The Alamo

by Frank Thompson

  Jesús sprinted toward the north wall, screaming without knowing it. Another cannon blast shook the ground under his feet and several men to his left were shredded by canister shot. He slammed against the base of the wall with a dozen other survivors. Above him, the Texians, including Travis, continued to fire, but Jesús noticed that they could not manage to fire straight down, where he was. For a Texian to do that, he would have to climb onto the top of the wall, leaving himself open. Within moments, the ground against the north wall was crowded with soldados, amazed to find themselves, for the moment, in relative safety.

  Colonel Duque’s men, losing momentum, slowed down fifty yards from the north wall. “Halt!” Duque called out. “Ready . . . aim . . . fire!”

  His men could barely see through the smoke and the darkness. The front row of his ragged column unleashed a volley at the north wall. Almost none of their bullets reached the Texians for whom they were intended. But several of the men with Jesús were hit by the volley from their own side. Jesús dove for the ground as balls ricocheted off the wall by his head.

  At the palisade, Crockett and his men kept up a steady stream of fire at the Morales column as the Mexicans continued their frenzied retreat toward the west. The soldiers, trying to avoid the Texians’ bullets as they moved in panic to the right, ran directly into their own officers, who angrily drove them on, cursing and striking the men.

  On the west wall, the gunnade fired out through its hole in the wall. Here, however, the Mexicans managed to jump aside before the blast. As soon as the gunnade fired, a half dozen soldados, knowing the Texians would have to reload, wheeled and fired their muskets into the hole. The two Texians operating the gun were blown back. One of the Mexicans began to chop at the hole with an ax.

  As more Mexicans massed directly under the walls at north and west, the Texians were forced to expose themselves in order to fire down on them. For the soldados, this was a little like target practice: Each time a Texian came into sight, he was brought down by three, four, five Mexican musket balls. When a Texian fell, there was no one to take his place, so each Texian death left larger and larger gaps along the wall.

  To the north, ladders were being pushed up against the wall, but the Texians knocked them down as soon as they were set up. General Juan Amador, impatient with this deadly game, began to climb up the wall itself. As Jameson had feared, the ragged wall with its chinks and holes provided perfect hand- and footholds, and soon dozens of soldados were swarming up it.

  Travis fired his shotgun directly into the approaching mass of men. He blasted the face off a Mexican soldier, and his falling body swept three more soldados along with him to the ground. “Depress the cannon!” Travis shouted. “Keep them off the walls!”

  Joe handed a loaded rifle to Travis and took the shotgun. As Joe reloaded it for his master, Travis moved to the edge of the wall, leaned over and fired directly into the right ear of the man standing directly next to Jesús, causing a thick red spray to explode out the left side of his head. In terror, Jesús fired blindly upward, without aiming, without even looking in the direction of the shot.

  Jesús’s musket ball slammed into Travis’s forehead, knocking him back, head-over-heels down the ramp. His body rolled to a stop at Joe’s feet. Joe stared at the lifeless Travis, whose eyes were wide open as if caught by surprise. In other circumstances, he might have felt a certain sadness, or perhaps relief. But shock and terror had shut off his other emotions. As the Mexicans began swarming over the position, hacking and stabbing the Texians, Joe gently lay the shotgun down beside Travis’s body and walked, as if in a trance, back toward Travis’s quarters.

  As Joe walked through the courtyard, he was surrounded by explosions, screams of fear and pain, the acrid smell of gunpowder. Texians were beginning to abandon their places on the walls and were searching, panicked, for places to hide, or for better defensive positions. Joe was oblivious to all the mayhem. It seemed to him like a dream, filled with strange shapes, weird sounds, inexplicable images. Behind him, the Mexicans started to top the walls in twos and threes. They were running toward the buildings around the courtyard where they had seen the Texians retreat. But just as Joe could not be completely sure that he was seeing them, they did not seem to be aware of him at all. When he reached Travis’s quarters—where only minutes before he had been sleeping, snug and warm—Joe stopped and looked around. He could not think of anything to do, so he walked to the back wall and sat down. Beside him was Travis’s leather saddlebag, ornately monogrammed WBT. Joe picked it up and held it tight against his chest. He began to repeat over and over, “Me naygro, yo soy naygro . . .”

