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FOLLOW Erin's Flag To Subscribe To Receive WGT's FREE E-Mail Newsletter Part 1: The 'Greening' of the 7th Cavalry Part 2: For 'Garryowen' and Glory Part 3: The Road to 'Fiddler's Green' Kildare's James Martin May Be Garryowen's Unknown Soldier Story and Photos By Robert Doyle The Peace Memorial at Garryowen. Click on image for a larger view. In 1895, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad established a tiny station on the edge of the Little Bighorn battlefield and called it "Garryowen," after the Seventh's regimental marching song. By the mid-1920s, Garryowen was in private hands and was little more than a small market town. In May 1926, almost 50 years after "Custer's Last Stand," construction work was being carried out on an irrigation ditch just east of this station, along the line of retreat Major Marcus Reno's men took early in the battle. While digging, workmen discovered a near complete set of skeletal remains, accompanied by 7th Cavalry uniform buttons. The dead soldier appeared to be have been decapitated after death as no skull or skull fragments were ever found. Looking down on Reno's retreat route from the area he defended. Click on the image for a larger view. The remains were buried in Garryowen with full military honors that year and overlain with a granite memorial inscribed: "Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God." But was this dead trooper American-born? Possibly not. It's likely, in fact, he was a native of Ireland. James Martin was born just outside Kildare Town in 1847. He enlisted in the 7th Cavalry on February 6, 1872, at age 24, and is recorded as having gray eyes, brown hair, fair complexion, standing at 5'5" tall. He met his end during Major Reno's retreat when he was shot from his horse and killed by a group of warriors. At the time of the battle, the Santee Sioux still ritually practiced decapitation instead of scalping, and Martin may have encountered them. His remains were never identified, but Private John Foley from Dublin made the grisly discovery of a head under a kettle in the Indian village days after the battle. Foley went on record as stating that it belonged to a corporal from G Company. Battlefield monument on the spot of a mass grave of 7th Cavalry troopers. Click on image for a larger view. As only two corporals from Co. G were killed during the battle — Martin and a German called Otto Hagemann — Foley's identification of the head probably stems from his recognition of James Martin's facial features and his knowledge that this fellow Irishman was a corporal in the Seventh's Company G. The intriguing possibility is that the skeletal remains uncovered in 1926 and buried in Garryowen as the "soldier known but to God" could, in fact, be Martin's. The bones were discovered near the spot of his death, and the lack of a skull with the skeleton further suggests that the remains could be those of the Kildare man, one of only a few soldiers whose severed heads were found in the abandoned Indian village. Certainty might be established by an exhumation and the use of DNA evidence, but it is probably more fitting that this soldier rests with honors near the monument to the fight in which he gave his life. WGT Related Resources: Part 1: The 'Greening' of the 7th Cavalry Part 2: For 'Garryowen' and Glory Part 3: The Road to 'Fiddler's Green' Myles Keogh – Three Wars; Two Continents; One Irish Soldier 'Born a Soldier': Myles Walter Keogh Hammer, Kenneth, Men with Custer: Biographies of the 7th Cavalry: June 25, 1876 Philbrick, Nathaniel, "The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn" Barnes, Jeff, Forts Of The Northern Plains: Guide to Historic Military Posts of the Plains Indians Wars Battle Of the Little Big Horn (DVD) Donovan, James, A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn - the Last Great Battle of the American West The Battle of the Little Bighorn, 1876 Old West Legends: The Battle of Little Bighorn The sequel to "The Irish Volunteer," featuring Irish songs of the Blue and Gray. Are you one of The Wild Geese? Show the world with a hat, shirt, or other item displaying one of these Wild Geese graphics. Wild Geese Today Logo Irish America: The Fenian Tradition Wild Geese Harp Flag Buy a hat, shirt, mug or other great "WGT" item at Show the world you are one of "The Wild Geese" SEARCH OUR SITE E-mail us for more information about TheWildGeese.com.   Web www.thewildgeese.com Click to return to The Wild Geese Today's Home Page Copyright © 2011, GAR Media. All rights reserved.