by Drew McGunn
Chapter 17
The horse sensed the rider’s urgency, as he was guided up and down the line of marching infantry. He hated himself for doing it, but General Johnston urged his battalion commanders to march their men double time. One hundred sixty-five steps per minute quickly ate away at the distance between them and their goal, San Antonio. Even so, he ordered it, knowing those reservists who were less capable would be left behind, as they hastened to the sound of the guns.
He patted his mount as he pulled off the road, watching the men of the 1st Cherokee Rifles march by. Behind the men, a faint golden glow grew along the eastern horizon. The sun would rise within the hour, and he begrudged every minute spent marching. Not long before, the distant thunder of guns fell silent, but the dark western sky still flashed with an orange and red glow by whatever was transpiring at the Alamo. Beyond the grueling pace already set, he could order the army to increase their speed up to one hundred eighty paces per minute, but one glance at his men and the thought died unspoken. They had been marching at double time for the past hour, cutting the distance by half between their camp and the battle at the Alamo.
Johnston drummed his fingers on his thigh, impatiently. It was taking too much time, he thought. But it was plain to see these men were not trained to the same standards as were his own regulars and they were showing signs of fatigue. As men, in ones and twos began to fall out, unable to keep pace with their comrades, Johnston ordered the commander of the 3rd Infantry to detail an officer to bring up the rear at a normal pace with the army’s stragglers.
Johnston trailed behind his column for a moment, watching a young lieutenant corral the winded men, and, after a brief breather, started them after the column at a more sedate speed. Satisfied that his army wouldn’t fragment into more than a couple of parts, he urged his mount to a gallop until he saw Sam Houston, slouched on a horse, riding next to his command.
Houston shifted in his saddle as he caught sight of the army’s commander. “Morning, Sid. Hell of a march, ain’t it?”
Johnston slowed his mount, matching the former general’s pace before replying, “You do have a way with an understatement, Sam. As God is my witness, I wish to hell we were already there. This invasion of theirs couldn’t have happened at a worse time.”
Houston shrugged laconically. In some ways Johnston wondered, was he misspending his life or was he just incredibly unlucky? He had squandered his opportunity as Governor of Tennessee more than a dozen years before, when his wife left him, and he crawled into a whisky bottle, then he had seen his own plans to become president of the republic of Texas slip through his hands, when David Crockett and William Travis garnered all the glory during the revolution. But if the rumors were true, Houston’s luck was turning around, living with the Cherokee.
“What was that?” Johnston asked. The other officer had been talking.
Houston repeated, “Just saying, any time’s a bad time, Sid. Although I’d like to think if this had happened when the army wasn’t seven hundred miles away that we’d have whipped them the first day they tried to stick their noses into San Antonio.”
Johnston’s mood was dark, angry that he and the army were not already in San Antonio, but he bit his tongue before he could form a retort. It galled him to admit it, Houston was likely right. Rather than continue talking with the former general, he gouged his heels into his mount’s flanks and gave the animal his head as he raced to the front of the column.
He yanked on the reins when he spied the cavalry scouts he’d sent out earlier, racing back toward the column. One of the men, his jacket covered in prairie dust, pulled up before Johnston and exclaimed, “General Johnston, sir! There’s Mexican cavalry, less than a mile away, smack between us and San Antonio.”
“Finally!” Johnston turned to Major West, whose battalion of Marines led the army. “Major, deploy your men into a battalion line of battle.” The reserve battalions had received less training on small unit tactics than his regulars, and he thought it best to fall back on a simple battle line rather than a skirmish line. If the situation changed, he would adjust tactics.
Major West flashed a fierce grin, then turned and shouted, “Marines! By company, into line of battle!” The column of Marines, flowed smoothly from columns of four into a battle line, two men deep and more than a hundred fifty long.
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.
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br /> 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?”
