St. Patrick Battalion

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  General Arista seems not to have taken the coronel’s alarm seriously, for he approved Teniente Riley’s plan, and gave him laborers and horses and infantry support for it. He made it a part of his own strategy to divert the force of General Taylor.

  Again it became our duty, we the “Water Moccasins,” to cross the river again, and to kindle a fire of excitement. We began subtly, around the camp followers.

  “Se rumorea que . . .”

  It is said that the Mexican army is going to Port Isabel on the Gulf, and destroy your supply base! You will be cut off from everything you need!

  In the way that rumors proceed, this soon was on the lips of all three thousand of General Zachary Taylor’s soldiers, and no one knew where the information had started. And then, very soon, General Arista sent regiments of soldiers out marching, making great clouds of dust, with the bands playing and the trumpets squealing and blaring.

  On the first day of mayo, we looked across the river from Matamoros and saw a remarkable sight. White tents were folding down, wagons and oxcarts were going out of the fort, hundreds of wagons! And we watched the Yanqui soldiers leave their fort and the deserted campground, and march away in the dust, going down the road toward Port Isabel. We counted and counted. Most of General Taylor’s army was leaving. Scouts came in and said they had counted more than two thousand of the Gringos on the road, nearly the whole army! The rumors had succeeded, and the Yanquis were out from the protection of their great fort, marching away from Matamoros! There was such joy and mirth in our town. We rang all the church bells.

  But all was not celebration, for General Arista had formed up the rest of our army and it moved out that same afternoon, marching downstream along our bank of the Rio Bravo del Norte. He might catch the Yanqui army out in the open somewhere, and defeat it, for ours was the superior army, and we believed that God would surely favor our forces, as we were rightfully protecting our own homeland from the invasion of the heretics.

  Of course, one believes such things. Before one learns the lessons of war. We have come to understand much, eh? Let us moisten our throats, Señor, while we consider that war which was beginning on its own, as yet undeclared. My country’s official stance was a defensive war. Your army by coming to the Rio Bravo had invaded Mexico, and those of you who were between this river and the Nueces were facing patriots. When we crossed the Rio Bravo to go anywhere around your fort or to your supply depot at Port Isabel, we were not in your territory, but our own. I know, Señor, I know. Your government interpreted the Texas solution as it wished, to its own advantage. Your officers were told that Texas bordered on the Rio Bravo. Perhaps some of them believed that, though not all believed it. We have read much of those debates in the years since. Your whole country, not just your government, not just your army, was divided. You are a journalist, Señor, but I am a scholar. For more than a decade I have studied that war which so disabled me that I am able to do what else but to study. As I have said already, you were fortunate to come to me with your questions about the war, and about Señor Riley, not just because I was so close to the events that concern you, but also because I have studied every detail of the war. I can help rid you of misconceptions.

  You must understand something about my country, Señor, if you are to understand what happened in that war. Mexico is very old. All through its centuries, conquerors came. They all supposed that they were bringing to us something superior to what was already here. They tried to change our country to meet their vision. They came, full of zeal to better us. When they controlled us, they became corrupt. Then the next conqueror would come with his own kind of zeal to destroy and reform that of the one before. We the people of Mexico always accommodated the new conquerors. Some of their notions we embraced; some were put upon us with force and cruelty. Through the centuries we were changed, but the people of Mexico changed more slowly than the succession of conquests, and beneath it all, something in us never changed at all. Each new conqueror said he was bringing enlightenment, but they all had to keep us ignorant in order to control us. Each new conqueror reached down into Mexico and hauled the wealth upward to himself, and the rest of us remained as poor as we had always been, and as ignorant as we had always been.

  But a people, Señor, contain their own long wisdom, whether or not they are kept ignorant of the conquerors’ doctrines. In the long course, the old wisdom is greater than the new doctrines.

  Do you comprehend, Señor? It has been a long, flowing river. The ancient kingdoms were dominated by newer kingdoms. When the Aztecans were on top of us, the conquistadors came. New ideas came from Europe and liberated us from the Spanish king. Then came a succession of class wars. Always there was the turmoil on the surface. But the old wisdom continued to flow quietly beneath, always enduring.

  Then, in that period of which we speak, your United States came to conquer us. Your enlightenment you called Manifest Destiny, as you remember. You had a president who told lies to make a reason to invade my country, and although half of your people did not believe him, and resisted the assault, he sent his armies into the Mexican territories from Texas to California. Your armies succeeded swiftly, for various reasons, including their great courage and uncommon initiative, but also because of the failings of our own leaders.

