by Drew McGunn
“Heaven help y’all if that’s the case.” Will rejoined before he turned serious, “No, Almonte appears to be taking a page from our hymnal. Putting his riflemen along a front closest to the ford will require we change our strategy.”
He turned to Seguin, “What about other fords nearby?”
The cavalry officer ran his fingers along the stubble of his chin, his face wore an uncharacteristic frown. “While there are a few other fords within a day’s march, they don’t suit our needs as well as the ford here. Also, Almonte’s cavalry are watching them like hawks.”
Former commander of the Texas militia, now the 2nd brigade’s senior officer, McCulloch said, “Couldn’t we swing a brigade down to one of those fords and force a crossing there? Catch Almonte’s flank.”
Using his finger, Seguin pointed at the nearest ford, south of Laredo. “In addition to scouting out the other possible points across the river, we’ve had some of our Rangers operating behind the Mexican lines over the past few weeks. Major Hays believes Almonte would use his cavalry to slow our advance while his main army here disengages and withdraws south. We don’t have the certitude we’d like, but Hays believes that Almonte is preparing a second fortified position much further south and he’ll withdraw here if he thinks he’s being flanked.”
“Then we’d smash them on the desert between here and Monterrey.” McCulloch pounded the table, emphasizing each of his words.
Will shook his head. “Perhaps, perhaps not. Where is the most likely spot between here and Monterrey for Almonte to set up more fortifications, Juan?”
The map on the table, drawn by army cartographers, was centered on Laredo and showed only a few miles in any direction. “Around a hundred miles south, after crossing the southern reaches of the Chihuahuan desert, we’ll come to the little town of Candela. It’s nothing to look at, but just south of the town is a natural choke point. The road passes between two mountain ranges. That valley might be a mile wide at its narrowest point. But if Almonte is planning a second set of defenses there, whichever battalion draws the short straw will pay the butcher’s bill pushing them off that line.”
Will’s focus was still on the map. “Solid points. If Almonte can’t draw us into attacking here, he just pulls back and forces us to fight him where there aren’t any choices. He bleeds us either way. We’ve been pretty good at creating tactical situations forcing Mexico to assault our positions. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and I don’t mind saying, it pinches like hell.”
He studied the map before continuing. “I’d rather fight Almonte here, where we have a chance, however slim, of decisively defeating him and destroying a sizable portion of his army. If we are forced to fight him in mountain passes, the war may drag out longer than we can afford. Even so, whoever we send in first will pay our pound of flesh.”
“Sir, my men can do it.” Will looked up, wondering who had spoken. Standing behind the general officers, was Lt. Colonel West. “Give us an artillery barrage until we’re on the Mexican side of the river and a couple of other battalions to support our flanks, and my boys will take those entrenchments away from the Mexicans.”
West’s Marines were, if Will was honest with himself, some of the best fighting men in the army. But there were only six companies totaling a little more than three hundred fifty men. Will eyed McCulloch. There were six companies of the 2nd Infantry garrisoning the fort at the bend in the Rio Grande. They were scarcely more than a rock’s throw away from the ford, and they were part of Ben McCulloch’s brigade. “What about Colonel Hodgen’s men, Ben?”
McCulloch stroked his well-trimmed beard as he considered the proposal. “It could work. They could anchor the Marines’ right flank. What about the Regulars from the 1st on the left flank?”
Johnston offered a thin smile. “My boys would like another crack at those Cazadores. With your permission, General Travis, I’d also like to deploy the 4th Infantry close enough to provide support.”
Will watched the officers parade out from the pavilion later, in a hurry to make whatever plans were necessary for the next morning. It was one of the oldest maxims that no plan survives contact with an enemy, but it galled him more than he was willing to admit to throw out the playbook before they had even reached the southern shore.
