Charles DeRudio Eyewitness Account Reveals The Chilling Truth Of Custer's Last Stand

Charles DeRudio [music] was born into Italian nobility, a man who by rights might have lived out a comfortable life of title and privilege, yet chose instead the harder, uncertain [music] road of a soldier's career in the United States Army. He rose through the ranks of the 7th [music] US Cavalry Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong

Custer, who came to trust him and think well of him, [music] promoting him to first lieutenant in December of 1875. Not every officer in the [music] regiment shared that opinion. Captain Frederick Benteen, unimpressed by DeRudio's [music] theatrical manner and his taste for a well-told story, gave him the mocking nickname Count No Account, [music] a jab that stuck with

him long after the campaign that made it famous. Whatever his critics said of him, DeRudio would go [music] on to live through one of the most infamous battles in American military history, the fight along the [music] Little Bighorn River in the summer of 1876. And in the years that followed, [music] he set his

memories down in writing, determined that what he had seen would not be lost. What follows is his account, [music] carried forward in his own words. >> I narrowly escaped the perils of the Battle of the Little Bighorn on the 25th and 26th of June, and I'm here to share with you my own harrowing first-hand

account of that epic confrontation, exactly as I lived it and exactly as it has stayed with me every year since. Around 10:00 that morning, General Custer's scouts rode back into column with news that quickened every pulse along the line. An Indian village, they said, lay some 15 miles ahead, tucked along the winding