Download Deliverance from the Little Big Horn: Doctor Henry Porter and Custer's Seventh Cavalry AudioBook Free
With the three surgeons who accompanied Custer's Seventh Cavalry on June 25, 1876, only the youngest, 28-year-old Henry Porter, survived that day's ordeal, operating by way of a gauntlet of Indian attackers or more the steep bluffs to Major Marcus Reno's hilltop position. But the tale of Dr. Porter's wartime exploits goes significantly beyond the battle itself. With this compelling narrative of armed forces endurance and medical ingenuity, Joan Nabseth Stevenson opens a new home window on the Challenge of the tiny Big Horn by re-creating the eager struggle for success during the attack and in its wake. Porter's life-saving work on the battlefield started out immediately, as he assumed the health care of nearly 60 soldiers and two Indian scouts, attending to wounds and accomplishing surgeries and amputations. He evacuated the critically wounded soldiers on mules and palm litters, embarking on a dangerous trek of 15 miles that required two river crossings, the scaling of the steep cliff, and a treacherous descent in to the protection of the steamboat Far West, waiting around at the mouth area of the tiny Big Horn River. There started out a harrowing 700-mile trip over the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers to the post clinic at Fort Abraham Lincoln near Bismarck, Dakota Territory. This unusual book will take its place both as a contribution to the annals of the fantastic Sioux Conflict and alongside such vivid historical novels as Boy of the Morning hours Celebrity and Little Big Man. It will ensure that the selfless deeds of the lone "contract" surgeon-unrecognized even today by the U.S. government-will never be neglected.
