Bill Calfee

Rudolf Höss

Rudolf Höss, SS-Obersturmbannführer, born November 25, 1900 in Baden-Baden, member of the post-World War I “Rossbach Freikorps,” Kommandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, SS officer at Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, winner of the War Service Cross 1st Class, convicted in Poland of crimes against humanity, author Rudolf Höss: Commandant of Auschwitz, executed by hanging on April 16, 1947 at Auschwitz, made the following last words: “I am very sorry for what I have done to the Polish people.  I ask that they forgive me.”  (2000 Quotations from Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich)

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Sitting Bull

On Thursday, April 16, 1874 beginning at about 10:00 a.m., waves totaling 1,400 hundreds of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors under Chief Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse attacked the 1874 Yellowstone Wagon Road and Prospecting Expedition as it moved southwest along Lodge Grass Creek  in the Montana Territory.  Over the next four hours, the expedition put up a spirited defense; warrior efforts were highlighted by a mounted dash by Crazy Horse to draw enemy fire away from trapped Lakota, a maneuver he would accomplish again two years later at the Little Bighorn.  Neill Gillis, Tom Rea, Irving Hopkins, French Pete, Pat Sweeny, Eli Way, Hugh Hoppe, Charles Avery, Joe Cook, Billy Cameron and Bill Calfee were in the thick of the fighting in the expedition.  Sustaining losses, Sitting Bull retired to the east, as Frank Grounds, commander of the wagon train withdrew west as he had run out of artillery rounds for one of the two small cannons the expedition had brought with it.  At the end of the fighting a lone warrior, later determined to be roughly 1,500 yards away on a ridge fired at the wagon train.  Veteran buffalo hunter Jack Bean, using his 1874 Sharps, fired back, killing the warrior in what probably was the longest recorded shot against a single target in the Wild West era.  The engagement has since acquired the name Battle of Lodge Grass Creek.  (Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gold and Guns: the 1874 Yellowstone Wagon Road and Prospecting Expedition)