Badass Of The Week: Thomas Custer !!

It was in the final months of the war, at the Battle of Namozine Church in Virginia, that Tom Custer performed the towering act of heroic badassitude that would earn him his FIRST Medal of Honor.  Lee’s forces had been defeated at Petersburg and were now on the run, and it was up to Sheridan’s cavalry to make sure they didn’t get away and regroup.  The Wolverines were sent in to battle a brigade of Confederate cavalry, and the Custer brothers were right there on the forefront leaping their horses over obstacles and ripping off fire with their awesome six-shooters.  Tom Custer, racing ahead of his unit, dove headlong into the enemy cavalry, swinging and hacking with this saber and firing his pistol point-blank into the enemy.  Tom’s horse ended up being shot out from under him, but Tom proceeded to fight on foot, stabbing and shooting left and right as he raced towards the flag of the 2nd North Carolina Cavalry.

To understand the importance of Tom Custer’s badassitude, it’s important to understand that unit flags were a really big deal in ancient warfare.  Back in the days before radios, HUDs, GPS satellites and helpful video game minimaps, the only way for your average soldier to know what was going on would be to have him look for the flag of his unit and make sure he was somewhat near it.  If things went to hell and everyone was just running around beating the crap out of each other, a trooper could scan the sky for his unit’s flag, and he’d know that he could run over there and he’d have a bunch of his buddies waiting to get his back.  Also, unit flags in the Civil War were typically stitched by the women of the Regiment’s hometown, meaning that this thing might as well have been a bullet-riddled version of that one fancy old tablecloth your grandma made that you’re not allowed to spill orange juice on for any reason ever.

Having your flag captured by the enemy was the greatest humiliation a Regiment could endure.  Likewise, stealing one of these things from the enemy was the military equivalent of lining up the entire enemy regiment and kicking every single man square in the balls as hard as you can.

At the Battle of Namozine Church, Tom Custer, already wounded and thrown from his now-dead horse, sprinted into the fray on foot, killed a couple of the enemy with a sword and pistol, single-handedly captured the flag of the Second North Carolina, and took nearly a dozen men and officers prisoner by himself.  For his actions, he received the Medal of Honor.

Three days later he did it again.   

I don’t know how many people in U.S. history have received two Medals of Honor, but I think it’s less than a dozen.  Thomas Ward Custer was the first.  And he’s probably the only one to get both Medals in the same calendar week.

The second Medal came at the Battle of Sayler’s Creek, the last engagement of the Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War, on April 6, 1865.  The rebels were on the ropes, making a last desperate break to escape the Union vice, but the hard-riding Wolverines had cut off a large portion of Lee’s men and were eager to deal a final death blow to the Confederacy.  Once again leading a daring cavalry charge, Thomas Ward Custer (still recovering from his wounds at Namozine Church!) raced ahead of his Company and jumped his horse over a barricade head-on into a line of Rebel infantrymen, completely ignoring the rifle fire and bayonets jamming up into his face.  Shouting a rallying cry to his troops, he pulled two pistols and dual-wielded them from horseback, ripping off rounds in every direction like a goddamn berserker.  When he saw a Sergeant trying to rally troops to his flag, Custer ran over and grabbed the flagpole.  The Sergeant drew a pistol and shot Tom in the face, drilling him in the jaw with a .44-caliber bullet at point-blank range, but a bullet in the face only succeeded in making Custer even more righteously angry.  Tom drilled the Sergeant with a bullet, wrenched the flag from the dying man’s hand, and then hopped his horse back over the barricade and galloped back to U.S. lines. 

When he arrived, he handed the flag to his brother, then immediately turned to go back into the battle.  George Armstrong was like, “Yo, bro, you got shot in the face dude!  You should probably get that checked out by a medic or some shit,” but Tom was like “ I ain’t got time to bleed,” and George had to literally put him under arrest and have him restrained by three MPs in order to keep his brah from sprinting into combat with a bullet hole in his face.