  The north wall was now almost undefended. Dolphin Floyd fell across the cannon, a bullet wound in his temple. Young Galba Fuqua was hit point-blank in the face, the musket ball shattering his jaw. He staggered backward but did not fall. His bottom jaw dropped unnaturally and the pain was unbearable. Holding his jaw together with both hands, Galba rushed down the ramp, running toward the church.

  A few other Texians pushed ladders away from the edge with their rifle butts or fired down at the climbing Mexicans, but each time, another ladder and another soldier took its place. William Ward looked past the struggle just in front of him to a wave of charging reserves. He had almost no men left. “Fall back!” Ward shouted. “Spike the cannon!” Just as he turned to do so, Ward was hit in the back of the head by a musket ball. He stood there for a moment, wavering like a scarecrow in a hard wind. Then, his body went limp and dropped to the ground.

  To the north and the west, Mexican artillerymen began firing Congreve rockets at the Alamo. As the missiles hit, the thatched roofs of the buildings along the west wall began to burst into flames. Overhead, flares were flying in the air. Attached to parachutes, they sparked red and white. This fireworks display would have seemed beautiful and thrilling on another day. But this morning it served only to illuminate the horror inside the walls of the Alamo.

  The cannon crew on the ramp in the rear of the church was keeping up a steady fire, but at this point, there were almost no Mexican soldiers in sight. Nearly every Mexican survivor who had at first attacked from the rear of the compound on the east side had moved around to the north or south, searching both for protection and for an easier entrance to the fort. Dickinson could see across the compound that the Mexicans were now swarming over the north wall. He turned to Bonham and shouted, “I will be back.” He raced down the ramp to the baptistery, where Susanna and the baby, along with other women and children, were hiding in the shadows.

  “Susanna!” Dickinson cried.

  She stood up, panic in her eyes. Little Angelina was screaming, backed by a chorus of weeping and moaning from the others in the room. Susanna embraced her husband, burying her face in his chest. He wanted to say something, wanted to craft a farewell that would sum up his love for her and the child, and his deepest regret for getting them all involved in this hopeless situation. But there were no words for any of this. Smelling her hair brought a barrage of fleeting images of happiness, images he hoped he could retain for the next little while. Perhaps if he held on to them long enough, when the time came, he could step directly from this dark reality into that warm and welcoming dream world forever.

  Dickinson held Susanna almost at arm’s length as they looked desperately into each other’s eyes. After a long moment, Dickinson kissed Angelina on the head, then quickly turned and ran back up the ramp to his post.

  Green Jameson was loading the eighteen pounder in the southwest corner when he saw a mob of blue uniformed enemy rushing across the compound from the north. He called out, “They are over the wall! Turn it, turn it!” The crew struggled to wheel the big cannon around.

  Crockett, at the palisade, heard Jameson’s cry and turned around. His Tennesseans had kept anyone from coming over their fragile wood fence, but the Mexicans had just kept running around the outside to the opposite side of the fort. Now Crockett stared in horror as hundreds of Mexican soldiers came streaming over
the north wall, rushing down the ramps in wave after wave.

  Crockett turned to Autry and shouted, “Behind us!”

  “Give ’em hell,” Autry replied. Crockett and the other men began firing almost without aiming into the throng of invaders, reloading frantically.

  A rifle was stuck through a loophole in a wall of the long barracks. A white cloth hung from the barrel. It was waved back and forth as a gesture of surrender. Several Mexicans approached cautiously to apprehend the ones who were giving up. When they opened the door, a barrage of gunfire cut most of them down.

  Other Mexicans, seeing the act, seethed at the deceit by the Texians and with an infuriated roar swarmed into the room, viciously hacking and slicing the defenders with bayonets.

  Elsewhere in the long barracks, the New Orleans Greys raced into their fallback trenches, slamming the doors shut, and waited for their very literal last-ditch effort. The Mexicans follow them inside almost immediately. The soldados flooded into the smoke-filled rooms, shooting, stabbing, screaming with blood lust as the Texians fought back with knives, rifle butts, fists, teeth. The darkness of the rooms made the struggle even more horrible. No one could be completely sure that he was not hacking away at one of his comrades instead of one of the enemy.

