Forrest Seventeen Dead Horses

Please don't stop! It's a great thread. And too funny, Sickles was a walking tall tale. You wonder if Longstreet was waiting for a modest rebuttal when telling the guy his idiotic move had broken up an attack. Really, how did he keep a straight face?

We girls only get prone to making stuff up when their children aren't around. You raise them to be honest citizens then it turns out to not have been a good plan.
 
Hah !

There's nothing wrong with embellishing 'a tale' . . . when everyone understands that's what it is and it's for entertainment.

But I had an Uncle ( World II Vet that outright lied).
Don't get me wrong, I loved him to death, and he was a character in his own right.

He did return from the War permanently injured.

And he had to walk with crutches from 1944 until his death a few years ago. He always claimed he had been shot in the leg during an amphibious landing somewhere in the South Pacific. Then the truth came out.

He was injured in an accident on his troopship no where near a combat zone.

Seems he was standing underneath a 1000 pound net of potatoes, when the hoist cable snapped.

:rofl:

I'm not laughing at his injuries at all . . . only his story about how he saw the eyes of the Japanese soldier up close . . . before he was shot on the beach.

:laugh:
Much better story than being injured by potatoes.
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Take it with a grain of salt because I'm talking out my nose, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was Custer!

Custer did kill his own horse with a shot to the head. This happened while he was chasing buffalo. I think this was during the Washita Campaign but I can't remember for sure.
 
And he had to walk with crutches from 1944 until his death a few years ago. He always claimed he had been shot in the leg during an amphibious landing somewhere in the South Pacific. Then the truth came out.

He was injured in an accident on his troopship no where near a combat zone.

Seems he was standing underneath a 1000 pound net of potatoes, when the hoist cable snapped.

One of my CW relatives, writing forty years later, said that "the only injury I received during the war" was when a ball struck and split the stock of his rifle at Chickamauga and knocked him over. But only if you've read the rest of his memoir about what he'd seen at Sharpsburg and elsewhere, where his unit was in the bloody thick of it, would you realize that his reference to his "injury" was tongue-in-cheek.
 
He also tailored them to his audience. Whenever he was with his buddy, Dan Sickles, he enthusiastically agreed that by moving his line forward on the 2nd day, Dan had broken up his attack and did, indeed, "save the Union army at Gettysburg." I never heard of him saying that except when he and Sickles were together.
I dont want to derail this great thread, but just wanted to let you know that Longstreet's praise of Sickle's forward line "saving the Union army" at Gettysburg was published in the newspaper at least once. I can't say if Longstreet intended for it to be published or not, but it was. :Dhttps://civilwartalk.com/threads/longstreet-to-sickles-on-gettysburg-1902.145172/#post-1798773
 
I dont want to derail this great thread, but just wanted to let you know that Longstreet's praise of Sickle's forward line "saving the Union army" at Gettysburg was published in the newspaper at least once. I can't say if Longstreet intended for it to be published or not, but it was. :Dhttps://civilwartalk.com/threads/longstreet-to-sickles-on-gettysburg-1902.145172/#post-1798773
Missed that one. I've got one or two threads discussing newspaper reports of it, too.
https://civilwartalk.com/threads/gettysburg-reunion-1888.139967/#post-1682575
https://civilwartalk.com/threads/a-return-to-gettysburg-1893.135405/#post-1561923
 
Sitting around and airing the breeze with homespun tales has always been delightful. History is shared much the same way in many places. The big problem is the contest of proof, and the double-dare. After the war, with the horrors of it all being silenced, it was better to keep a righteous tenor to the tone in managing the account. You want to prove that barrel has no more powder and lead when it is put on the shelf.
Lubliner.
 
