by Drew McGunn
Compounding Johnston’s problem, was that as the Mexican attack fell apart and their army retreated, more than three hundred soldados had surrendered. More than five hundred more were wounded and were now filling up field hospitals set up outside the fort’s walls and overflowing temporary hospitals in town.
But it had been a near-fought thing, Johnston conceded. He had nearly lost control of the army when the scope of the massacre had become known. He climbed the northern wall and looked over the field at where, less than an hour before, the ground had been carpeted with the dead. In the distance, to the east, a bonfire burned, turning the dead of the Mexican invasion to ash. Between the Alamo and the river, he spied a thin line of Marines guarding prisoners. His fingers turned white as he gripped the wall, realizing how close the army had come to anarchy following the battle. “Thank God for Major West.”
As the remnants of the Mexican army retreated to the south, the captured soldados were rounded up and pushed into the northwestern corner of the plaza. As his reservists became aware of the massacre of most of the fort’s defenders, his men approached the soldados and started screaming for their blood. A few rocks were thrown at the unarmed men and they crowded against the walls, trying to get away from the encroaching enraged Texians.
Even now, as he looked over the prisoners, now guarded outside the Alamo’s walls, Johnston wasn’t sure what had kept his men from opening fire during those tense moments. Moments after a fist-sized rock had knocked a soldado from his feet, there was the sound of rushing feet as Major West barreled through the milling men, his two companies of regulars on his heels. Once the Marines created a barrier between the reservists and the demoralized prisoners, the rocks stopped, but the din of shouts continued unabated.
He thought back to what he had been forced to do. There was a battery of guns along the northern wall, and he had raced up the ramp, and climbed atop one of them, where he could see over the heads of the men in the plaza. Even now his throat was still raw from how loud he had been forced to shout. “Men of Texas! We haven’t come and relieved our valiant brothers here at the Alamo, only to turn ourselves into the very thing we abhor! If any among you attempts to murder these men before you, who have surrendered, you are no better than they were when they killed the wounded and defenseless.”
He could see the murder in the eyes of his men, even after he had harangued them. The iron control Major West exercised over his regulars was something Johnston would never forget, then the officers finally came to their senses and began establishing order, pushing their men away from the prisoners. He would make sure his report to General Travis praised the major. Unless he misread the tea leaves, war was on their doorsteps, and officers like West would be needed.
He turned away from the camp, and strode back down the ramp, and as he walked across the plaza, toward the office over the hospital, he pulled out the totals Major West had collected for him earlier. He shook his head as he reread the notes. The Alamo defenders had lost two hundred twenty-seven men dead. Only fifty-nine were wounded. He crumpled the note as he felt a hot tear slide down his cheek. Many of these men had served under him, when he had commanded the 1st Infantry. They were men he had known. Some, like Almaron Dickinson, he had counted as friends.
He climbed the stairs and closed the door to the office. He needed to be alone, as more tears slid down his face into his mustache. He pulled a glass from a desk drawer and from behind the desk took a bottle full of an amber liquid of uncertain provenance and filled the glass. He hoisted it in his hand and turned toward the eastern wall, toward the military cemetery in the distance, where Dickinson had been buried and where several hundred more would be interred on the morrow. He slammed the shot back and gasped after the liquor hit his stomach. It was vile stuff, probably brewed somewhere in the Republic. General Travis had always gone on about buying from domestic producers when possible. As Johnston’s eyes crossed, he thought domestic alcohol production had a very long way to go.
His toast complete, he collapsed into General Travis’ chair. The crumpled piece of paper with the casualty report sat balled up on the desk. More than two hundred killed. Not even during all the battles of the revolution had this many Texians been killed. As the warmth of the alcohol spread beyond his gut, he let his mind drift to his own relief force. Only twenty of his men had died when they had lifted the siege and sent General Woll and his army limping away. Against that, he knew he had won a devastating victory against Adrian Woll.
