by Drew McGunn
Anderson screamed at the men along the wall to pour their fire into the ranks of advancing infantry. A word of caution from the artillery sergeant holding the linstock for the 18-pounder, was the only warning before the huge gun fired double-loaded canister rounds into the ranks of soldados crowding across the acequia. Dozens of men were swept from their feet, as eighty heavy, round balls slammed into the men wading through the ditch. They fell into the dirty, shallow water, only to be stepped upon and pushed down into the muddy bottom, where those who had not been dead already, died a hideous death by suffocation or drowning.
The devastating cannon blasts and accurate rifle fire wreaked an atrocious bill on the men of Urrea’s 3rd brigade. The pressure along the southern wall eased as Urrea’s men disengaged and retreated into the darkness of the predawn.
Anderson moved over to the west side of the bastion and saw several ladders had been placed against the wall. The problem, as he saw it, was the western wall had not been rebuilt like the fort’s northern and southern walls. Although the clouds still obscured the moon and stars, the constant flashes of light and fires burning along the wall, illuminated the battle raging before his eyes. At least a hundred of his riflemen were on the wall, firing down into the milling mass of men at the foot of the fort. They fired as fast as their breechloaders would allow. The artillerists on the wall exposed themselves to the musket fire from below every time they rolled their cannon back into firing position and depressed their barrels so that the guns could fire into tightly packed soldados.
As men grabbed hold of ladders’ rungs and tried to crawl over the wall, Anderson raced down the ramp, and shouted at every rifleman he could find and sent them rushing toward the western wall, where a fierce battle raged. He saw a group of men moving purposefully toward the wall, it was Major Dickinson leading several gun crews. Apparently, the dense forest of mesquite trees growing between the eastern wall and the acequia had deterred the Mexican army from attempting anything along that wall. He watched Dickinson and his men swarm up ramps and ladders, joining their fellow gunners as they rushed to fire and reload their guns.
***
As the attack on the gatehouse faltered, Sergeant Leal looked over at Jackson, whose face was covered in sweat and grime. For a moment, he felt guilt at not having rounded up the men from the quartermaster’s corps and engineers assigned to his command. But as he looked at the dead and dying carpeting the ground before the gatehouse, he shrugged it off. Even so, duty called, and he grabbed Jackson by the collar and headed toward the chapel, where he figured most of his men would assemble.
He found nearly all of them in the nave of the chapel in front of the makeshift barricade. He saw the teamster’s black faces on the other side of it, staring at him as he entered the chapel. He smiled at the image and thought they might be the only smart men among the whole lot of soldiers trapped in the fort.
He left the freedmen where they were. As far as he was concerned, they barely knew which end of the gun to load. He left a few men from the quartermaster’s corps behind, responsible for doling out ammunition, and took the rest of the men back outside. There was a low wall between the chapel courtyard and the Alamo plaza which ran between the gatehouse and the hospital, about seventy feet, where he placed his men at evenly spaced intervals and waited. Across the plaza, along the western wall, the battle continued to rage. Most of the garrison was there, pushing over ladders nearly as often as they were raised.
He had lost track of time. It seemed as though the battle had been waging for hours. In the east, there was a hint of dawn on the horizon. Leal scanned the walls ringing the plaza and to his left, to the south, he saw dozens of riflemen atop the gatehouse and the 18-pounder’s bastion firing at targets he couldn’t see. To his front, the western wall was ablaze with cannon and rifle fire. To the northwest, at the corner of the fort, he saw the tops of several ladders poking above the wall, then soldados appearing at the top and clambering over the wall and landing in the corner of the plaza. A couple of rifle teams ran down from their firing platform on the northern wall and began slashing and stabbing at them, while the Mexicans reacted with their own bayoneted muskets and knives.
The eastern sky continued to lighten. More Mexicans joined their compatriots in the corner, clearing the wall to either side, as they overwhelmed the Texians who had met them only moments before. More than a dozen stormed up one of the northern ramps, where they cut and bayoneted the gunners who only seconds before had sent canister shots crashing into the milling soldiers still attempting to scale the wall.