  Jameson had the eighteen pounder completely turned around now, and fired it directly into the wave of Mexicans inside the compound. The blast scattered bodies and severed limbs; it cut a bloody swath not only through the throng of soldados but through individual soldados as well.

  “Reload!” Jameson shouted. Before anyone could prime the big gun again, a musket ball exploded through Jameson’s chest and he fell face-forward. A volley of gunfire from the ground just outside the southwest corner cut down the rest of the Texian crew from behind. Immediately, ladders began to appear on the wall and soldados climbed over. A sergeant barked an order and several Mexicans began pushing the dead bodies of the Texians off the cannon and swinging it toward the church.

  Twenty sick and wounded men lay on cots in the infirmary on the second floor of the long barracks. Those who could hold knives or pistols braced themselves for the inevitable attack. Others simply lay there, cringing in fear. Some of the more seriously wounded, mercifully, were unconscious or in a daze. Amos Pollard, the main surgeon of the Alamo garrison, stood at the doorway of the infirmary, unarmed. When the Mexicans finally rushed up the stairs he shouted, “These are wounded men! They are noncombatants.” Before he could say more, he was run through with two bayonets. Soldados swarmed through the infirmary, quickly dispatching the rest of the patients.

  Now there was more of the attacking Mexican force inside the walls of the Alamo than outside. Like a ship rapidly taking on water, the Alamo’s walls were covered by a steady flow of Mexicans. They streamed in over the north wall, over and through the west wall, up and over the lunette at the main gate, into the cattle pen.

  But not over the palisade. There, Crockett and his men crouched with their backs to the wooden emplacement and fired into the compound. They continued to move sideways, trying to make it into the fortified front entry of the church. Tom Waters set down his dog. “Go on now, Jake, get outta here,” he urged. But the dog refused to leave his side. He was licking Waters’s hand when Waters was hit by a blast from several Mexican muskets. He fell into the shallow ditch by the palisade and lay faceup. The dog, not knowing where else to go, burrowed in next to his master’s body and watched the Mexicans stream by.

  Several Texians, watching in panic as the enemy swept toward them like a multidirectional tide, leaped over the palisade and started to run into the darkness. “Try to get to the Alameda!” called out one of the Texians. The others, desperate for any idea that might mean escape, took his call to heart and headed south, for the road out of town.

  They scattered, but this was precisely the moment that the lancers had been waiting for. The horsemen easily caught the fleeing men and impaled each one on a lance. It was almost like sport. But one Texian, armed with a double-barrel shotgun and a single-barrel pistol, stopped abruptly in the middle of the plain. He raised his shotgun and pulled the trigger. A lancer, half of his neck blown away, dropped off his horse. Another lancer cried out, “Eugenio!” and bore down on the Texian, who raised his pistol at the charging Mexican. He pulled the trigger—and it misfired. A second later, the Texian was run through by the lance. Foamy blood poured from his lips as he fell to his knees. The lance protruding from his chest propped him up and he died kneeling, as if in prayer.

  One of the running men was overtaken by two horsemen, who simply trampled over him, the horses’ hooves cracking his spine and caving in his skull. Another was mowed down by a lance that was flung like a javelin from horseback.

  Two men were able to reach a thicket, trying to evade the trio of lancers who rode rings around them. Yelling with excitement, the lancers herded them like stray calves, their horses’ hooves splashing in the swampy ground. One man dove into the tangle of spiny underbrush, but was immediately pinioned by a pair of lances. He screamed as he was pierced again and again.

  The other man vanished. The lancers carefully rode around the thicket, looking at the underbrush, knowing he could not have gone far. Suddenly, a shot rang out from under a bush. Too angry to be cautious, the lancers rode toward the bush. The Texian had fired only a single shot because he had only a single gun and one bullet. Then he bundled himself on the ground with his arms wrapped around his head. “Don’t kill me,” he cried. “Don’t kill me. . . .”

  The lancers did not understand English. Even if they had, they were in no mood to grant this gringo’s wish. He was trampled by their horses first, then perforated repeatedly by their lances.

