Reno’s position in the bottom, in the old river bed, was sheltered from fire from the hills by heavy timber, and was nearly a mile from the hills. I have never before heard that he was fired upon from those hills; but he was fired upon from the woods on the opposite side of the river. General Gibbon and I both thought the hills were too far away to give any effective fire. It must be remembered that the river bottom was heavily timbered for some distance above and below this position. This timber subsequently was cut for the construction of Fort Custer. LIEUTENANT-COLONEL GREENE’S DEFENSE OF CUSTER Hartford, Conn., September 1, 1904. My Dear Sir: I have read with great interest your discussion of the question of General Custer’s alleged disobedience of orders, both in the narrative of the Battle on the Little Big Horn and in the appendix to the volume, and upon which you have asked my comment. For whatever bearing it may have upon the propriety of any comment of mine, let me say that General Custer was my intimate friend, and that his first act after receiving his appointment in the Civil War as a brigadier-general was to secure my appointment and detail to him as adjutant-general, which relation I held until his muster out of the volunteer service in 1866. I think no one knows better his quality as a soldier and as a man. I know his virtues and his defects, which were the defects of his virtues. He was a born soldier, and specifically a born cavalry man. The true end of warfare was to him not only a professional theory—it was an instinct. When he was set to destroy an enemy, he laid his hand on him as soon as possible, and never took it off. He knew the whole art of war. But its arts and its instruments and their correct professional handling were not in his eyes the end all of a soldier’s career, to be satisfied with a technical performance. They were the means and the tools in the terms of which and by the use of which his distinct military genius apprehended and solved its practical and fateful problems. When he grappled his task it was to do it, not to go correctly through the proper motions to their technical limit, and then hold himself excused. He was remarkable for his keenness and accuracy in observation, for his swift divination of the military significance of every element of a situation, for his ability to make an instant and sound decision, and then, for the instant, exhaustless energy with which he everlastingly drove home his attack. And the swiftness and relentless power of his stroke were great elements in the correctness of his decisions as well as in the success of his operations. He was wise and safe in undertaking that in which a man slower in observation, insight and decision, and slower and less insistent in action, would have judged wrongly and failed.