialogue almost by heart (as I do with most John Wayne films and all of the John Ford cavalry films in which he starred - notably the famous "Cavalry Trilogy" of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande and Fort Apache). I read the novel the summer after my freshman year of college when I worked selling paint at Sears. The movie of course has so many stock characters and little asides and vignettes that are pure John Ford romanticism - but that perhaps is why it still resonates so with me, 54 years after I first saw it...

...and as the song from the movie says, I, too, "would ride right down to hell, and back, for Ulysses Simpson Grant" -- especially if John Wayne was leading.....