by Drew McGunn
As the other battalions approached, Johnston ordered the officer commanding the 2nd Infantry battalion to deploy to the Marine’s right flank and the 5th and Cherokee Rifles to deploy to the Marine’s left flank. The 3rd would follow behind, as a reserve.
Elated at the prospect of action, Johnston held his sword in one hand, and the reins in the other. He controlled the animal by guiding him with pressure from his knees. He came up next to the Marine major, “West! When you engage their cavalry, keep advancing while firing. Nothing’s to stop us until we reach San Antonio.”
Although the sun had not yet crested in the east, the sky was lightening, and Johnston could see his cavalry, falling back from the Mexican lancers. As they skedaddled from in front of their infantry’s line, several were skewered from behind by the lancers. The sun was behind his line, and the men of Mexico’s Santa Anna cavalry regiment were little more than silhouettes, but even a silhouette is a target, and the Texian line sighted in on the advancing lancers.
Mexican cavalry were typically recruited from among Mexico’s well-to-do, and after putting down rebellions across Mexico over the past decade, had earned a reputation for bravery and élan. The regiment that bore the dictator’s name was the unit by which other cavalry formations were judged. When they came under fire from the Texian rifleman, they wheeled their mounts and charged, racing to close the gap.
Shadows morphed into silhouettes, and silhouettes into men. The lancers saw the red, white, and blue flag flying over the center of the Marines’ line, and they tore up the ground to reach it. At West’s command, the Marines opened fire.
***
A rifle team crouched by the wall of the old Spanish Governor’s Palace, rifles pointing across San Antonio’s main plaza. Major West took a moment to rest against the adobe wall and catch his breath, as his men took up positions north of San Antonio’s central plaza. They had swept around the town in an arc, while the rest of the army went directly to the Alamo’s relief. They had run the last mile in an effort to be in position to attack the Mexican rear when the rest of the army attacked.
Across the plaza, atop the bell tower of the Church of San Fernando, West saw the national flag of Mexico flapping in the breeze. Apart from a few soldados, who appeared to be injured, the plaza appeared to be empty of enemy troops. He grabbed the corporal in charge of the closest rifle team, and pointed toward the flag, “Get that damned thing down from there, Corporal.”
Gesturing at his teammates, the NCO started off across the plaza, joined by one of others, while the other two covered them. Leapfrogging across the plaza, they reached the doors of the church without incident. A few minutes later, one of the marines appeared in the bell tower, where he cut the cord and lowered the Mexican flag. From his tunic, he pulled a small Texas flag, and hastily tied it to the cord and raised it over the church.
West allowed a faint smile to cross his tired features as he yelled to the other Marines. “Let’s go, boys. We’ve got a flank to turn.”
***
Johnston watched his men sweep through part of the Mexican army camp, north of the Alamo, less than half a mile from the fort’s walls. Camp followers, who had followed the Army of the North from Mexico, scattered in noisy surprise when they realized the Texians were moving through the camp. Apart from the women and children, only a handful of wounded were in camp. Johnston had his men secure the camp and move on. He could hear the rattle of musketry coming from the Alamo and time was of the essence.
Once the northern wall of the Alamo had come into view, Johnston gasped in shock at the scene. Fires burned along the western wall, where he could see blue-uniformed Mexican soldados firing into the fort. Between his army and the fort, the ground was carpeted with dead and wounded Mexicans. Scores appeared to have been hit before ever reaching the north wall, where, a line of scaling ladders rested against the fort’s northwest corner.
An echoing boom sounded from within the fort, as an artillery piece was fired. The fort hadn’t fallen yet, and he and his men were still in time! Throwing caution to the wind, Johnston urged his horse forward, across the body-strewn prairie. He yanked his sword from its scabbard and pointed it toward the wall. The men of the 2nd and 3rd Infantry battalions heard his cry and raced after him, as he kicked his horse into a gallop. He reached the wall, and swung himself out of the saddle, as a dozen men raced by him, and hurled themselves up the undefended ladders.
