Everything you need to understand or teach Bugles in the Afternoon by Ernest Haycox.
The characters in Bugles in the Afternoon are both historical and fictional. Haycox manages to balance his treatment of both so well that neither upstages the other. The historical figures — Custer, Mrs. Custer, Capt.
Frederick Benteen, Major Marcus Reno, and others — are well drawn and interplay with the fictional characters: Kern Shafter, Josephine Russell, and Edward Garnett. Haycox's fictional protagonist, Kern Shafter, seems to be troubled by an experience during the Civil War and after the war can only find a sense of satisfaction back in the Army. He is a competent man whose actions and bearing hint of his having attained some sort of command station in the past. With the 7th Cavalry he appears satisfied to be a sergeant. Edward Garnett, who knew Kern in the past, is now an officer with the 7th and makes no attempt to conceal his hatred for Shafter...