Chapter 10
8 April 1843
The ground beneath him shook Lieutenant Javier Morales awake. Shells exploded over the trenchworks. As he dove into a shelter dug into the rocky ground, he heard the deadly patter of shell fragments raining on the thick wooden roof. It was still too dark to see his pocket watch, but a look to the east showed a glow below the horizon. The sun would be up shortly.
Not everyone had been quick enough to seek shelter and he heard the plaintive cry of one of his riflemen. He swore as he stared into the dark trench. Around him, several of his Cazadores crowded under the shelter. He turned to order one of them to go and fetch the injured man, but then saw terror in their eyes. The firefight the previous day, and now the bombardment, were taking their toll on these peasants turned soldiers. As the youngest son of a merchant family in the capital, the lieutenant realized it was his responsibly to set an example for the men serving under him.
Despite the steady rain of shrapnel and shell fragments above the dugout, he raced out into the trench, open to the sky above without a backwards glance. “I should have traded places with Estevan!” He found the wounded soldado cradling his leg, his rifle lay by his side. He was one of the sentries, who had been keeping an eye on the ruins of Nuevo Laredo below.
“Alright, Fernandez, let’s get you out of here.” Morales wrapped his arms around the wounded soldado and pulled him to his feet. He supported the rifleman as they raced back to the shelter, ignoring the death raining down on the Mexican trenchworks. As they reached relative safety, the other men grabbed their wounded companion and found a spot for him to lay down while one of their number looked at his injuries
The Mexican caste system dictated a man’s role in the army even more than in society at large. The soldados under his command came from the Mestizo and native populations, nearly all of whom were peasant farmers, or would have been were it not for the conscription laws which swept them into Santa Anna’s army. Morales was the youngest son of Creole parents, descendants of Canary Islanders who had immigrated to Mexico several generations earlier. There was a wide gap between the officers, who were typically of Spanish descent and the men they commanded. But when Morales came back from fetching his injured rifleman, those distinctions fell away and for a moment, they were one.
The bombardment continued as the sun climbed into the sky. A few minutes after the yellow orb bathed his world in light, Morales noticed the guns had stopped firing. He stepped out from under cover and peered over the top of the trench. A long, thin line of blue-clad men were racing across the plain east of the remains of Laredo. In their center was a Texian flag, snapping in the wind as the color sergeant carrying it raced toward the river.
Another formation of soldiers in their mud-colored uniforms was entering the town’s ruins from the north. More men poured from the trenchworks which ran from the five-sided fort toward the remains of the town. From the fort, a barrage of gunfire erupted along the southern facing sides.
“To arms! They’re attacking!” Morales shouted for his Cazadores to man their positions along the trench. Out of two dozen present at the beginning of the previous day’s battle, now less than twenty were still on their feet. As Morales watched, every one of them raced to their places. He wore a feral grin, realizing he had earned their loyalty. Without waiting for orders, his riflemen used the same tactic from the previous day. One rifleman in four poured aimed fire on the Texian forces moving through the town on the other side of the river, while the other three reloaded.
He looked over the ledge. It looked like hundreds of riflemen were assembling amid the ruins of the town. A bullet buzzed by his ear and he flinched. A nervous smile flitted across his face. Ducking or flinching w
ouldn’t matter. He knew he’d never hear the one with his name on it. Stepping away, he strode back and forth along the trench, encouraging the men to load faster.
When he reached the end of his line, there was a few feet between his platoon and the next company over. He looked and saw that east of town another battalion of riflemen were coming up behind the blue-clad Marines, who were shifting their own skirmish line into town.
The Mexican artillery had been silent until now, and with a roar from their positions on the crest of the hill, they opened fire on the Texians down below. Solid shot and canisters landed amid the foe. Buildings which were nothing more than rubble were further reduced as solid shot turned adobe to dust.
The Texian artillery opened fire again, shifting their aim. And shells began exploding above the fortified positions at the top of the hill.
