Page 18 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • June 26, 2013 German would have found his Allemannic accent unacceptable and difficult. No Prussian officer who could not speak and write High German fluently would have been accepted into their service. Incidentally, no Prussian officer named Finckle, Finkle, or Finkel served between 1869 and 1873. As to the “elegant” handwriting: August Finckle’s two enlistment signatures are written in American cursive, not Prussian script. Samples taken of Frank Finkel’s careful handwriting from 1921 on a probate statement and a shaky signature from 1930 – on a last will and testament -- have the same letter formation and angle of slant. The curves in the Finckle-Finkel lettering are consistently tight and the dot on the letter I is consistently off-center. August and Frank, despite the name change, wrote in the same handwriting. The clincher was the blurry photograph published with the article. This photograph was supposed to prove that the men were two different people -- even though they shared the same exact height, hair color, and eye color. The published August Finckle photograph was so faded in some places and so dark in others that I assumed, as did at least one qualified photographic expert, that it had been doctored. But when we obtained the original, a hand-tinted black and white photo with a rippled surface, it was clear that the poor reproduction was not a deliberate fraud. It was also clear that the man in the tinted photo was a younger version of Frank Finkel from Ohio, later Washington state, the German-American who claimed to have ridden away from Custer’s Last Stand. While I was at a copy shop getting the best possible rectification of some photos of Finckle and Finkel, the consulting technician said he had some abilities in photographic identification and asked to see the photos. We had four photos: the flattened black and white August Finckle, the rippled hand-tinted August Finckle, a photograph absolutely known to be Frank Finkle of Ohio and Washington taken around 1886 for his first wedding and a photograph of a dapper elderly Frank Finkel of Washington taken around 1926 probably for his second wedding. The photo technician studied the August Finckle and the 1886 Frank Finkel point to point for several minutes and then asked me if I was absolutely sure the elderly Frank Finkel was the same person as the younger 1886 Frank Finkel. I told him they were and had come from the same person, Frank’s grandson Milton Koch. He nodded and did a little more quiet study, focusing on the earlobes and eyebrows. “These are definitely the same person,” he said. “The angle of the eyebrow is different in the August Finckle photo and Frank Finkel in 1886 photo, but the cock of the eyebrow is exactly the same in August Finckle and Frank Finkel in 1926.” “Which shows it was voluntary and not anatomical?” I asked. “Right -- and probably habitual. I couldn’t get a good look at the earlobe in Finkel 1886 but in Finkel 1926, it’s the same earlobe too. Same guy.” That is the masculine scientific verdict by a professional photographer and analyst. For the feminine intuitive verdict, I showed August Finckle 1876 and Frank Finkel of 1886 to one of my students. “The angle of the head and the direction of the glance are the only difference,” she said. “It’s obviously the same man.” Then she took a marker and added the swept-back coiffure and black mustache of August Finckle on top of the receding brow-line and graying mustache of Frank Finkel 1886. She was right. Except for the angle of head and glance, the photos were identical. Another odd detail is that before Finkel’s second wife spiffed him up, Finkel seems to have retained August Finckle’s habit of flipping up his shirt collar. That also shows up in both photos. August and Frank had the same handwriting, the same photographic image, and the same telltale mannerisms. There was also the plausible story of being carried off on a runaway horse and accurately describing country no white man but outlaws had seen at that time. “One long sword escaped,” Rain-In-The-Face said in 1893. “His pony ran off with him and went past our lodges. They told me about it at Chicago. I saw the man there and I remembered hearing the squaws talk about it after the fight.” Finkel insisted his horse had been a roan, and a dead 7th Cavalry roan from C Company -- the company that seems to have shattered on impact -- was found about 80 miles from the battlefield a few weeks after the battle. He apparently knew the names of all the C Company officers and sergeants, because his second wife listed them when she applied for a pension. People who do not want there to be a Custer survivor counter these facts with “facts” of their own. They claim Frank Finkel was the town drunk in Dayton and a habitual liar. Older people in Dayton remembered him as an honest man and records show he came there with almost nothing -- still signing his name “Finckle.” He married respectably into one of the town’s pioneer families with money, had a son in the Idaho Legislature, chipped in to build his neighbor a bridge, and ended up owning three houses, a square mile of farmland, and $40,000 – worth about a million today. Find out what this “drunk” drank and I will have some every day. He never went to reunions. The last two British combat veterans of World War I never did either. They both said war was a dirty business and was nothing to celebrate. Now weigh the following claims against the facts: The Indians said there were no escapees. Rain-In-TheFace saw one. Finkel did not know the names of the men in his unit. See his wife’s pension application. Four people saw his body and Alcott saw him buried. Enlisted men were not truly “buried” and Sergeant Finckle’s best friend, Charles Windolph, winner of the Medal of Honor at the Little Bighorn, is on record in “I Fought with Custer” saying he looked for Finckle’s body and never found it. Windolph repeated this to a researcher a few