While responding to a number of questions posed by Colonel W.A. Graham, Godfrey described his first visit to the Custer battlefield. He seems to have been startled by the colors: “The marble white bodies, the somber brown of the dead horses. . .tufts of reddish brown grass on the almost ashy white soil. . .” He observed that from a distance the stripped men resembled white boulders, and he heard West exclaim: “Oh, how white they look! How white!”

More than two hundred bodies and about seventy animal carcasses had been exposed to the June sun for two or three days when burial parties went to work. Pvts. Berry and Slaper remember being assigned to this duty on the twenty-seventh, Varnum went to work on the twenty-eighth, and there are reports of burials on the twenty-ninth. Soldiers detailed to hide the remains were overcome by nausea, vomiting and retching while they tried to dig graves, so the business was simplified. Bodies thought to be those of officers were nudged into shallow trenches. Each officer’s name was written on a slip of paper which was inserted into an empty cartridge and the cartridge was hammered into the top of a stake or a length of lodge pole set beside the trench.

Those thought to be enlisted men were hastily concealed beneath sagebrush or a few shovels of dirt. Some attempt was made to identify them though not much. Few could be recognized. Very often the features were distorted by fright or anguish.