Within a few seconds, two of his men were knocked from their spots as more aimed fire from below focused on the Cazadores’ trench. One was wounded, and Morales sent the rifleman toward the rear, following the narrow communications trench. He knelt beside the other. A neat hole was centered in the soldado’s head, and blood dribbled from it. He didn’t need to see the exit wound. Blood and gray matter pooled in the trench under the body. He crossed himself then closed the soldado’s eyes.
Reloaders stepped forward, replacing the two fallen along the firing line. Despite the continual roar of gunfire below, and the rising casualty count in the trench, the Texians appeared content to hold their position in the ruins of the town. Morales couldn’t help but wonder when they would tire of absorbing the losses they surely were taking from the Mexican artillery and the aimed fire of his riflemen.
***
First Sergeant Julio Mejia watched the gunners loading their field pieces. From his place behind the line of cannon, the glint of the dawn sun reflecting off the bronze barrels caused him to squint. He turned away from the artillery and looked over his company. More than seventy men were ready to move forward as soon as the artillery barrage stopped. Even though the company was under the command of Captain Edwards, Mejia thought of these men as his own. As the ranking non-commissioned officer, Mejia worked with and trained them. Officers could come and go, and often that was the case as the Texian army rapidly expanded in the days following General Johnston’s relief of the Alamo. The real measure of a rifle company were the sergeants and corporals that kept things working. Mejia quietly chuckled. At least that’s what he told himself.
After arriving back at the Alamo with news of the massacre of his company in Reynosa the year before, he had been surprised when General Travis himself had promoted him to first sergeant. He had helped Captain Edwards rebuild the company lost the previous year.
The guns fell silent. That was the signal. The captain, with his revolver in hand, stepped ahead of the company. With a single word, “Forward,” the company advanced through the guns and across the prairie. Their immediate goal was the ruins of Laredo. As he walked behind the rifle teams, spread out across a wide front, he hoped that all the training of the past year would pay off.
When the company reached the town’s ruins, each of the rifle teams sought cover behind the mounds of debris as they worked their way toward the ford. The riflemen from the Mexican Cazadores regiments opened fire, causing Mejia to drop to the ground behind a short adobe wall. He glanced over it and saw a crucifix lying in the rubble. Crossing himself, Mejia realized he was in the remains of the church. A rifle team was on the other side of the rubble. They opened fire on the trenchworks midway up the hill, south of the river.
To his right, Mejia heard boots crunching under cinders, and turned as he saw a company from the 2nd Infantry working their way through the western side of town. They had climbed out of the trench near the fort and joined the advance.
The ruins of the town ended less than a hundred feet from the shallow ford. A couple of men were sprawled, fallen where they had been hit, when they had attempted to cross the open ground. The distance between the town and ford was a killing ground, well inside the Cazadores’ range.
As solid shot and exploding shells rained down on the ruins, Mejia saw that whatever shelter the town offered was an illusion. He saw Captain Edwards collapse amid the rubble of the next building over and Mejia left cover as bullets threw up puffs of dirt near his feet. He dove into the rubble, landing next to the captain. The officer’s leg was turning red. A long shard of glass had pierced his thigh.
“Don’t bother going into the cantina, Sergeant. No drinks to be had. Hays’ Rangers have cleaned the place out. All I found was this damned piece of glass.”
The sergeant ignored his captain’s feeble attempt at humor and pulled a clean handkerchief from his knapsack and covered the wound as he pulled the shard from the leg. Blood turned the white cloth red. “Hold this on the wound, Captain.”
Edwards grabbed his arm, “Get the men moving, Sergeant. If you can’t get them across the river, by God, get them out of town. This is a death trap.”
Leaving his captain behind the wreck of the wall, Mejia joined the handful of men sheltering in the ruins of the church. They were from his company, and they were unnerved by the constant zinging of bullets close by as well as the choking dust from pulverized adobe. He placed his hand on the arm of one of the men, “Nothing good will come of staying here. Who will join me? I’m taking this fight to the Mexicans.”
