Colonel George Armstrong Custer Failure

A few United States Soldiers have attached to their names more controversy than Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. An 1861 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Custer became one of the Civil War’s generals at age 23 years old and received the nickname “Boy General.” His meteoric rise was based in no small degree upon his aggressiveness and reckless courage under fire.1 It was his reckless courage, however, that he was tragically defeated at the Battle of Little Bighorn, also commonly referred to as “Custer's Last Stand”. Custer failed to execute the operations process in which he failed to understand, visualize, describe, and direct his forces that ultimately resulted in his demise and cost the lives of

The 7th Cavalry Regiment, led by Custer, advanced along the Little Bighorn pursuant to orders from Custer’s superior, Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry. Terry ordered Custer to pinpoint the location of the hostile Indians and wait for reinforcement before engaging in any battles. However, during a reconnaissance of the area, Custer’s scouts were spotted by a few Indians, which led him to believe that his position has been comprised. Custer believed he had lost his element of surprise, so he disobeyed Terry’s orders and rapidly devised and employed an assault on the Indians in hoping to still achieve his end state of capturing the Indians before they

Custer’s faulty understanding of the environment, his preconceived notion of how his enemy would fight, his lack of certain critical information elements, as well as arrogance, and complacency led to poor decision-making and direction. Had he paid more attention to his scouts, he might not have divided his force to the point that no single element thereof could withstand the enemy onslaught. While the dispatch of Captain Benteen and his battalion to block the enemy’s avenue of escape was not itself unusual,17 dividing his forces to conduct the entrapment he had visualized and then ordering Reno’s element to attack was ill considered, if not foolhardy.18 Thus, Custer did not task organize his force in a way that it could be successful under the