Leal tapped Jackson on the shoulder and pointed toward the growing problem in the northwestern corner of the plaza. The two men raised their rifles and took a few seconds to aim and fire. Both men hit their targets; Leal’s lips peeled back in a vicious grin as he levered the breech open and slid in another cartridge.
***
He no longer needed to rely on the fires burning along the western wall to see the deteriorating position of the defenders. He heard rifle fire from behind and Captain Anderson spun around and saw a few riflemen in butternut uniforms crouching behind the low wall in front of the chapel courtyard. They were firing at a growing number of Mexican soldados in the northwestern corner of the fort. A green, white, and red flag was being waved by a handful of soldados on one of the northern gun platforms.
Anderson realized several guns along the western wall had fallen silent, their gunners shot down by Mexican infantry, who had seized several sections of the long wall. Closest to him, near the 18-pounder, most of his regulars were still manning their section of the wall, but near the northwest corner, Mexican soldados were rapidly overwhelming his men. Recalling Major Dickinson’s earlier arrival to shore up his batteries, Anderson scanned the wall, but the major was nowhere to be seen. With the crumbling defenses in front of him, he swore as he realized there was no option but to fall back. “Back, boys, Back! The wall’s breached! Fall back to the courtyard!” As his men raced back to the relative security of the chapel courtyard, he turned on his heels and strode toward the low wall.
The captain came to the wall and saw a few butternut-clad riflemen standing atop the southern barracks. As dozens of his men knelt behind the wall, he called up to the men atop the barracks, “Hold your position there! Don’t let anyone get ladders up to you, and by God, kill any of the bastards that try to use our cannons against us!”
He desperately hoped the reason the Mexicans hadn’t tried to raise any ladders along the walls where the new barracks had been built was because they had no ladders tall enough to reach the top of those buildings. Anderson ground his teeth in frustration. What did it matter? More ladders were thrown up against the western wall and more soldados poured over the top.
The courtyard wall was only a couple of feet tall, split in the middle by a narrow walkway leading from the plaza to the chapel doors. Anderson passed through the narrow opening and directed the retreating men into spots along the wall, where they joined the men already kneeling. Once the places behind the wall were taken, the captain ordered the men to create a second line, standing behind those who were kneeling. As the last of the survivors from the western wall passed through to the chapel courtyard, he reckoned he had about a hundred men still with him. Additionally, there was a platoon’s worth of men stationed on the rooftops of the new barracks buildings on both ends of the fort. As long as they held out, he would control the high ground. But time was running out.
With his sword in his hand he paced behind the line of riflemen. “That’s it, men, aimed fire. Make every shot count!”
Chapter 16
From where he paced behind the line, Captain Anderson saw soldados swarming over the southwest bastion where the 18-pounder was positioned. Some had grabbed the trail handles and were lugging the heavy ordinance around. Using the sword in his hand as a pointer, he yelled, “Kill those bastards at the gun.”
From the roof of the southern barracks, a smattering of gunfire began to drop the soldado
s around the large cannon. The captain whooped and raised his hat, cheering as the soldados, who only a moment before had been turning the gun around, now scrambled for cover. Apart from blasting a hole in the thick adobe walls from outside the fort, the only entrance to the southern barracks was through a door in the chapel courtyard. As long as his line held the courtyard wall, the men atop the barracks would have a commanding view of the plaza and walls.
With one threat neutralized for the time being, Anderson walked down the line, behind his men, “Keep it up, boys! They’ll not drive us any further!” Acrid smoke hugged the ground before the wall, as his riflemen poured a devastating fire on the Mexicans assembling on the walls and in the northwestern portion of the plaza. A bullet crashed into a rifleman, standing directly in front of Anderson, with a wet, meaty smacking noise and the young man sank to the ground, crying out as he clutched at his shoulder. A nearby Tejano sergeant, who Anderson recognized as bringing word to the Alamo of the Mexican invasion from Laredo, helped him drag the badly injured rifleman from the line.
