St. Patrick Battalion

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  General Ampudia was about to be replaced by General Arista in command at Matamoros, but we did not know that yet. He was planning as if he would be in command if a war started there. It was important. My madre and I were listening, but trying to seem as if we were not listening. Mamá made tortillas and stewed some rice with pollo, and made more tea for the general and the private. Our friend Francesco Moreno, the adjutant, admitted officers who came with their issues for the general’s attention. To such officers the general introduced Señor Riley, and told them of his great knowledge as a gunner, trained by the British, and the officers were polite. Some were impressed and seemed glad. Others seemed suspicious and only looked warily at the deserter. Some of them I could see were displeased by the general’s enthusiasm, and were only as civil as the general’s rank required them to be.

  In the Mexican army, Señor, you see, most officers are unsure whether they are in favor or not. It frightens them to hear their superiors praise other officers, or to see their general being warm to someone else. And this man who was spending so much of the day in General Ampudia’s company, why, he was a foreigner, a prisoner in the muddy clothes of a Yanqui soldier! You may presume what was in their imaginations! If this was interrogation of a prisoner, why was there no guard, or any scribe writing down the deposition? Of course, there on the table lay the leaflet that the captive had brought with him across the river, and the sight of it explained enough, one would think. But subordinate officers are usually worried for themselves.

  Some of the officers who came, the general treated them brusquely, and did not even explain the Irishman or introduce him to them. This you can say for General Ampudia: He knew well each of his officers and treated them accordingly.

  As for the officers in your army, the West Pointers that most of them were, those officers were very much a subject of the conversation over the many cups of tea. Often when Señor Riley was speaking of them he would rise from the table with his blanket over his shoulders and stare across the river at that fort they were building over there. His anger and his contempt were plain to see in his eyes and hear in his voice. It is said to be a trait of Irishmen that if one earns their enmity, it will endure for a long time, perhaps forever. You are Irish, yes? So you understand how he bore the resentments of his fellow soldiers for their sufferings at the hands of those officers over there across the river. Soon there was no room to doubt the sincerity of his passion. He offered to do whatever he could do to lure more of the immigrant soldiers across to the Mexican ranks. The general was aglow with eagerness. Plainly to him, a man of great potency had been delivered to us.

  I learned much of Señor Riley’s life that morning, as I sat in a corner pretending to study my schoolbooks. In case you don’t know it, or have heard it from sources that don’t really know it, here is the great Irish patriot’s biografía as I heard it from his own lips. Please pick up your pencil, Señor, for the history of your Greatest Traitor does not begin on the day he swims across the Rio Bravo del Norte.

  He was from a country where people dead of starvation lay rotting on the roadsides, as the British soldiers had torn or burned down their hovels because their English landlords meant to graze sheep on their land for the wool trade. This is not the first you’ve heard of their trouble, Señor. All the world knows of it. You know this to be true, yes? Thank you. The poverty and suffering were beyond endurance. The Irish have never been a tame people, and they tried to rise against the English, here and there, only to be crushed by Redcoats, and by harsh policies. As they weakened with hunger, their will ebbed. The only salvation they could see was to flee to better places. The Americas were seen as a better place. They came to all parts of America, not just the United States. Some came to Mexico, and found themselves welcomed. But Mexico is a poor and troubled land also. After this country freed itself from the Europeans, those who wanted to rule were like crabs in a tub: climbing up and pulling each other down. Our Santa Anna would be in and then out and then back in. Everyone would be the savior of Mexico. There came theorists and reformers, and reaccionarios, and always only one thing was certain, Señor: Almost everyone would be poor. To bear poverty, it helps to be Catholic. In this, Mexicans and Irishmen son muy semejantes. Thus it was poverty that sent the Irishman into the broader world as a mercenary soldier.

  Many young men of Ireland who could find no work, they were brave and tough. The English army was always at war and needed brave and tough young men. If one could earn a living in no other way, one could become a Redcoat, even if one hated the Redcoats. Such was the way of that Irishman of whom I speak. He lived in one of the poorest corners of that stricken country, and had a wife and a son to feed. Therefore he became a Redcoat soldier. He meant it to be only a while. But he liked soldiering. Soon the army promoted him to corporal. It sent him among the colonies. He became an artillero. Then a sergeant. He was literate, and considered himself fit to be an officer. But Irishmen had little hope of becoming officers in the English army. They are not of that class, you understand. Being in Canada when an enlistment expired, he therefore mustered out, meaning to seek his fortune in the United States and send home for his wife and son. He labored on docks in the Great Lakes. He learned in a letter that he had lost his wife to illness. My madre gave a soft cry of sadness when she heard him tell of that, and though it was surely evoked by true sympathy, I suspected that she was, beneath it, relieved that this man had no wife. Or did I imagine that because I expected her to feel so? As I have said, we have strange ways of remembering our emotions.