More than five hundred Mexicans had been killed. Their bodies would light up the night sky. Travis wouldn’t like it. He was soft when it came to how the dead should be treated. “I’m here and he’s not. If they hadn’t massacred our boys, maybe I’d feel different,” he muttered to himself. At least he’d kept a lid on things today, and the prisoners hadn’t been killed out of hand. In addition to the three hundred prisoners, more than five hundred Mexican soldados filled the hospitals and were under the care of the Texian surgeons and doctors from San Antonio.
No matter how impressive the victory, it didn’t lessen the pain and loss he felt in his heart for the dead he had once commanded. As the alcohol worked its medicinal properties on the general, he leaned back in the chair and for a moment imagined Major Dickinson and the other defenders answering to a heavenly roll call this night.
***
The kerosene lamp had gone out, and the office was dark when Johnston awoke. He lit a candle and stood, stretching his muscles after falling asleep in the chair. He felt far older than his thirty-nine years as he heard his joints popping.
He stepped over to the door and opened it. The sounds of wounded men in the hospital below drifted up, but the cool breeze felt good, so he left it open and returned to the desk, after refilling the kerosene lamp and relighting it. A glance at his pocket watch showed it was just past midnight. He pulled a few sheets of paper from a drawer and inked a pen and began writing orders.
His supplies had been left where the army had camped the previous night. Additionally, he had eight hundred prisoners to watch, and that included feeding them and taking care of their injuries. As his pen scratched across the page, he detached West’s Marines to watch the prisoners and secure the town. As he set the order aside, mentally he subtracted them from his available forces. Next, he wrote instructions for the 3rd Texas to return to their previous camp with enough wagons to retrieve the army’s supplies. He subtracted them from his available forces, too. That left him with less than five hundred reservists and Houston’s Cherokees.
He set the pen down and rubbed his eyes. He resisted the urge to shudder when he allowed his thoughts to play over the numbers. He couldn’t fault the bravery of Houston’s Cherokees. They had done a commendable job during the morning’s attack on the Mexican command, but after Woll’s army was in headlong retreat, Houston had lost control of his men, as they looted the Mexican encampment. With no one to see him, Johnston heaved a heavy sigh as his shoulders slumped. Better that they had been looting the camp instead of inside the fort when things came dangerously close to another massacre.
He jumped when there was a knock on the open door. Major West stood in the doorway. “I guess it’s early enough to say, good morning, General. The cleanup of the bodies has been finished. We’ll be putting the Mexican prisoners to work in the morning digging graves in the cemetery. Any other orders before I find a quiet place to get a few hours’ sleep?”
Johnston smiled ruefully at being startled by the major, before looking down at the orders he’d written. He scribbled the last note and addressed each one to the battalion commander for which they were intended then handed them to West.
“If you’ll see to it these get to their intended, I would appreciate it.”
He’d decided, the rest of the army, composed of the 2nd and 5th Infantry regiments and the Cherokee battalion would march out at dawn and stage a demonstration of strength ten miles south of San Antonio. If Woll’s army hadn’t fled any further, they would hopefully encou
rage him to return to Mexico. He didn’t want another battle, if he could avoid it.
***
The sun was climbing above the tree line of mesquites and hackberries. A couple of lancers had ridden in only few minutes earlier with word that a few battalions of Texians were on the march from San Antonio. The idea of standing and trying to fight never crossed his mind. Even after a full night’s rest, the stink of defeat hung heavy over his much-reduced army.
With the aid of an orderly, Woll climbed into the saddle. He wore his blue- and red-trimmed jacket like a cape. His right arm hung before him in a sling. Apart from a few scouts, who were further north, the remnants of the Santa Anna cavalry regiment were deployed to the north of the encampment, keeping an eye on the road to San Antonio.
The badly mauled 2nd brigade was already on the road, heading south. The 1st brigade was assembled just south of camp, waiting for the wagons loaded with wounded that would accompany them in their retreat south.
