guerrilla warfare

Crazy Horse Kills 81 US Troopers in the Fetterman Massacre, Dec.21, 1866

On this day in 1866, just about 18 months after the Civil War, the U.S. military suffered its worst defeat in the West until 10 years later when LTC George Custer and the men of the 7th Cavalry would be wiped out at the Little Big Horn.

The defeat took place in Wyoming along the Bozeman Trail. Here, Crazy Horse, displaying classic guerrilla warfare tactics, with just 10 warriors, lured Captain William Fetterman and 80 of his troopers into a fatal ambush where 1000-2000 warriors were waiting and the army troops were wiped out to a man. This caused the United States to pull out of the area.

Tensions among the Indians had been deteriorating for three years after John Bozeman blazed a trail thru American Indian territory to help Americans rushing to the gold fields of Montana. The land was deeded to the Crow Indian tribe from the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty. But due to dwindling herds of buffalo, the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux were all encroaching upon Crow land. By 1860, the tribes had taken the hunting grounds west of the Powder River.

With the discovery of gold in Montana, there was a massive influx of settlers pouring into the area, in clear violation of the treaty. Rather than dissuade the settlers from encroaching on Indian land, the government sent U.S. Army troops under the command of Colonel Henry Carrington from Fort Laramie to protect the settlers. He moved into the Powder River area with 1000 people (700 soldiers, 300 civilians) under his command.

Carrington and the army, exploiting legalese in the treaty that allowed them to “establish roads, military, and other posts” built three forts along the trail including his headquarters which was named Fort Phil Kearny, located near present-day Buffalo, Wyoming. He posted about 400 soldiers and almost all of the civilians there.

The Indians wasted no time in making their displeasure felt; in the few months it took to construct his forts, Carrington’s troops were attacked no less than 50 times and the army lost 20 troopers and civilians. While Carrington had the army in a defensive posture, that was soon about to change.

In November 1866, Carrington was reinforced with 63 additional cavalry troopers under the command of Lt. Horatio Bingham. Accompanying the troopers were two Captains from the 18th Infantry, William J. Fetterman and James W. Powell.

Both Fetterman and Bingham were Civil War veterans. Fetterman came from a military family both his father and his uncle (who he lived with for a time) were West Point graduates. When the Civil War began, Fetterman enlisted in May 1861 and was given a commission as a 1LT. He was assigned to the 18th Infantry and served thru the entire war, being twice breveted for gallant conduct. At the war’s end, his rank was that of an LTC of Volunteers. Fetterman was like many officers of his generation. They were all prone to self-promoting, bombastic remarks. Or as we’d say today, “they liked to talk S**T!”

Soon after arriving, Fetterman urged his commander to be more aggressive and reportedly made the remark “with 80 men, I could ride through the whole Sioux Nation.” Of course, no mention of his remark was made until about 40 years later. Carrington, in an effort to protect his own legacy, threw Fetterman under the bus, saying that the Captain was reckless and disobeyed orders. However, after nearly getting caught in an ambush earlier in December, Fetterman reportedly told Carrington that “learned a lesson, and that this Indian war has become a hand-to-hand fight, requiring the utmost caution.”

So then came the events of December 21, 1866. A large band of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors under the command of Red Cloud which included Crazy Horse numbering between 1000-2000 warriors were going to lay a trap for the troopers.

Crazy Horse had earlier ran a successful ambush where he had enticed troopers to follow a small band of warriors into a kill zone where a large number of their tribe would await. On December 6, they killed several troopers that way including Bingham, the cavalry commander. This one would be on a much grander scale.

The Indians who knew the land well picked out a perfect ambush site about 4-5 miles north of Fort Kearny and along the Bozeman trail north of Lodge Trail ridge. At 10 a.m. on the 21st, about 90 soldiers and a wagon train left the fort to go to what was described as a “pinery”, where there was ample supply of wood for the fort.

Only about an hour after they left, pickets reported that the wood detail was under attack. Carrington immediately ordered a quick reaction force composed of 49 infantrymen of the 18th Infantry and 27 mounted troopers of the 2nd Cavalry to be commanded by Captain James Powell. However, Fetterman asked for and was given command of the rescue party, claiming seniority. Lieutenant George Grummond, led the cavalry, which had been leaderless since Bingham’s death two weeks prior. Captain Frederick Brown, the post quartermaster and two civilians, James Wheatley and Isaac Fisher, joined Fetterman, bringing the relief force up to 81 officers and men. The infantry marched out first; the cavalry after mounting their horses would catch up on the march.