years before his own death in 1950. People who do not want a Custer survivor may rave and rant and pout while serious experts laugh at them, but they are stuck -- and have become increasingly ludicrous. The Finckle-to-Finkel comparison closes a case that started with a dead 7th Cavalry roan horse 80 miles from the battlefield, ran through the escape account of RainIn-The-Face, and was previously clinched by forensic and handwriting analysis. August Finckle and Frank Finkel were the same man. Denial is always possible if the deniers simply ignore the facts and lie about them, cannot analyze photos, and know no German. Case closed. Once upon a time, Custer’s Last Stand was famous as the battle with no survivors. As the June 25/26 anniversary arrives, this outlook is no longer possible. This is almost entirely my fault. Early in 2010, “Custer Survivor” was published and got rave reviews from Library Journal and Publishers Week, some great reviews, and some hostile reviews by people who could not or would not believe there could ever have been a survivor of the five companies George Armstrong Custer led into the Indian encirclement. The would-be critics’ last hope of making a case for a non-survivor battle just flopped. On May 10, The Battlefield Dispatch, a members-only publication for Custer specialists, included a story entitled “Who Was August Finckle?” August Finckle was the name an Ohio-born German-American adopted as his own when he signed into the U.S. Army in January of 1872, giving his birthplace as “Berlin, Prussia” -- but signing the enlistment form with distinctively American handwriting. The author of “Who Was August Finckle?” claims to have documented this Finckle, said to have been an officer of the Prussian Army and veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, before he joined the United States Army as an enlisted man a year later. (August Finckle apparently did this without ever passing through immigration because the only two Prussians named August Finckle who emigrated from Prussia at the right age and filled out U.S. Census forms lived into the 20th century, and never West of the Mississippi. The author says he found a diary by Samuel Alcott, a sergeant of the 7th Cavalry who said August Finckle was his good friend. Alcott was not at the Little Bighorn, but claimed to have seen Finckle buried three days after the battle -- after the dead had been mutilated beyond recognition by some angry Indians and left in the sun for two 100degree days. It must be added that “buried” is a sentimental Victorian fiction. The dead enlisted men were covered with sagebrush, loose dirt, and rocks. A year later, their bones still littered the battlefield. The officers were buried. “He was highly educated and wrote in the beautiful hand,” Alcott said of Finckle. However, Alcott made fun of Finckle’s inability to speak proper English. Alcott also recalled that other German-speaking members of the regiment told him that Finckle’s command of their mother tongue was as bad as his English. So we have here a former Prussian officer who wrote beautifully but could not speak proper German or English, yet rose to be a senior sergeant in less than three years. August Finckle’s bad German would be no surprise at all if he were actually Frank Finkle, later Finkel, from Marietta, Ohio. The man from Marietta was American-born, never lived in Germany, and had never studied the German language in school. His Bavarian-born parents would have spoken the Allemannic dialect used in South Germany, German Switzerland, and Alsace in France, which is about as different from the North German dialect of Prussia as either dialect is from formal High German or from Dutch or English. If Finckle were Finkel, the Prussians and German Poles who had grown up with North German or High Custer: The very last stand Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: The Memorial Day services and parade in Wyckoff were memorable events this year due to the members of the community who took time from their holiday weekend to honor our veterans who sacrificed so much so that we may enjoy the freedom we know today. Even the weather was in our favor. Our sincere appreciation is extended to all of the corporate sponsors who generously donated toward the parade expenses. Many thanks to: the Wyckoff Police Department and Fire Police for their assistance with traffic; the Wyckoff Department of Public Works for all their efforts in preparing for the parade; the Wyckoff Community Emergency Response Team for their help at the staging area and along the parade route; the Wyckoff Fire Department for their assistance in setting up and cleaning up and for the use of their facilities; the Wyckoff Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary for cooking and serving 1,400 hotdogs for the enjoyment of township residents; the staff of the township clerk’s office for their invaluable assistance in preparing for the parade; the staff of Walgreens on Clinton Avenue Memorable occasion who distribute water every year at the end of the parade; and the Boy Scouts of Troop 89 for their help in placing flags on the veterans’ graves at the Wyckoff Reformed Church Cemetery. Thank you to the many organizations and bands that participated in the parade and to the people who took part in the service at the Wyckoff Reformed Church. A special thank you it given to the members of the Wyckoff/Midland Park VFW Post 7086 for supporting the parade each year. The Memorial Day Committee begins planning the parade and service in the beginning of the year. It is through their tireless efforts that we are able to provide the township residents with a celebration depicting the true meaning of Memorial Day. It takes the work of many hands to continue to honor our veterans who made the supreme sacrifice. Thank you, one and all, for another job well done! Nick Ciampo, Parade Chairman Joyce Santimauro, Township Clerk Erik Ruebenacker, VFW Post 7086 Adjutant Wyckoff (continued on page 20)