The soldados of the 1st brigade, turned from their line, and went into a long column of four men abreast and started south, as the wagons creaked and groaned under their heavy load, behind them. Several hundred walking wounded trudged after the wagons. Those unable to walk were carried in litters. Woll was determined to leave no more wounded behind. He winced when he thought of what the Texians would do to the prisoners already captured.
Once the Alamo’s defenders had refused his last demand to surrender, he felt no compunction in following his Excellency’s orders that no prisoners be taken. But now, he worried how the Texians would react to the order. In the chaos of the retreat, he presumed hundreds of his men had been captured. After the last of the walking wounded were on the road to the south, Woll coolly nodded to General Urrea. With quietly spoken orders, the three regiments of the 3rd brigade, brought up the rear of the army.
The lancers followed behind Urrea’s brigade. If the Texians attempted to pursue, Woll hoped there was enough fight left in his rear guard to knock them back.
To one side of the encampment were the hastily dug graves of several dozen men who had succumbed to their injuries during the night. Woll gulped down the bile in his throat. He hated to leave them on the South Texas prairie, without the decency of burial on consecrated ground. It’s not something a good Catholic would normally do and being forced into it didn’t sit well with him. He shoved the thought aside as he urged his horse to a gallop, catching up with his lancers. He couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before another army from Mexico would finally force Texas back into the fold.
Chapter 19
3rd April 1842
His jacket lay under his head, propping it up, and keeping it off the dirt floor. He stared at the whitewash which coated the adobe walls of the small church. Sergeant Julio Mejia couldn’t ignore the itching in his injured leg anymore and he sat up, to get a better look at it. His pants had faded to brown, and the left leg of his trousers had been cut away above where the splinter had torn open his skin. He touched where the wound was healing, and it only twinged a bit. Without proper medical care, it was doing better than he expected. While he wasn’t normally a religious man, he had sent a few prayers heavenward to Santo Gregorio, the patron saint of soldiers, that his leg not become infected.
Others had not been as fortunate, and the tiny cemetery outside the walls of the church had added a few new graves since the Texians had been imprisoned there for the past couple of weeks. A blue-jacketed soldado stood guard inside the door, his bayoneted musket held resolutely in his hands. His cautious eyes scanned the sanctuary, eyeing the sixty other men packed into the room.
The little town of Reynosa was on General Woll’s supply line, and after he had surrendered Fort Moses Austin to the overwhelming might of the Army of the North, Sergeant Mejia’s company had been marched to the tiny, dusty hamlet, ostensibly to be sent on to Veracruz, where they would be kept until, as they had been told, Mexico had reclaimed Texas. Then they would be repatriated to the United States.
Even though the town was on Woll’s supply line, the food Mejia and the other prisoners were given was a meager meal of rice and beans each day. As he limped around the men on the floor, checking on several of them, it was clear they were tired and hungry. “Damn the Mexican army. Give us just enough to survive, but not enough to be satisfied.” Then he turned his eyes on the rail-thin guard at the door and couldn’t decide if he and his men were being deliberately starved or the lack of food was a systematic problem with the Mexican army’s supply lines. He suspected the Mexicans were learning that it was a long way from their heavily populated states in central Mexico to the frontier and keeping the army supplied was more difficult than anticipated.
Mejia found himself at one of the windows. It was stain glass, depicting the Sermon on the Mount. Beyond the window was freedom, but a quick glance at the guard showed he was staring intently at Mejia. In addition to the alert guard, from without, he heard the voices of more guards patrolling around the church’s exterior. He gave up the thought and returned to where he had been lying.
***
Lieutenant Javier Morales tilted his canteen to his lips and gulped down the tepid water. He was bone-tired, having been on the road between Tampico and Reynosa for what seemed like forever. Twelve days was a long time. But apart from the occasional farmer hauling food to market, he had seen hardly any traffic. Before leaving Tampico, he’d been assured the road was safe between the two towns, patrolled regularly by the state government of Tamaulipas. After more than three hundred miles, he was willing to concede the road was safe. Not because the Tamaulipan militia kept it that way, but simply because there was nothing worth taking.