Although there was a doorway from the courtyard into the hospital, it was now guarded by a rifle team. The main hospital doors faced the open plaza, and Anderson worried the hospital would fall to the Mexicans as soon as they advanced from their positions. A couple of orderlies with green chevrons on their sleeves were evacuating the wounded, carrying them from the hospital’s side door into the chapel. They left the injured soldier with one of the orderlies and turned to look at the firing line.
Anderson asked the Hispanic sergeant, “Leal, isn’t it?”
The sergeant wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve, “Yes, sir.”
Anderson nodded toward the men on the firing line. “We’re going to need more ammunition. Fetch a box from the chapel. We’ve got to be running low.”
***
Sergeant Leal acknowledged the order with a single nod and turned, running toward the heavy, wooden doors of the chapel, where a couple of men from the quartermaster’s corps stood with rifles. They stepped aside as he entered the chapel’s dimly lit nave. The sound of wounded echoed from the thick walls, where they had been laid after the hospital’s evacuation. Standing near a tall barricade, made from bags of grains, corn, and flour, a soldier with a quartermaster sergeant chevrons stood guard over several long ammunition boxes. Leal ran up to him, “I don’t suppose you’re planning on using all that yourself?”
Grimly chuckling, the other sergeant shook his head. “It’s all yours. How’s it going out there?
Leal’s shoulders sagged. “We’re still alive, some of us. But there are so many damned Mexicans coming over the walls.”
The quartermaster sergeant helped him heft one of the boxes onto his shoulder and led him back to the doors, through which the medical orderlies were dragging more wounded. As Leal hurried back across the courtyard, musket balls kicked up dust near his feet. He swore as he reached the wall. The enemy’s musket fire was increasing as their own sergeants and officers were joining the soldados along the wall.
After helping to pass the ammunition around to the riflemen kneeling and standing behind the low stone wall, he found Private Jackson kneeling against it. The private’s actions were economical and fluid. He fired his rifle at a target, then levered the breech open and shoved a paper cartridge into the breechblock before levering it closed, slicing off the cartridge’s excess paper. He fished a percussion cap from the box on his belt and slipped it onto the nipple and cocked the rifle’s hammer, aimed, and fired. Each shot followed the preceding one by less than ten seconds.
To Jackson’s right another rifleman was aiming at a target across the plaza, when he tumbled back, almost knocking Leal down. The sergeant was about to swear at the soldier when he saw the top half of his head had been messily clipped off by a musket ball. He grabbed the body by the shoulders and dragged it away from the line and slipped into the space beside Jackson and loaded his rifle and aimed at an officer on the western wall. Before pulling the trigger, he wondered how much longer the line would hold.
***
If there was a silver lining, Anderson thought, then it had to be that as the sun crested the eastern sky, it would be in the eyes of the rapidly increasing number of soldados opposite his line. A quick estimate put the number of Mexicans at several hundred, who were now blazing away, barely forty yards from his line. The training his men had gone through had turned them into fair marksmen, he thought, as a dandily uniformed officer near the abandoned 18-pounder tumbled off the bastion and disappeared. Officers and NCOs were always the preferred targets, but even so, the weight of musket fire was telling. Dozens of men were down behind the wall; some forever, and others crawled back toward the chapel doors.
From the western wall, the soldados’ shouts and curses turned into a sustained battle cry. Anderson plunged his sword into the ground and drew his pistol. Hundreds of the enemy leapt from the wall or jumped off the roofs of the buildings there and ran as fast as they could across the forty yards of killing ground. Anderson didn’t think his men could fire any faster, but the rising crescendo of gunfire belied his thinking, as dozens of the attackers dropped in their tracks. But there were far more men crossing the plaza than defending the courtyard wall.
Anderson pointed his Trinity Arms revolver at the nearest charging soldado and pulled the trigger. A hole appeared in his chest and he crumpled to the ground. Anderson pulled the hammer back again and again, firing at the men racing toward him, until the hammer landed on an empty chamber. The rush of Mexicans was upon them.