Carrington later testified to the inquiry after the battle that his orders were quite clear. “Under no circumstances” was the rescue to “pursue over the ridge, that is Lodge Trail Ridge”. Lieutenant Grummond’s wife, later wrote in a book that Carrington’s statement was true. She said these orders were given twice, the second time by Carrington from the sentry walk after ordering the soldiers to halt as they left the front gate of the fort, to drive home the point. Mrs. Grummond wrote that everyone present could hear the orders from Carrington.

But once he left the fort, Fetterman did, in fact, take the Lodge Trail north rather than the other trail northwest which ran to the “pinery” where the troops on the lumber detail had been attacked. At the time Carrington assumed that Fetterman was attempting to approach from the Indians’ rear area.

Around 11:30 a.m., the garrison watched Fetterman’s command, with Grummond’s cavalry out in front on the flanks, cross out of sight over the ridge in pursuit of 10 Indians, who were the decoys. As soon as they entered the kill zone, the large Indian contingent expertly caught them in the open, quickly wiping out the entire command.

So how did this happen? Grummond who was both reckless and unfamiliar with Indian tactics had ridden out ahead of Fetterman’s infantry. So while Fetterman did truly disobey his orders, the tactical situation had changed. The woodcutting detail was no longer under attack and was proceeding to the “pineries” unhindered. The Indians were retreating over the ridgeline toward Lodge Trail Ridge.

Fetterman was going to attempt to seize the initiative and was going to attempt to catch the Indians before they could get away. He had no way of knowing his men were about to enter a maelstrom with about 1000-2000 Indian warriors awaiting.

His men had followed the 10 Indian decoys until they reached a spot where the decoys signaled the Indians waiting on both sides of the trail. Fetterman’s troops were quickly overwhelmed and they were found in a tight circle where the Indians overwhelmed them. Few of the Indians had firearms, most fought with bow and arrow, war clubs and knives. Only six troopers were found killed by firearms. It took all of 20 minutes to kill all of the infantry. The cavalry under Grummond was a mile ahead and the same fate befell them as well. It took just another 20 minutes for the troopers to be overwhelmed.

The last man to die was the bugler Adolph Metzger. His bugle, likely his only weapon was found smashed. But the Indians, in a show of respect for a lone man fighting against huge odds, didn’t mutilate his body but covered it with buffalo hide.

About noon, Carrington assembled about 75 troopers under Captain Ten Eyck to investigate where Fetterman’s troops were. Shortly afterward, they were joined by 40 more. They reached the top of the Lodge Trail about 12:45 p.m. In the valley below, they observed a large group of Indian warriors. As the Indians dispersed, the troops moved down into the valley.

They found the remains of all 81 of Fetterman’s command. They’d all be stripped naked, mutilated in the ritual fashion. Hands, noses, and ears cut off, eyes gouged out. Private parts severed. Brains removed and laid on rocks. They dispatched wagons to bring back their dead.

Indian casualties ranged from between 14 -100 dead with about 150 wounded.

By 1868 Fort Kearny was abandoned.

This was a classic guerrilla operation, unfortunately, it was and still is a hard lesson for the U.S. Army to learn. The conventional “Big Army” still hasn’t mastered how to win a guerrilla war over 150 years later.

Illustration: Kim Douglas/Wyoming History

T.E. Lawrence, Born on this Day 1888, Author of Seven Pillars of Wisdom

If you aspire to become a member of the Special Operations Forces community, then the name T.E. Lawrence should be one you become intimately familiar with. Commonly known as Lawrence of Arabia, he was one of the most fascinating characters of the 20th century.

Lawrence was an accomplished archaeologist, British military officer, a foreign diplomat as well as a writer. During World War I, he was a British officer who helped raise a guerrilla army known as the Arab uprising against the Ottoman Turkish Empire during the Sinai and Palestine Campaigns.

He later chronicled his story of the revolt in his book, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom” and wrote for Encyclopedia Britannica an article on Guerrilla Warfare for the 14th Edition in 1929. He used his time fighting the Turks during the war as the basis for it.

Lawrence died in 1935 as a result of a motorcycle accident in England.

Beginnings in the Middle East: Lawrence was working as an archaeologist after studying Arabic in the Middle East in 1910. The British sensed a war coming in the summer of 1914 and co-opted Lawrence and Leonard Woolley into the British Army for the purpose of mapping the Negev Desert, an area the Ottoman Turks would have to cross if they were to attack Egypt.