April of 1867 was when the boy genius killed his own mount with just 1 shot!! It seems that he was hunting and the buffalo wrenched his head to the side and "Yellow Hair" shot his horse instead.
Regards
David
 
Southerners have longed been categorized as being slow, which is a poor choice of words in my opinion. We are deliberate! For example:

Like any good dip, there are 8 layers to a Southern goodbye:
1) "about to leave" warning
2) a "we've gotta go" statement
3) hugs
4) walking to the driveway
5) one more conversation in the driveway
6) more hugs
7) talking while everyone's piling in the car
8) pulling out of the driveway

Whereas in the North, all goodbyes are said inside before they close the door on you!
Regards
David
 
Southerners have longed been categorized as being slow, which is a poor choice of words in my opinion. We are deliberate! For example:

Like any good dip, there are 8 layers to a Southern goodbye:
1) "about to leave" warning
2) a "we've gotta go" statement
3) hugs
4) walking to the driveway
5) one more conversation in the driveway
6) more hugs
7) talking while everyone's piling in the car
8) pulling out of the driveway

Whereas in the North, all goodbyes are said inside before they close the door on you!
Regards
David
Love it !

Gawd that is so true.

Even in an emergency, it will take us an hour to get to the hospital.

After all, we've got to stop and ask about everyone's family and such.

:rofl:
 
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Southerners have longed been categorized as being slow, which is a poor choice of words in my opinion. We are deliberate! For example:

Like any good dip, there are 8 layers to a Southern goodbye:
1) "about to leave" warning
2) a "we've gotta go" statement
3) hugs
4) walking to the driveway
5) one more conversation in the driveway
6) more hugs
7) talking while everyone's piling in the car
8) pulling out of the driveway

Whereas in the North, all goodbyes are said inside before they close the door on you!
Regards
David

And if they farm, you'll pull out of the driveway with a load of produce in the trunk! (And the back seat...) Granny in SC - while we were doing the traditional good-by, Uncle was putting all sorts of things in the car. One kid wandered into it - there's two boxes of tomatoes. The next kid went out for a sweater, and there's three boxes of corn and squash on the floor... We could have opened a roadside stand! :laugh:
 
Sharing the produce from one’s garden says a lot about the recipient. Won’t share my ‘matters with just anyone kinda of attitude. Plus if it was sweet corn then you are special but you must eat it soon as the sugar will turn to starch and then it ain’t sweet!
Regards
David
 
Sharing the produce from one’s garden says a lot about the recipient. Won’t share my ‘matters with just anyone kinda of attitude. Plus if it was sweet corn then you are special but you must eat it soon as the sugar will turn to starch and then it ain’t sweet!
Regards
David

That's sooooo good just right off the stalk! Same with watermelons, too, come to think of it... They did in A P Hill's Light Division once - must have been Yankee melons! :tongue:
 
"General Longstreet, alluding to the exaggerated number of horses said to have been killed under several of the most celebrated cavalry commanders engaged in the American Civil War, in a letter to the author of this article, dated Sept. 22, writes: 'Referring to seventeen horses killed in battle ... The seventeen horses can perhaps be accounted for when we reflect that the commander knew little of the power and importance of organization, and that going into the cavalry fights his unorganized forces may have shot his horses instead of the enemy. If he were riding for (Forrest), I doubt if he would have asked credit for seventeen horses killed.'"
Gen. J. G. Wilson, The Outlook magazine, p. 59, January 1897
Ok, which "celebrated cavalry commander" was it who claimed 17 dead horses?
It wasn't Forrest. Having found and bought the book Bedford Forrest And His Critter Company, the opening preface gives theses statistics on page xi-
"He was wounded four times, had twenty-nine horses shot out from under him, and killed thirty men in hand-to-hand combat." (Walter Sullivan, 1982).
I read the author's intro and Chapter 1, which portrays the scene of mother Mariam and Fanny Beck being chased by a panther, and Bedford chasing the panther to exact revenge. It is in the vein of storytelling common to the thread. Mariam just happened to be a sturdy 180 pounds, and 6'1 Bedford gently lifted her from her saddle after her wounding; ran an indeterminate distance through the swamps and bayous chasing the cat, and having it treed by his dogs, waited until dawn, shot it and scalped it.

"I kinda' like the feller already!"
Lubliner.
 
Take it with a grain of salt because I'm talking out my nose, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was Custer! JO Shelby ran Forrest a close second on dead horses - he had 24 shot out from under him. But Confederates had to get their own horses without reimbursment...which is one reason both Forrest and Shelby were darn good horse thieves. Make the other guy pay!

Killcavalry probably claimed 17...but in truth, he likely just rode that many to death. :nah disagree:
 
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