Two Medals of Honor in the same week

War History Online has an article about Tom Custer (George's brother; photo, top):

Thomas Ward Custer (15 March 1845 to 25 June 1876) was a United States Army officer and two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor for bravery during the Civil War. He was a younger brother of George Armstrong Custer, perishing with him at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the then-Montana Territory.
He was born in New Rumley, Ohio, the third son of Emanuel and Marie Custer. He enlisted in the Union Army in September of 1861 at the age of sixteen, and served in the early campaigns of the Civil War as a private in the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He saw action at numerous battles, including Stones River, Missionary Ridge, and the Atlanta Campaign. He mustered out in October of 1864 as a corporal. Commissioned a second lieutenant in Company B of the 6th Michigan Cavalry, he became his brother’s aide-de-camp and accompanied him throughout the last year of the war.
Tom Custer distinguished himself by winning successively the brevets of captain, major, and lieutenant colonel, although he was barely twenty years of age when the Civil War ended. He was awarded two Medals of Honor. He was the first soldier to receive the dual honor, one of only four soldiers or sailors to receive the dual honor during the Civil War, and one of just nineteen in history.
Both actions that earned Custer the Medal of Honor involved capturing Confederate regimental flags (the 2nd North Carolina Cavalry flag at Namozine Church on 3 April 1865, and again at Sayler’s Creek on 6 April 1865). Such battle flags “denoted individual persons, or units, on the field of battle. The flag symbolized the honor of the regiment…In combat, with the field full of noise and smoke, the soldiers watched their regimental flag and, if it advanced or retreated, they followed. The names of the battles that the regiment participated in were sometimes stitched onto the flag. The loss of a regimental flag was a disgrace to the command.”

Custer earned his first Medal of Honor for actions during the Battle of Namozine Church on 3 April 1865. Among Union forces charging Confederate barricades, Custer had his horse leap a barricade while coming under fire. The Confederates fell back in confusion before him. Seeing a color bearer and acing forward, he seized the flag of the Second North Carolina cavalry from the bearer and commanded those around him to surrender. He took three officers and eleven enlisted men prisoner, took them behind the Federal column, and requisitioned another horse, as his had been shot in the charge.

Tom Custer was buried on the battlefield, but exhumed the next year and reburied in Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery. A stone memorial slab marks the place where his body was discovered and initially buried.
In November of 1868, following the Battle of Washita River, George Custer was alleged (by Captain Frederick Benteen, chief of scouts Ben Clark, and Cheyenne oral tradition) to have unofficially married Mo-nah-se-tah, daughter of the Cheyenne chief Little Rock in the winter or early spring of 1868–1869. (Little Rock was killed in the Washita battle.) Mo-nah-se-tah gave birth to a child in January of 1869, two months after the Washita battle. Cheyenne oral history tells that she also bore a second child, fathered by Custer in late 1869. Some historians, however, believe that George Custer had become sterile after contracting gonorrhea while at West Point, and that the father was, in fact, his brother Thomas. A descendant of the second child, who goes by the name Gail Custer, wrote a book about the affair.

Rico says history is always more complex than we initially realize...