Under the guise of an archaeological dig, the two men meticulously mapped the area and made note of all of the military significant features including the valuable water sources in the region.

When the British became involved in the war Lawrence enlisted with a commission and was assigned to the Arab Bureau of Intelligence in Cairo. There he became involved with a growing Arab nationalist movement. The Arabs were willing to revolt against the Ottoman Turks but insisted on a British guarantee of an independent Arab state including the Hejaz, Syria, and Mesopotamia. Such an independent Arab state would be beneficial to the British and would ensure the Suez Canal would remain open.

The Arab Revolt: After initial successes, the revolt bogged down and there was the danger that the Turks would recapture Mecca. In October of 1916, Lawrence was sent to survey the situation and evaluate the three sons of Sharif Hussein’s sons: Ali, Abdullah, and Faisal to see which one would be best suited to lead the revolt.

Lawrence deemed Faisal as the one. He became a permanent part of Faisal’s staff at Faisal’s request to the British. He would remain there until the fall of Damascus in October of 1918.

From Wikipedia: Lawrence took part in several operations participated personally in several military engagements:

3 January 1917: Attack on an Ottoman outpost in the Hejaz.
26 March 1917: Attack on the railway at Aba el Naam.
11 June 1917: Attack on a bridge at Ras Baalbek.
2 July 1917: Defeat of the Ottoman forces at Aba el Lissan, an outpost of Aqaba.
18 September 1917: Attack on the railway near Mudawara.
27 September 1917: Attack on the railway, destroyed an engine.
7 November 1917: Following a failed attack on the Yarmuk bridges, blew up a train on the railway between Deraa and Amman, suffering several wounds in the explosion and ensuing combat.
23 January 1918: The battle of Tafileh, a region southeast of the Dead Sea, with Arab regulars under the command of Jafar Pasha al-Askari. The battle was a defensive engagement that turned into an offensive rout and was described in the official history of the war as a “brilliant feat of arms”. Lawrence was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his leadership at Tafileh and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. The Arabs took the lives of 400 Turks and captured more than 200 prisoners.
March 1918: Attack on the railway near Aqaba.
19 April 1918: Attack using British armored cars on Tell Shahm.
16 September 1918: Destruction of railway bridge between Amman and Deraa.
26 September 1918: Attack on retreating Ottomans and Germans near the village of Tafas; the Ottoman forces massacred the villagers and then Arab forces in return massacred their prisoners with Lawrence’s encouragement

Lawrence continued serving on Faisal’s staff but his liaison activities for the British curtailed while he took a more active role in intelligence gathering and conducting raids of the Turks. While Faisal wanted to begin attacks as a conventional force, Lawrence talked him out of this strategy and convinced the Emir that their role was best served as a guerrilla force. He later wrote about the Bedouins as soldiers:

“The value of the tribes is defensive only and their real sphere is guerilla warfare. They are intelligent and very lively, almost reckless, but too individualistic to endure commands, or fight in line, or to help each other. It would, I think, be possible to make an organized force out of them…The Hejaz war is one of the dervishes against regular forces-and we are on the side of the dervishes. Our textbooks do not apply to its conditions at all”.

“The value of the Arab army depended entirely on quality, not on quantity. The members had to keep always cool, for the excitement of a blood-lust would impair their science, and their victory depended on a just use of speed, concealment, accuracy of fire. Guerrilla war is far more intellectual than a bayonet charge.”

In July of 1917, Lawrence led an attack of the Arab guerrillas against the town of Aqaba on the Red Sea. They deftly attacked the Turks from behind and captured the town on July 6th. His British commander General Sir Edmund Allenby, commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force wrote a glowing recommendation of Lawrence’s strategy with Faisal after the war.

“I gave him a free hand. His cooperation was marked by the utmost loyalty, and I never had anything but praise for his work, which, indeed, was invaluable throughout the campaign. He was the mainspring of the Arab movement and knew their language, their manners, and their mentality.”

Lawrence was heavily involved in the planning of the attack on Damascus at the end of the war. He tried to lobby the British government on the merits of having an independent Arab state. After the fall of Damascus, he assisted Faisal in the establishment of a provisional Arab government in Damascus.

However, the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and Britain, which would give the French a colony of Syria went completely against the promises of independence that he had made to the Arabs and left him frustrated. He returned to Britain as a full colonel.