Johnston heard the riflemen firing at targets within the fort as he grabbed the rungs and hurried to the top. The carnage on the field before the walls was nothing in comparison to the horror he saw upon reaching the top. One could step across the plaza on the backs of the dead and never touch the ground. He swung his feet over the wall and was lowered to the ground by a rifleman who had climbed the ladder behind him. But it was the hundreds of soldados on their feet, who had turned to see the Texians on the wall, that posed an immediate threat.
The length of the plaza from the north wall to the southern gatehouse was a little more than four hundred sixty feet, and as the Mexicans became aware, Johnston heard lead balls hitting the adobe wall behind him.
Riflemen threw themselves prone or hugged the fort’s walls, making themselves smaller targets. The volume of fire from the north wall increased exponentially as more men crawled over it and added their aimed fire into the Mexican force at the far end of the plaza.
Kneeling beside an old building set into the western wall, Johnston watched a platoon-sized collection of men, who were lying prone, firing independently of each other. After firing a few rounds, they began working in tandem, under the command of a sergeant. Men, who had never before worked with each other, coalesced in ad hoc rifle teams, and began working their way toward their foes on the western side of the fort.
The dozens of ladders against the western wall were now carrying the men from the Cherokee Rifles over the wall, along its entire length, adding their weight to the growing pressure on the soldados.
Caught in a crossfire from both the north and west, the Mexican force broke, and streamed through the gates, heading south. Along the small wall separating the chapel’s courtyard from the plaza, there had been more than a hundred soldados firing toward the chapel and with the rest of their force streaming away, they broke, and joined the retreat.
“At them, boys!” Johnston shouted. He joined his men, who were now racing across the field, firing at the backsides of the soldados, who were running away. Some threw their muskets away, running even faster.
Scattered gunfire came from the south a moment before blue-jacketed Marines under Major West began trickling through the southern gatehouse. The Alamo was once again in the hands of the Texians. Dozens of Mexicans stood around, their weapons thrown down and hands in the air. Riflemen and Marines rounded them up and herded them toward the fort’s northwestern corner.
As he stepped around the bodies littering the plaza, Johnston saw mixed in among dead and wounded soldados in their blue and red uniforms, Texians in their butternut uniforms. There were plenty of each and he knew before the end of the day, that he would know the totals. As he accidentally stepped on a hand, he shuddered. Even a casual glance around the walls, told him the butcher’s bill would be horrendous.
From the chapel, its doors damaged beyond any hope of repair, a dozen survivors emerged. Their uniforms were filthy, tattered and torn by the hell they’d endured over the past few hours. They approached the low stone barrier as Johnston stepped up to it and examined the haggard group.
They were led by a short Tejano; his jacket was caked in flour. The chevrons, normally black, were white with flour paste, and denoted he was a sergeant. Standing behind the sergeant was a youth. Bareheaded, the youth was as tall as the Tejano. He was jacketless. His shirt, once dyed blue, now was stained in equal parts black with grime, and white from flour. Beneath the coating of flour, a shock of red hair was visible.
As his eyes slipped toward the next survivor, the red hair registered, and he did a double-take
of the boy. “Dear God in heaven! Is that you, Charlie?” Johnston stammered as he recognized the son of the army’s commander.
With his father’s rifle still clutched in his hand, the boy stepped forward, crying, “Colonel Johnston! Thank God y’all arrived.” The boy’s treble voice broke with emotion.
Any pretense of military formality forgotten, Johnston stepped forward and grabbed the boy’s shoulders and stared at him intently. “By all that is holy, boy, what the hell are you doing here? Where’s Becky? Please tell me that your family is safe.”
Gulping hard, his emotions threatened to overwhelm him, Charlie managed a nod before he finally found his voice. “Yes, sir. They’re in the chapel and safe.”
The boy trembled as he spoke, and tears streaked down his face. Johnston pulled him into an embrace as he listened to the sobs that were muffled against his chest. Over the years, he’d watched Charlie turn from a slight little boy of seven into the gangly teenager he now comforted. As the boy’s tears soaked Johnston’s jacket, the general sent a silent prayer of thanks heavenward; the children and wife of not just his commander, but his friend, were safe. He tousled the flour-caked hair.
