The Stanton Disaster

Apache Rifles creates a fictional disaster equal to Custer's Last Stand in 1876.

When Captain Jeff Stanton takes command of Troop B of the 28th cavalry in 1879, the sergeant and the corporal tell other troopers that Stanton hates Indians because his father trusted Indians once too often and got half his command killed, and was cashiered out of the army.

Later the surgeon tells Captain Stanton he was a friend of the elder Stanton who claimed he was right until his dying day.

Audie Murphy was forty in 1964 but looked young for his age. If you assume that Captain Stanton was about 25 to 40 in 1879, he would be born about 1839 to 1854. And if the elder Stanton was old enough to command 700 men at the time of his disaster it probably happened after his son was born and not before. Thus the fictional date of "Stanton's Disaster" would be between about 1839 and at least a few years before 1879.

When Capt. Stanton tells Colonel Perry that Victorio will keep his word, Perry replies that he heard similar words from Stanton's father 2 days before Indians killed 350 men of the father's "squadron". Perry says he survived because he was an adjutant at company headquarters.

And that is about all the audience hears about the fictional Stanton Disaster.