Harry Turtledove (Editor) - Alternate Generals II

Custer, on the other hand, claimed that a column he led came "close, very damned close" to Villa himself, even though none of the reports from Pershing's expedition mention it. In any event, Pershing retired back into the United States in a bit under a year, the Mexicans probably chastened a bit if hardly defeated in detail.

Then came the real war, and both men went to France. Patton was an aide to Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, while Custer was assigned to a troop of the Second US Cavalry. Patton asked Pershing for a combat assignment, and was put in charge of the first American tank brigade, as a lieutenant colonel.

He looked up his friend, and told him that horses were doomed. Unless Custer wanted to spend his war like the British cavalry, eternally waiting for a breakthrough in the trenches, he'd go with Patton.

Custer refused.

He told me three times, late, in his quarters, after he'd been drinking, that this was "the biggest damned fool mistake I ever made, and thank God he gave me a chance to change things."

This, by the way, brings up another of Custer's meaningless prevarications. He claimed that he'd gotten drunk once, when a young lieutenant, made an ass of himself, and never touched alcohol again. He was, indeed, piously temperate among civilians and politicians, but would have three or four whiskey-and-waters in the officer's club, although I never saw him more than mildly intoxicated. Why he bothered to tell this lie, other than to further set himself apart in a hard-drinking Army, is beyond me.

At any rate, Patton went on to have "a hell of a war," as Custer described it, gaining respect, medals and recognition. He was badly wounded in the battle of Meuse-Argonne. Custer claimed he visited him in the hospital, just as the great influenza epidemic was beginning.

Patton realized he was dying and, again according to Custer, made him swear to pick up the torch of the newly invented tanks and bring the Army into the Twentieth Century.

Custer, like most liars, couldn't leave well enough alone, and told me he was one of the casket bearers at Patton's funeral. Some years after the Second World War, I happened to see an old photograph of the pallbearers as they carried Patton's casket onto the transport that would take his corpse back to the United States. George Armstrong Custer was not one of them.

His oath to Patton is also suspect because, with the war's end, the tanks were given to the infantry, and Custer, rather than go with them, chose to return to the horse cavalry.

Custer's service between the wars was somewhat undistinguished, although he gained a reputation for not suffering fools gladly. Unfortunately, all too often the fools he wouldn't suffer were his commanding officers or post commanders, and he was constantly in trouble.

However, he saved his career by becoming an intensely political officer, making close friends with high-ranking Republican politicians, or at least as much as a soldier and a politician can be friends.

Needless to say, this did not endear him greatly to his fellow officers. But in the tiny peacetime Army, one learned to keep one's mouth shut, particularly as the Depression roared around the gates of the camps, and the advantages of a civilian career looked very bleak.

Then Custer was chosen for his first staff post, and his behavior changed. Now there was no one smoother, more ready with a colorful story of what it was like "out in the field," or to agree with a superior's opinions. Custer was now considered a man who was headed for the top.

There were also murmurs from his conservative political friends that anyone this handsome and well-spoken might, in time, make an interesting senator or representative.

He married well, to the beautiful and flamboyant Reynolds-tobacco widow Libby Holman. But she was hardly the perfect Army wife, especially in those days, with her loud espousal of such causes, radical to the military, as civil rights, black music and the arts. Their relationship has been written about extensively, particularly considering Holman's suicide in the late 1940s, and I feel no need to invade their privacy, in my speculations, since I never met Libby. I do wonder, if Custer had lived through the war, if the marriage would have survived, given the different directions their lives would almost certainly have taken.

In late 1939, with war again ravaging Europe, Colonel Custer was given a battalion of tanks, although half of them were no more than trucks with signs proclaiming their tracked status.

Then came the huge 1940 war games, in Louisiana, that ended some officers' careers and made others. Custer had been commanded to hold a flanking position for an infantry division's attack. Instead, he led his «tanks» in a long, looping maneuver around the "enemy," and romped through the rear lines, bringing havoc.

The blitzkrieg and the destruction of the Polish army by the Wehrmacht was much in the headlines, and George Armstrong Custer became a bit of a hero, enough so those who muttered about his disobedience or behaving as if he were leading a saber charge did so quietly, especially after Custer was summoned to the White House, congratulated by President Roosevelt, and given his first star.

Two days after Pearl Harbor, Custer was ordered to form the Second "Hell on Wheels" Armored Division, and given his second star.

He took the Second into combat in North Africa. Where other generals hemmed and stumbled, Custer and firebrands like Terry Allen, Lucian Truscott, Ernie Harmon and others smashed into combat as if it was what they'd been born for.

Custer loudly thought just that. He was beginning to become a reporter's darling, always ready with a controversial quote or interesting perspective.

He said he believed in reincarnation (as, interestingly enough, had George Patton). Custer thought he'd been first a caveman, defending his tribe; an infantry commander in ancient Atlantis; a centurion at Cannae; a Crusader in the Holy Land with the Knights Templar; and most recently a subaltern in the Indian Wars, dying when the Seventh Cavalry, under Major Marcus Reno, was wiped out by the Sioux at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Custer fought the Second Armored like it was a cavalry squadron, hitting the Germans when and where they least expected it. The vastly more experienced German Panzer soldiers were impressed by Custer, dubbed him the "Cavalryman From Hell."

Custer became the best-known general of the African campaign, although there were whispers that he was too ready to fight, taking his tanks and men into head-on assaults when he could have saved many lives by waiting until a flank opened, or until the enemy's intentions were more clear before he attacked.

But he won every battle he fought, and people spoke of "Custer's Luck."

He and General Eisenhower had a few disagreements during that campaign, but nothing serious. Eisenhower made him Commander of the Western Landing Force for the Sicily invasion.

Custer took his Seventh Army north and west, and the Germans and Italians retreated steadily east, toward the Straits of Messina and the short passage across to Italy.

Then Custer almost ruined his career again. He had always been a little loose with his mouth, particularly as his fame grew, and now was more than willing to comment on what he thought of the British Allies-"Our Brit brothers seem to have two speeds, slow and stop."

He and British General Montgomery became bitter enemies when the British forces became stalled at Catania. Custer said, "The only thing good about General Montgomery is that he had the balls to stand up against Churchill at El Alamein until Winnie gave him enough troops to have ten-to-one odds when he finally attacked Rommel. Frankly, he doesn't appear to me to be the bravest of men when he doesn't have those kind of odds on his side."