After too many fourteen-hour days in the saddle it wasn’t possible to find a comfortable position, no matter how often he shifted around. He’d long ago decided this road was a pain in the ass. His laughter at his wit would have been louder, save for the hard truth. When he came around a bend in the road, his fatigue fell away as he spotted the town of Reynosa in the distance. “At last. Not long now and I’ll get off this nag and sleep in a soft bed tonight.”
A little while later he rode across the plaza to a small adobe brick building, opposite from the town’s only church. The guards patrolling around the largest building in town drew his attention. No doubt the objects of the reason he had spent nearly two weeks on the back of that flea-bitten horse were ensconced within.
He grabbed the saddlebags and walked through the building’s open door and found himself in a tiny office that under normal times housed the office of the town’s alcalde. Since the beginning of the most recent campaign into the rebel province of Texas, the office was where Morales’ equally junior counterpart, Lieutenant Estevan Alameda conducted business for the understrength company charged with guarding the supply depot and prisoners. Against one corner of the room was crammed a small desk, and opposite from it was a narrow cot. There was less than a couple of feet between the sparse furnishings. On the cot, Morales found the other officer, lying down with a white handkerchief covering his face. Every few seconds the small piece of cloth fluttered up as Alameda snored.
Morales began to set the saddlebags on the desk, but then thinking better of it, he plopped them heavily on his fellow officer’s chest. Lieutenant Alameda snorted and coughed before reflexively brushing the leather bags onto the floor. The dust-covered Morales stood over the startled Alameda, laughing. “Wake up, old boy!”
The other officer rolled off the cot and stood, crowding Morales’ space, as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “What the hell was that about, Javier?”
Morales scooped the saddlebags from the floor and deposited them on the desk. “You should have seen the look on your face, Estevan. You’d have thought that the devil had come to collect your poor soul.”
Alameda managed a severe glare in the direction of his friend and fellow officer. They had grown close while cadets at the Colegio Militar at Chapultepec. Ultimately, he couldn’t stay mad and he sat back dow
n on the cot and began pulling his boots on. “What’s the news from Tampico?”
Morales unfastened the leather straps on the saddlebag then dumped a few letters on the desk. He plucked one from the small pile and handed over the sealed envelope. “If you’re still the commander of the Reynosa garrison, such as it is, this one’s for you.”
Alameda chuckled. “This is one hell of a garrison, Javier. Me and forty soldiers. It’s good that our northern neighbors are otherwise busy being properly educated by General Woll, lest they cast their hungry eyes our way.” He pulled a penknife from his pocket and broke the wax seal and perused the letter’s contents.
The letter slipped from his fingers and drifted to the ground, landing on Morales’ boot. His friend picked up the letter and handed it back to him. He then looked into Lieutenant Alameda’s face and saw its pallor. Alameda pursed his lips and shook his head.
Perplexed, Morales asked, “What’d it say?”
Alameda wordlessly handed the letter to his friend and sat heavily on the cot while the courier read the letter.
From the office of his Excellency Antonio López de Santa Anna
To the Commander, Garrison at Reynosa
You are hereby ordered to execute general order number 77, signed by this office on the 9th of January 1842. Any pirates caught under the rebel flag of the North Americans is to be summarily executed, by order of the office of the presidency.
Antonio López de Santa Anna
Morales gently set the letter down on the desk. Alameda frowned as his color returning to his cheeks. But he struggled with his words, still dumbfounded by the letter’s contents. “Who? How did they find out so quickly about the prisoners, Javier?”
The other officer shrugged. “I doubt that his Excellency actually knows you have them here, Estevan. Yours is the third letter I have delivered since leaving Tampico, and I have another just like it for whomever is holding Laredo. I think his Excellency is simply being thorough.”