As he leapt over a fragment of the wall, he desperately wanted to look behind and see how many were following him. But whatever he felt, they needed to see his bravery. As he passed by the fallen riflemen in the no-man’s land between the town and ford, with every step he braced for the bullet that would lay him low. He reached the ford and was still on his feet, although he had felt more than one bullet whiz by his ears.
As he splashed into the low-water crossing, he couldn’t help himself and looked behind. There were dozens of men racing after him. He redoubled his effort, slogging through the shallows. The water never crested his belt, and in the back of his mind, he felt relief, knowing his ammunition box stayed dry.
Even as more bullets plunged into the water all about him, he let loose a primordial shout as the water fell away and his boots landed on dry ground. Behind him, he heard his men echoing the primitive yell. He raced toward the equally devastated remains of Nuevo Laredo, and ducked behind a low, crumbling adobe wall of what had once been a small house. He checked his rifle, saw it was loaded, and rose and fired at the trench in the distance. Shards of adobe rained down on him as he ducked. Bullets tore up the top of the wall where he had stood only a second before.
Along the side of the town facing the river, Mejia saw most of his company had followed him across the ford and into Mexico. But the riflemen above poured a deadly rain of lead on them. Even as his rifle teams infiltrated the broken town and returned fire on the Cazadores, he wondered how in the hell he was supposed to close the distance.
***
Within the army of the Republic field-grade officers were expected to provide their own mount. In theory, it allowed the battalion commanders to issue orders and maintain cohesion among the various companies under their control more quickly than if they were afoot. Lt. Colonel Elliot West had refused, telling General McCulloch, “I’m a Marine. I’ll lead my boys on foot or not at all.” The truth was, which he would never admit, he was afraid of them. Since being thrown as a young boy, he had avoided the beasts as much as possible.
He strode behind his men as they swept past the Texian field pieces. Their first objective was to secure the river bank east of town, before pivoting into the ruins and across the river. The men deployed smoothly into open-order tactics. They deployed much more smoothly this day than they had a year before when they had driven off the Mexican army under General Woll at the Alamo.
A year’s training would do that to any command, he thought, but these were his men and he felt pride as the rifle teams sped across the open ground. They had crossed most of the half mile when the Mexican arti
llery opened fire. For the most part, the guns tore up the remains of Laredo, as they attempted to drive off the 1st Infantry, which had swept into the ruins a moment before.
But some of the guns on the heights behind Nuevo Laredo targeted his men. Before reaching his line, a shell exploded in the air, raining bits and pieces of iron over the prairie. A couple more shells plowed into the earth before they detonated, throwing dirt and iron into the air. The men picked up their pace and West found himself jogging to keep up.
When they reached the river, two of the companies extended their lines and sought shelter along the river bank and opened fire on the trenchworks halfway up the fortified hill. They would remain in place until the 4th Infantry arrived, providing suppressive fire.
Lt. Colonel West reached the company anchoring his right flank and watched as they poured into the ruins of Laredo, angling toward the ford. When he reached the water’s edge, he saw a company had reached the other side of the river and were hunkered down in Nuevo Laredo’s ruins. Between the edges of the two towns was a deadly no-man’s land. A few bodies were floating in the river and there more were scattered on the ground.
West studied the soldiers sheltered behind the rubble on the Texas side of the river. Several companies were doing yeoman’s work, returning fire. The problem, as he saw it, was they were supposed to be on the other side of the river. The men tasked with storming the Mexican hill were not supposed to settle into the ruins and return fire. That job belonged to the soldiers in the fort and the 4th Infantry.
A spray of adobe dust blew into his face as a bullet slammed into the partial brick wall he stood behind. He wiped the dust from his face and saw streaks of blood on his hand. “No, staying on this side of the river won’t do.”
The company commander for the lead element of West’ battalion was down. He was writhing in the dirt, hit in the abdomen. His second-in-command, a fresh-faced lieutenant, looked expectantly at West.