  General Arista underestimated your army. He believed it would disintegrate by desertions, and that it would be helpless against his forces when he caught it out from its fort. General Arista had come to know some American officers during his years in exile from Mexico. He admired them. But he did, nevertheless, underestimate their abilities.

  In war, you must presume and presume. But to presume only one thing is fatal.

  It was very quiet all the next day in Matamoros. Most of the soldiers and officers had marched down the river. It was quiet but it was busy. My mother made me stay in our house and help her pack our small belongings into trunks and crates. We stacked all that inside the door to the street, where a man with a carriage was to come and load it.

  Teniente Riley came up from the artillery redoubts with a warning for our defenders. I think he came also to pass eye messages to my mother. They did much glancing at each other while we translated to the officers the information that the Yanqui artillerymen in their fort were preparing incendiary shot. He told an officer to take his spyglass and look at the hot smoke rising from the gun emplacements over there. “Those are furnaces,” Señor Riley said. “They will be used to heat roundshot before they bombard the city. A glowing-hot cannonball can start a fire in wooden buildings. They are heating the furnaces now so that the incendiary shot will be ready whenever the shooting begins. Everything that will burn must be removed, wood buildings abandoned.”

  General Arista looked with the glass, and thanked him. He said, “As of now, the civilians in Matamoros begin leaving by the Linares road. They all should be safe from those cannons by nightfall. As for our cannons, the priests will come through the batteries and once again consecrate them. At daybreak tomorrow, we begin bombarding the Yanquis who stayed in their fort.”

  Teniente Riley said, “Then, Excellency, is it the Americans have finally declared their war?” General Arista replied that he did not know whether the Congress had done so yet, but that President Polk had declared war by sending an army into Mexico, and Mexico was in a state of defensive war. “Blood is already on the ground. Declarations are the formality. President Polk has already decided. Therefore we will destroy his fort tomorrow, and catch his little army out in the open. Dios mediante, this war will be over as soon as it begins.”

  My mother was bringing tea to the officers. I remember that the tea set was the one item she had not yet packed. In giving Señor Riley his tea, she caressed the back of his hand. I saw it, and I saw that they both closed their eyes and inhaled. Later she told me that she did not know at that moment whether they would live to see each other again. That was why she had been so forward.

  PADRAIC QUINN’S DIARY

  Fort Texas on Rio Grande
May 2nd 1826

  IT IS AN ODD feeling here, with most of the Army gone away. Good not to have so many people crowded in a place. But after being used to so many, the absence is scary.

  Only about 500 left here, being Maj. Brown’s 7th Infantry. Lt. Bragg’s artillery makes up the rest. Some of the camp followers gone with the Army, about a dozen laundresses and children still here, and moved their things into the fort where there is more than enough room now.

  I have to worry what will become of us here if Gen. Taylor and the Mexicans have a big battle down by the coast. What if we were to lose that battle? The Mexicans could just swallow us up here then. And they wouldn’t be very kindly disposed toward us. A little comfort is the kindly treatment Capt. Thornton’s dragoons got after they were captured, but one could hardly base one’s hopes all on one example.

  Can’t sleep at all. This afternoon had to tote several barrows of firewood to Lt. Bragg’s gunners. They have little ovens there to heat cannonballs. Tired me out good. While I was up there we got a view of a procession of priests with their tall crosses, over around the town, saw them go down to the gun emplacements. One of Lt. Bragg’s gunners cussed and called it popish mumblejumble. That made me mad but I know better than to talk up for the Pope among such people as them.

  Lt. Bragg reckoned the benediction might mean shooting was about to start, and said he’d knock down and burn down their damned churches if they did.

  It is a hard thing to think about, I mean blessing a gun that’s made for killing and destroying. Does it mean God’s help killing and destroying, or does it just mean keep the gunners from harm? I hope it’s only that. If Mister Riley’s to be on those guns, I would pray he doesn’t get hurt.

  Nothing but water and wormy biscuit for supper tonight. Gen. Taylor left us with just 2 weeks’ rations. Wonder if we will be for living even till that’s gone.

  I shouldn’t have let myself get in a place like this. Should have crossed the river when I had that chance. If that Sgt. Maloney hadn’t got his ideas into my head.

  Maloney is down there with the troops that went to the coast. I might never see him again, either. Or Lieutenant Grant.

  I wish I was someplace else.

  May 3rd, 1846 Fort Texas, Rio Grande

  HAIL MARY FULL of grace the Lord is with Thee; blessed art thou among women and Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

  The Mexican cannons opened up on us this morning and they’re playing hell. Whoever invented cannons is the worst sinner ever!

  This day could well be my last day alive and so I ought to make note of it in this diary. This wad of pages is the only thing I have ever made, to leave any trace of evidence that I Padraic Quinn ever lived or had a thought, except in Michigan where there’s a record of my christening.

