With Custer`s Cavalry

A wife’s premonition spared Lieutenant Francis M. Gibson from the fate that overtook General George A. Custer and the Seventh U. S. Cavalry. At her insistence, he declined a transfer that would have placed him in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, but he was on the scene immediately after it. Gibson’s letters detailing the devastation, together with his wife’s reports on the women at the army posts waiting for news, allow a fresh perspective on "Custer's Last Stand." Told in the first person, With Custer's Cavalry represents the story of Katherine Gibson, the author's mother, who supplied all of the material. Mrs. Gibson describes a phase of army life during the 1870s and 1880s that has received scant attention--a gala wedding, a baby's funeral, a sewing bee, a buffalo stampede, a smallpox epidemic. She provides candid glimpses of her good friends, the Custers. And every page brings the reader closer to the intimate events surrounding the most infamous battle in the history of the West.