After the war, he worked for the British Foreign Office and was an adviser to Winston Churchill in the Colonial Office. But he found the work tedious and boring after being a guerrilla freedom fighter in the war. He joined the RAF as a lowly enlisted man in an attempt to live quietly and privately. He developed a taste for motorcycles and owned several of them.

It was riding one of these, a Brough Superior SS100 in Dorset, close to his cottage, Clouds Hill, near Wareham where he was fatally injured. A dip in the road obstructed his view of two boys on their bicycles; he saw them too late and swerved to avoid them. He then lost control of the motorcycle and was thrown over the handlebars, suffering severe injuries. He died six days later on May 19, 1935. Lawrence was buried in the churchyard of St Nicholas’ Church, Moreton.

Seven Pillars: In 1926 he first published his memoirs of the war and the Arab revolt with the title Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The title comes from the Book of Proverbs (Proverbs 9:1): “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars”

In it, he described not only his part in the Arab Revolt with Faisal but essays on military strategy, Arabian culture and geography, and other topics. It was a high-priced popular book but he refused to take any royalties from it. Instead, offering his proceeds go to the RAF educational trust fund for the children of pilots who lost their lives in the line of duty.

He later wrote an article for Encyclopedia Britannica on Guerrilla Warfare in conjunction with Sir Basil Liddell Hart in reflections of irregular warfare in a piece that was originally published in the Army Quarterly. It can be found here:

Photos: British War Office Archives

Mosby’s Rangers, Civil War Guerrilla Fighters Were a Thorn in the Union’s Side

One of the best-known cavalrymen of the Civil War was John Singleton Mosby. He served under J.E.B. Stuart for the Confederacy during the Fredericksburg and Gettysburg campaigns and started his own cavalry unit, the 43rd Battalion of Virginia Cavalry, which became known as Mosby’s Rangers, or Mosby’s Raiders.

Mosby’s Rangers operated out of Middleburg, Virginia. Their area of operations in Northern Virginia ranged from the Shenandoah Valley to the west, along the Potomac River all the way to Alexandria in the east, bounded on the south by the Rappahannock River, with most of his operations centered in or near Fauquier and Loudoun counties.

His troops were such a thorn in the Union’s rear areas and supply trains that his area of operations became known as “Mosby’s Confederacy.” They were masters at the art of guerrilla warfare, gather intelligence of the enemy, able to strike quickly in the rear of Union forces, and then able to melt away undetected from pursuing forces.

At war’s end, when General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox, Mosby’s men never surrendered, they disbanded and returned to their farms. In a bit of an interesting twist of fate, after the war, Mosby became a political ally and close confidant to President Ulysses S. Grant, his former enemy during the war and served as a consul to Hong Kong.

Early Service And Unit Beginning: Mosby was against secession from the Union, however when the war began, he enlisted in the Confederate infantry as a private, having decided that he couldn’t turn against his home state. He was soon granted a commission as a Major and assembled two companies of cavalry and eight of infantry called the “Virginia Volunteers” and took part in the first Battle of Bull Run.

By June of 1862, Mosby was scouting for J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry during the Peninsula Campaign. He took part in Stuart’s famous ride around McClellan’s army but was captured on July 20, while waiting for a train at Beaverdam Depot.

He was held as a prisoner in Washington D.C., but he was released in just 10 days as part of a large prisoner exchange program. While being transported back to the South, he observed large amounts of Union troops under Ambrose Burnside from North Carolina on their way to reinforce the Army of the Potomac and John Pope in the Northern Virginia Campaign. Once he was released, Mosby walked to the army headquarters outside Richmond and personally related his findings to Robert E. Lee.

After the disastrous Union defeat at Fredericksburg in December 1862, Stuart and Mosby led several raids behind enemy lines in Prince William, Fairfax and Loudoun counties, to disrupt the Union communications, harass the enemy and gather supplies for their own forces. Late in the month, with Stuart’s blessing, Mosby gathered experienced horsemen from the Middleburg, VA area to form Mosby’s Rangers.

Mosby’s Rangers Are Born: Mosby created his force under the auspices of the Partisan Ranger Act of 1862 which sought to recruit irregulars for service into the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.