  It is my wish that if I get scattered in pieces by one of these Mexican cannonballs or buried under the collapse of this bombproof, that this memorial be sent to my mother, Moira Colleen Quinn.

  That might be difficult, as she is probably somewhere between Michigan and Mexico. She would be for making her way by any means she thinks of. She does get to where she intends to go. Wherever the headquarters of this Army may be, if there be an Army left, that headquarters is where she will make her way looking for me. So on reflection I suggest this be kept at such headquarters for her arrival.

  If on the other instance, as seems likely, there is nobody to find this except Mexicans, I pray they will put it in the hands of someone who reads English. I would ask that such person would then put it into the possession of the gunnery officer John Riley, formerly of K Company 5th Infantry and now in the Mexican Army. He will remember me, I’m sure.

  I write this a bit at a time. When a cannonball or mortar shell lands inside the fort the earth shakes, and things fall, and then there is so much dirt sifting down and so much dust in the air. Then a time passes before my hand is steady enough to write. People in and out, screaming, needing water, some beshitten out of fear. A cannonball coming over sounds like, I imagine, some old tomcat being pulled apart. The shellburst is a kind of clanking boom and if it’s close enough you hear fragments hissing around and smacking into anything near. Everything in the fort is nicked and tattered, and smoky little fires burning on the ground. I write to describe it because I can’t think of anything else except being in this. Everything gets very interesting when you think it may be your last thing ever. So if any person ever reads this he’ll understand how keen and awful it is, without having to be in it actually.

  It has passed through my mind many a time since this began at daybreak, that these shells are being shot at me by Irishmen I used to run errands for, and listen to them talk in their tents. That a soldier I liked so well, I’d cross the camp just to see him and hear him talk, is over there shooting at me.

  Well, not at me.

  I had rather think that he’s shooting at Lt. Bragg. Sure and it is like a duel between those two. Bragg is a mean son of a bitch as no man will deny, but sure he’s a brave gunner and has stayed up there on the parapet without cover, returning cannon fire on the guns around Matamoros all day. If a ball took off his head I doubt anyone would weep except maybe his mother, if ever he had one. No one could deny he’s brave. But as I wrote here some days ago, I doubt he and his cannons can prevail against a better man whose cannons have been blessed.

  If those cannons got holy blessings over there, they’re sure getting unholy curses from our fellows here. Hardly any of our soldiers have ever been under cannonfire before, not even the Swamp War veterans, since Seminoles didn’t have cannons.

  The Mexicans, though, have no cannon shortage! Their shells come from three angles. Our parapets are crumbling in places. My head is aching and my ears ring. We have no one killed in the fort yet, though a few wounded. If not for these earth-roofed shelters where we can burrow like moles, we’d have many dead, sure. Most of the infantrymen are down here. No one is of much use aboveground except the cannoneers.

  My God, what a noise, that! There it is again.

  And again. It’s our big guns shooting back. Heated cannonballs, whitehot, meant to set their town on fire. That would be the firewood I pushed up there in barrows. So I help burn a Catholic city?

  Not good to think of this. Those Mexican civilians over there have no bombproof shelters. Hope they moved the townfolk out.

  Evening coming on at last, but yet bombardment continues. I really don’t like this. I wish that President of the U. States was here cowering as the shells come in. He’d have shitten britches.

  Here’s something awful that happened today, so close by: I heard a private of the 7th Inf. say that his understanding is that President Polk never soldiered. He opined that no man who has not faced cannonfire should be elected to the authority of sending men to war. He had just finished saying that when a shell fragment tore through the opening of our shelter and sheared his left cheek and chin away to the bare bone. I was sprayed by his blood, and got wet by more of it while helping other soldiers drag him over to the surgeon. I pray never to have anything like that again.

  Midnight now. Cannons stopped. The soldiers sleeping with their muskets. More likely, lying awake. We keep hearing all sort of noises out in the dark, voices, digging tools, metal clinking and scraping. Mexican sappers ditching or tunneling, maybe? Oh this is scary. After all the boom and roar. Can hear the river running. Matamoros dark, just a glow now and then, like somebody lighting a cigar or a pipe. First night the town has been all dark. Most of the people must have left before their artillery opened up on us.

  I should put out my candle, quit trying to write. Exhausted. I am not the only one writing. Soldiers are scribbling despite the discomfort. One who can’t write came and asked me to write a letter to his family. I put him off until daylight. He went back to his burrow and I could tell that he was crying. I haven’t cried. I’ve written instead. I probably would be crying if I couldn’t wr
ite. I guess that’s why I don’t want to put out my candle.