With all his might, he threw the empty weapon into the face of a rushing soldado. Despite the roaring sound of battle around him, he was sure he heard bones shattering as the soldado fell to his knees, screaming in pain. Behind him another soldado stepped forward, with his bayoneted musket and plunged toward him, driving the steel blade into Anderson’s chest.
***
As he fired his rifle, Leal’s vision became tunnel like, focusing on each target. But something broke his concentration and he became aware that the line of Mexicans was racing across the plaza. He levered the breech closed and capped the gun and hastily raised it to his shoulder, as the charging mass of men reached the wall. He pulled the trigger. Before red and gray mist exploded out the back of the nearest soldado’s head, Leal thought he saw the man’s eyebrows burning away as incinerated gunpowder flashed into his face.
Along the line, the enemy had closed with them, and bayonets flashed in the sunlight that peeked over the chapel walls. Leal climbed to his feet and grabbed Jackson by the collar. “Let’s get back to the chapel, Terry. It’s over here.”
Turning to run, he felt the other man stumble against him, and saw him grab at his left shoulder. As he pulled the private away from the crumbling line, he saw blood flowing through Jackson’s fingers, where he clutched at the wound. Casting a look around, Leal saw the Mexicans bayoneting anyone still at the wall, as they surged over it. Frantically, he pulled his friend toward the chapel by his good arm. They were the last two of only a score of men from the wall, to cross the threshold of the chapel before the heavy wooden doors were slammed close behind them and a massive oaken crossbar was dropped into place, sealing the chapel off from the rest of the fort.
He handed Jackson over the barricade then helped a medical orderly pass the remaining wounded across before he, too scrambled over the makeshift barrier. Although the light flickering from the lanterns was dim, he saw several gunners standing on the gun platform over the chancel at the front of the chapel. Someone had reversed the three guns, facing them toward the doors at the opposite end. The sergeant, fighting off the exhaustion which threatened to overwhelm him, chuckled mirthlessly, thinking about the deadly welcome the Mexican army would receive when they breached the chapel’s doors.
Leal took a swig of the stale water from his canteen and tried to shake off the fatigue creeping into his bones. They weren’t beaten yet. He stepped back from the barricade and looked at the men around him
. There were around twenty men who had escaped the barricade with him. They were exhausted. Most sat behind the barricade, sitting on empty boxes. Some, like him, were slaking their thirst with water from their canteens. Several stared into the chapel’s shadowy recesses, lost in their own thoughts. A few others were busy stuffing their cartridge boxes with more ammunition or otherwise preparing for the next thrust from the Mexicans outside the building.
Leal saw the quartermaster sergeant, standing at the far end of the barricade with a handful of other men from the quartermaster’s corps. Their relatively clean uniforms contrasted sharply with those who had spent the last few hours fighting along the fort’s walls. Next to them were a handful of engineers assigned to the Alamo’s garrison. The last group were a band of teamsters stranded in the fort since the beginning of the siege. To a man, they were freedmen, hired by the army to haul supplies. The rifles in their hands were held inexpertly. Leal briefly wondered if anyone had taken the time to show the negros how to use the weapons they now held. He’d served alongside men from the American South long enough to know, the situation would need to be nigh on unwinnable before the typical Southern officer would have considered arming them.
Next to one of the teamsters, atop the last overturned box closest to the confessional, with his rifle resting on top of a burlap bag stood a youth, a boy of no more than thirteen or fourteen years. He was bareheaded, and his shock of red hair was an unruly mess. Leal’s eyes traveled to the boy’s rifle. It was the same as his, an 1842 Sabine breechloader. The rifle was well cared for, the barrel’s bluing gleamed in the flickering light from the lanterns on the chapel wall. Around the corner, off the north transept, he heard several young children crying, as their mothers’ voices nervously tried to sooth the unhappy toddlers.
Any thoughts coalescing around how to better protect the women and children fled from this mind, when he heard a loud boom, and the heavy chapel doors rattled on their hinges, as a battering ram slammed into them. The doors held. The walls of the chapel were four feet thick and expensive steel hinges holding the doors in place were bolted deep into the walls.