There were two purposes of the Partisan Ranger Act. The first purpose was to take control over guerrilla warfare and decide who would and would not be able to use it. This proved useful to Confederate military raiding. The second purpose was to promote the use of guerrilla warfare to help protect areas where there was little protection from the army. The Partisan Ranger Act resulted in many Southerners believing that any of form of guerrilla warfare was now being approved. From Wikipedia:
The Partisan Ranger Act allowed Davis to form a group of partisan rangers. This also led to the recruitment of irregular soldiers into the Confederate army. This meant that partisan rangers would have the same rules, supplies, and pay as the regular soldiers of the army, but they would be acting independently and were going to be detached from the rest of the army.
The partisan ranger’s job would gather intelligence and take supplies away from the Union army. Anything they brought back, they would give to the quartermaster, a military officer who was in charge of providing food, clothing, and other necessities, and in return, they would get paid. The Partisan Ranger Act drew many Southern men who were interested by this opportunity.

By February of 1864 under pressure from General Lee and other senior officers, the Partisan Ranger Act was repealed and all but two guerrilla groups were disbanded. Mosby’s Rangers and McNeill’s Rangers. Both operated in Virginia and operated under normal military discipline.

For the most part, Mosby and his forces operated out of an area that a horse could travel in a day’s hard riding, about 25 miles (40 km) in any direction from Middleburg.

Mosby summed up his operations quite simply:

My purpose was to weaken the armies invading Virginia, by harassing their rear… to destroy supply trains, to break up the means of conveying intelligence, and thus isolating an army from its base, as well as its different corps from each other, to confuse their plans by capturing their dispatches, are the objects of partisan war. It is just as legitimate to fight an enemy in the rear as in the front. The only difference is in the danger …

Mosby’s men dismissed the use of sabers, thinking them too limiting in combat. Instead, they each carried two .44 caliber revolvers and many of his troops carried two more, one each stuffed in a boot top. The tried using carbines captured from Union cavalry but found them too unwieldy for their type of operations.

Mosby experimented with some small artillery pieces but quickly stopped their use as they were of little practicality for the type of lightning fast hit and run raids his forces were conducting.

Each man had at least two horses and many men had several. Mosby himself had six horses that he’d change out frequently. The men’s treatment of their horses and the sentiment they shared about their horses, not as animals but as members of the unit was legendary.

Mosby’s men conducted nearly 30 raids in 1863-64 and were very successful at putting a thorn in the enemy’s backside as well as scouting and foraging for the army. They hauled in 1,600 horses and mules, 230 beef cattle, 85 wagons and ambulances, and 1,200 captured, killed or wounded, including Union Brig. Gen. Edwin H. Stoughton who was captured in bed.

Mosby, it was reported, woke Stoughton with a “spank on his bare back.” The general was outraged and demanded to know what the meaning of this was. Mosby asked him, “have you ever heard of Mosby?” The general replied, “Have you captured him?” at which time Mosby said, “I am Mosby,” he said. “Stuart’s cavalry has possession of the Court House; be quick and dress.”

He was wounded twice in battle but was able to return to duty quickly each time. The Union began hanging any of Mosby’s men they captured. This quickly became the norm for Mosby’s men when the captured Union soldiers. This continued until late in November 1864 when Mosby wrote to General Philip Sheridan and requested that both sides return to treating prisoners of war more humanely. Both sides agreed and there were no more executions.

When Lee surrendered in 1865, Mosby and his men were leery of surrendering, fearing that the Union would hang them as spies. They received mixed signals from General Winfield Scott Hancock’s staff and rather than risk it, they instead just disbanded the unit.

Post War: Mosby was only 31 when the war ended, but was constantly harassed by occupying Union troops. Not only him but his wife and family as well. It took a personal letter to now President Grant to stop the practice.

Mosby supported Grant, his former foe, in the presidential election and was his campaign manager in the state of Virginia. Grant in his memoirs wrote about Mosby after the war and came away with a different perspective.

“Since the close of the war, I have come to know Colonel Mosby personally and somewhat intimately. He is a different man entirely from what I supposed. … He is able and thoroughly honest and truthful.”

He was named the Consul to Hong Kong, a position he held for eight years and served in the Justice Department as well as a lawyer for the railroad. He was now reviled in much of his home state of Virginia for his friendship with Grant. He disagreed with the practice of slavery and tried to explain his reasons for still fighting for the South. In a 1907 letter he wrote:

“I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery—a soldier fights for his country—right or wrong—he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in” and he added,”The South was my country.”

He died on May 30, 1916, Memorial Day, from complications from throat surgery and is buried in Warrenton, Virginia.

Photos: Mosby Museum