Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book is wonderfully written but contains complete nonsense. Reuben Bernard was an outrageous self-promoter although a man of some skill as a soldier. In 1868, with most of the actual participants in the Bascom Affair dead and gone, Bernard, who wasn't there, made himself the hero of the piece villifying George Bascom and getting most of his facts wrong. He invented the story of the wise-sergeant and the stubborn lieutenant casting himself in the role of the former and blaming Bascom for igniting the Apache Wars. The Apache were at war long before the incident. Bascom was 7th Infantry, Bernard 1st Dragoons operating out of forts 90 miles distant from each other and 120 miles from Cochise's camp at Apache Pass. The 1st Dragoons arrived on the scene 10 days after the crucial events in which Bernard claimed to have had a role.
Bascom's guilt was perpetuated by hack historians who didn't dig for the documents left to us by the actual participants - Bascom's and LT Moore's reports, letters from Bascom's commander and the Departmental commander in Santa Fe, SGT Robinson's memoire, the Post Returns from Forts Buchanan and Robinson. They ignored what was reported in the newspapers at the time. Felix Ward was taken on January 27, 1861, not in October 1860 as Bernard says. Bascom followed a fresh trail to Cochise's camp and had good reason to suspect he had the boy even if another band had taken him.
I have researched the Bascom Affair extensively. The story recounted in this book is exciting but lacking in facts and full of fictions. If the remainder of the book is of such high quality research, I wouldn't trust a word of it as Western history. On the other hand, it is great fiction and an exciting read. The author captures the flavor of the times and offers us a view into army life before and after the Civil War.
Click Here to see more reviews about: One Hundred & Three Fights: The Story of General Reuben F. Bernard (Frontier Classics)
Reuben F. Bernard (1834-1903) had one of the most remarkable military careers of the nineteenth century, serving three years in the American Civil War between stints against Indian forces in the West. He claimed to have fought in more engagements than any other officer of his day, including campaigns against the Apache, Modoc, and Paiute. Don Russell (1899-1986), a journalist and Western historian, breathes life into Bernard's story, drawing from the general's official and personal correspondence, his diary, and the recollections of retired Indian Wars officers who served with Bernard.
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