Chapter 18
30th March 1842
General Adrian Woll gasped and winced. A medical orderly held his arm tightly as the surgeon pulled the thread through the torn skin, where a bullet had gone through his upper arm. For what seemed the dozenth time, he thanked the Blessed Virgin the bullet hadn’t hit an inch to the left. It would have shattered the bone. Had that happened, the surgeon would have been cutting the arm off, instead of suturing it. When the last stitch was in place, he wrapped clean linen around Woll’s arm. With a final knot, securing the bandage, he said, “There you go, General. It’ll be like new in a few weeks. If you’ll excuse me, I have others to attend to.”
Without waiting for permission, the overworked doctor turned his back on the general and was soon at work, trying to save a soldado with a bullet lodged in his shoulder. Woll flexed his fingers and grimaced as pain lanced up and down his arm. The tent was packed with injured men and smelled of feces and the metallic odor of blood. With his good left arm, he picked up the jacket from the ground and fled the tent. Once outside, he looked at the horizon, and saw the sun sinking in the western sky. Any hope for moving further away from San Antonio this day sank with the setting sun.
Under more favorable circumstances, Woll would have preferred to rest and regain his strength. His army was in tatters, and they needed rest. But time was of the essence. Less than a hundred yards north of the surgeon’s tent, which had been hastily erected only an hour before, the Army of the North’s 3rd brigade stood in line of battle, facing toward San Antonio. A few hundred yards beyond, the remnants of the army’s Cazadores companies were deployed, less than ten miles separated his shattered army from San Antonio.
How had it come to this? Woll needed a few minutes to think and plan his next move. Feeling dizzy, he moved over to a supply wagon, and sat heavily down on the tail of the wagon bed and waited for the dizzy spell to pass. He closed his eyes and thought about where things had gone wrong this morning. The attack had gone as planned, more or less. The Texians were alert and repulsed a couple of attacks before his men had managed to force them from one corner of the fort’s walls.
After his men had seized part of the wall, they quickly expanded their hold, and drove the remnants of the defenders from the outer wall. They fell back to a low wall in front of the old chapel, where they put up a strong defense for a while, until they were driven to within the thick walls of the chapel. It should have been only a matter of time before the defenders in the chapel fell.
Woll, in his location on the southwest corner of the Mexican starting position, had heard the sound of shooting in the town, then saw the army’s camp followers streaming from the north and knew something was amiss. When he saw the blue-jacketed Texian Marines streaming toward his command post, racing down Alameda Street and seizing the wooden bridge over the San Antonio River, he commanded his orderlies and couriers to find any units not committed within the Alamo’s walls and to pull back to the southern portion of their camp.
He had been climbing onto his own mount, when he’d been shot by a rifleman from the bridge, at a range of less than a hundred yards. He would have affected an organized withdrawal of most of his army, had it not been for the savage Indians who had accompanied the Texian relief column.
The first thing he’d seen splashing across the shallows of the San Antonio River was a blood-red flag with scattered stars on it, being carried by a screaming, savage Indian. He’d barely had time to read the words emblazoned on the flag, “1st Cherokee Rifles” before he had been forced to jerk on the reins and retreat toward General Urrea’s reserve regiment, which was south of the Alamo.
After that, the retreat was a blur. Opening his eyes, he fished from his vest pocket the latest figures provided by his staff. The 1st brigade, under the command of General Guzman still fielded around six hundred fifty men. It was only half of their original strength. As his eyes read over the totals, he allowed doubt to creep into his thinking. “Was it how quickly they broke when the Cherokee hit them in the rear that kept them from sustaining even more casualties, or are they broken and unable to fight?”
He shook his head and hoped he wouldn’t have to find out.
