Robert Kershaw is a Parachute Regiment officer who has published an outstanding analysis of the 1944 Arnhem battle from the German standpoint. He brings the same skills to bear on Custer’s debacle, focussing attention both on modern archaeological research and contemporary Indian testimony. The latter, he finds, was vastly more reliable than white men at the time found acceptable.
Kershaw shows that, by a nice irony, the Indians outgunned the horse soldiers…his analysis exposes many historical myths about Custer’s last fight. He presents a professional soldier’s view of a sorry little fiasco, of which the only plausible heroes were ‘redskins’.
