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."
Eisenhower told him to hold his tongue and attack west, giving him various units for small amphibious landings along the north coast.
In a little over a month, the Seventh Army took Messina. However, almost all the Axis forces managed to escape to the Italian mainland.
Now Custer made his first large-scale rewrite of history. He claimed that he hadn't been able to stop the Germans because Montgomery was moving so slowly, and he knew better than to leave a flank exposed to the Germans.
Also to blame were the new divisions arriving from America-"There's nothing wrong with our fighting boys," he said in an interview. "I just wish their damned generals would get some of their spirit."
In fact, Custer split his forces, trying to not only hold to the coastal route as ordered, but to clear the mountains to the south, the same mountains holding up the British.
The Germans, always masterful in the defense, would fall back, counterattack again and again, ridgecrest by ridgecrest, and Custer's units were badly battered, even as the advance slowed.
But finally the campaign was over, and plans were made for the Italian invasion. Eisenhower, newly named Supreme Commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces, decided he would have enough prima donnas in the Mediterranean, between Mark Clark, Montgomery, other British Generals like Alexander and Leese, New Zealanders like Freyberg, and took Custer with him to England, to prepare for the Normandy Invasion.
In Britain Custer busied himself, building what he called "An Army that's the way it's supposed to be,"-Third Army.
As for me, Captain James Casady…
I'd graduated from the Point in 1942 and ended up as a tank platoon commander in the muddy nightmare as we slogged up the Italian Peninsula toward Rome, in a campaign noted for not just the bravery of the soldiers, but the stupidity of the Allied Commanders.
I had three tanks left when I was ordered to support the Fifth Army's crossing of the Volturno River in October of 1943. Clark and his staff, luxuriating in their villas, never considered that it was raining in the mountains, and all the Italian rivers were flooding.
The Germans held the far bank of the Volturno, and were committed to keeping it. We attacked and attacked again, each time being driven back.
I went forward with my tracks to support a retreating company pinned down in the muddy swamps by a German machine-gun nest. My Shermans' 75mms took care of the Spandaus, and then the Germans unmasked two of their deadly 88mm cannon.
Before I could order a pullback, two of my tanks were hit. I stayed in the open, bringing fire on the 88s, long enough for the infantry and my surviving tankers to get out. I thought I'd gotten away with it, and then the world exploded. The aviation-fuel burning M4 was well, and correctly, known as a "Ronson lighter," lighting up every time.
I was burned badly enough to be evacuated by hospital ship to Britain, where the best burn specialists in the world were. They laboriously rebuilt the skin of my chest, arm and the right side of my face, made me a major and said I could go back to combat duty if I wished.