Gritting his teeth, as he used his injured right arm to shuffle the pages, he found the report on the 2nd brigade. The burden of any general is knowing that some portion of the men sent into battle will die. Unlike Santa Anna, Woll couldn’t think of his soldados as little more than chickens. They were his men, and he knew when he ordered the 2nd brigade to assault the Alamo’s western wall, they would take terrible casualties. No one was around to hear him say, “But over sixty percent! Holy Mother of God, so many dead.”
The remnants of the 2nd brigade numbered no more than four hundred fifty. They had started the campaign in Nuevo Laredo with more than thirteen hundred. While they had suffered heavy casualties in the process of capturing the fort’s western wall, it wasn’t yet known how many had been taken prisoner within the walls of the Alamo when General Johnston’s relief army had stormed over the Northern wall.
The next report was from General Urrea. The gods of war had shown him favor, and he yet lived. Woll harrumphed. Nothing else had broken his way this day, why should Urrea’s survival surprise him? He chided himself for again wishing ill of his subordinate. He pushed aside his thoughts of Urrea and saw that the 3rd regiment of Urrea’s 3rd brigade had sustained more than seventy percent casualties. They had caught the worst of the brunt of the Marines’ attack and their sacrifice had allowed the rest of Woll’s army to retreat. But overall, Urrea had husbanded the lives of his men, and escaped with the majority of the two regiments he’d used to assault the Alamo’s southern wall. More than six hundred men had escaped. They had held their ranks until the survivors from the other two brigades had fled through their lines. Woll wanted to hate Urrea, for his naked ambition and opportunism, but the general had held his men together, when the rest of the army was in tatters, and the sacrifice of his 3rd regiment was the only reason Woll was able sit on the back of the wagon and review the army’s miserable status. Without that sacrifice, the army would have been annihilated.
The last sheet of paper slipped through his fingers and landed in the dirt. He didn’t need to see it. He cursed Colonel Moro, who had commanded the Santa Anna cavalry regiment for the lack of warning he’d received. He sucked in the cool, evening air, and reminded himself it wasn’t right to speak ill of the dead. The report blowing away in the breeze said what he already knew. Moro’s cavalry had been swept aside by Johnston’s relief column and hammered to pieces by the breech-loading rifles they carried. Only one hundred thirty lancers had escaped from before Johnston’s onslaught, and Woll added them to his tally.
The last branch of the army to consider were the artillery. One battery of four guns, 8-pounders, had been entrenched sout
h of the fort, while the other, also four 8-pounders, had been positioned along the banks of the San Antonio river, west of the fort. He had taken care to position his guns outside of the range of the Texian riflemen, but he couldn’t have anticipated how quickly Johnston’s attack had rolled up his army . Not a single gun had been saved, but he was thankful nearly sixty of the artillerists had escaped with the army.
He thought back to the day after the earthen fort on the Rio Bravo had surrendered, back on the 13th of March. He had assembled nearly four thousand men and brought them north to besiege the walls of the Alamo. Now, according to his reports, only nineteen hundred men remained ready to fight, or so he hoped. He was only ten miles from San Antonio, and he prayed the Texians were too busy putting their house back in order to pursue him this day. He needed time to care for the four hundred wounded clogging the tents of his regimental and brigade surgeons.
As he thought of the eighteen hundred men, now dead, wounded, or prisoners of the Texians, he frowned. “What was it General Wellington had said? The only thing worse than a battle won was a battle lost.”
***
Sidney Johnston carefully stepped across the plaza of the Alamo as the sun sank below the remains of the fort’s western wall. Everything he’d ever learned at West Point and his natural inclination screamed he should be marching his army south in pursuit of General Woll and his army. He closed his eyes against the horror within the fort’s walls, willing the images burned into his mind to let him be. What he wanted to do, and what he was able to do, were unfortunately, two different things.
There hadn’t been time to find Rebecca Travis in the chapel before men started bringing him word that the Mexicans hadn’t simply stormed the walls and driven off the defenders. No, it soon became evident the Mexican army had slaughtered the wounded along the outer walls, when they had seized them. Scores of mutilated bodies were found where they had fallen, dozens of bayonet wounds rendered some of the fallen unrecognizable.