  In the baptistery, Susanna Dickinson held her baby tight, hiding in the darkness of a corner with Juana and the Esparzas. To see Almeron, all she would have to do was step out of the room and look up the ramp, but she could not bear to do it. If he were still alive, she would not be able to resist running to him. If not, she did not think that she could stand seeing him. So she sat and held her child and wept.

  Suddenly, Galba Fuqua burst into the baptistery. He ran straight for Susanna.

  “Galba!” she screamed, quickly standing up.

  He was holding his shattered jaw in place with both hands, while blood gushed from his mouth and the wounds in both sides of his face. He tried desperately to say something to Susanna.

  She ran to him and tried to tie a bandage under his jaw but he shook his head angrily. Once again, he tried to speak, but could make nothing but grunting, moaning noises.

  “What can I do, Galba?” Susanna said.

  Tears filled his eyes. He gave her a hopeless look, shook his head once again and ran back out into the thick of the battle.

  Crockett, Autry and other Tennesseans were just outside the door of the church, at the barricade made up of trunks, desks, barrels and whatever scraps of wood they could find. They were as far as Galba got. Running blindly, he was immediately riddled with bullets and fell back against the façade of the church. He died directly under the statue of St. Francis.

  While Crockett and the rest savagely defended the entrance to the church, several Mexican soldiers climbed to the top of the long barracks and began firing into the roofless building from there. Bonham was struck with a bullet from above and staggered backward. A second later, he was cut to ribbons by gunfire from above. Almeron Dickinson looked around wildly for the source of the gunfire but he never saw the riflemen on the long barracks roof before they riddled him with bullets. Bonham rolled down the ramp and came to rest directly in front of the baptistery. Susanna saw him and instinctively ran to his side, screaming. Ana Esparza darted from the baptistery and grabbed Susanna by the arm to drag her back to safety. Gregorio, already hit twice, saw his wife exposing herself to danger and shouted, “Ana!”

  Ana and Susanna looked up the cannon ramp. Almeron was slumped over one of the cannon, blood pouring from bullet holes in his chest, back and legs. Gregorio, b
leeding from his arm and his side, started toward Ana but was cut down by a blast of withering fire from the roof. The two women shrieked in horror. Susanna fell to the ground, screaming. Ana pulled her to her feet and dragged her back inside, where Juana and the other women and children huddled. When they were in the baptistery again, Ana and Susanna collapsed into each other’s arms, wailing with grief.

  With a bone-rattling crash, the eighteen pounder in the southwest corner was fired down at the chapel entrance, blowing apart the thrown-together breastworks. Autry was shredded in the blast and fell backward, gasping. The other men crouched behind what was left of the barricade and tried to keep up a steady fire. They knew that one more such blast would finish them all.

  Crockett knelt by Autry’s side and lifted his head. His own arm was bleeding.

  “Micajah,” Crockett said in an anguished voice.

  “They’ve killed me,” Autry said hoarsely.

  Crockett’s eyes filled with tears. “I am real sorry about all this.”

  Autry stared directly into Crockett’s eyes. He looked startled. The expression on Autry’s face did not change at all when he died a second later.

  With a deafening concussion, another blast hit the remnants of the barricade. Three men were blown apart. Crockett and the few surviving Tennesseans were thrown to the ground by the blast. Although dazed, they were able to get up and retreat into the church.

  Lying in his bed, Bowie had been listening to the progress of the battle. He could tell that the Alamo’s cannon were now firing into the compound instead of out, and could hear the enraged cries of the approaching Mexicans. He aimed both of his pistols directly at the door and waited. One last fit of coughing left Bowie breathing hard, gasping. Suddenly, his door slammed open and Bowie tensed, glaring at the Mexicans with watery eyes. A half-dozen soldados rushed into the room, bayonets gleaming. The first two in the door were brought down by twin blasts from Bowie’s pistols. But the others followed so quickly that he had no chance to reload. His legendary knife was stuck in the bedside table. A second before the Mexicans plunged their bayonets into his chest, he reached for the table . . . past the knife . . . to Ursula’s cameo. He was dead before he was able to reach it. Bowie’s eyes were open in horror as the soldiers stabbed and hacked him with their bayonets. One officer placed the barrel of his musket to Bowie’s temple and pulled the trigger.