  General Ampudia was a despot, feared as too ambitious and cruel an officer. He was soon to be replaced by General Arista. But it was nevertheless General Ampudia who lured the great Irish soldier to Mexico, who gained his confidence, who took it upon himself to offer him a commission in the artillery. That was a boldness.

  But consider, too, the part that I had played in it, equally or perhaps more bold—taking the leaflet to the enemy camp. That was a very important service done by this brave niño for Mexico! Maybe it was the best thing I have ever done, or that I ever will do . . .

  Or perhaps, Señor, it was a terrible thing. When one looks hacia atrás.

  PADRAIC QUINN’S DIARY

  April 19, 1846 Fort Texas, R. Grande

  MORE MEXICAN REGIMENTS arriving at Matamoros.

  More of our Irishmen than ever going across the river. John Riley seems to have inspired more and more to go.

  Some of our deserters now stand on that side of the river and call over to their messmates by name, exhorting them to cross over for the wine, women, and song, and good rank in the Mexican Army.

  A patrol went out from the 4th Inf. to search for Col. Cross, our Quartermaster. He rode out more than a week ago, like a fool, alone, and has been missing since. The patrol of 10 men went out under Lt. Theo Porter, a friend of Lt. Grant’s. I had carried a letter over to Lt. Grant, from his fiancée, that had got shuffled into 5th Inf. mail, and saw Lt. Porter’s patrol go out. Mr. Grant shook his hand as he left. Officers seem like they almost hope Col. Cross’s disappearance will spark a real fight. Lt. Grant is grim about such talk. He said in my hearing that we are striding toward an unholy war, that our presence here in the disputed country between the rivers is “a deplorable aggression.” He argued the matter with other officers and I would not have been surprised to see them come to blows with him.

  Seeing and hearing a fine fellow like Mr. Grant makes me ponder.

  It is that when shooting begins, even those that don’t believe in the cause will have to fight in it! It is that notion, in the back of my mind every day, that makes me question whether I want to be a soldier someday, for a soldier has no choice except of course by deserting, forever disgraced. An officer can resign his commission, on the principle of it, but there’s disgrace in that too, and an officer’s got more to lose by it, as he has more to begin with. Soldiering is all I ever meant to do in my maturity, but being here on this dubious mission, and hearing everybody divided on i
t, has set me to questioning on the whole matter of soldiering.

  All those who have deserted, and got across the river without drowning or being shot in midstream by the sentries, they have given up their souls as far as the United States Army is concerned, and they’re doomed beyond pardon if they’re ever caught. But sure and I know that they’ve settled it all down inside themselves by the time they go. The inducements are mighty and many, enough to tempt either the good side or the bad side of any kind of a man. Every day there’s the sound of church bells—Catholic church bells—across the river, and most days more faint comes the chanting and singing of the faith. And other music, too. Those Mexicans make music even more than Irishmen do, and at all hours. To hear them, one might think there’s no such thing as an unhappy Mexican, nor do they ever sleep.

  And as if the faith and the music were not enough to pull on a man’s soul, there’s the earthly inducements. When the wind’s right—as I write this, in fact—the smells of cooking come across the river, so savory as compared with the steamy stench of our rancid and slimy kegbeef and bacon boiling in kettles, something a buzzard would find repulsive, I daresay.

  And then there are those girls over there, who come to the river to wash their clothes, and bathe themselves and frolic all bare within plain view of our panting wretches, as if we were no more than so many cattle gazing across at them. Our soldiers are sick with longing, and a mix of longings it is, both sacred and profane.

  And even if there were no such enticements, many of our soldiers would be happy to risk the crossing just to get away from the humiliations and cruelties of their officers, which grow ever more malicious; as an example, Lt. Bragg, who lately made one of his artillerymen ride the rail all day in a cold rain. It was explained that Bragg was in a foul mood because the weather prevented battery drill that day. I myself heard one of his gunners to say that if he abandoned all to cross the river, he would kill Bragg in his tent before he swam away.

  If he continues with his ways, the lieutenant might become a casualty before a war even starts!

  Ft. Texas R. Grande Apr. 21, 1846

  MUCH GRIM NEWS.

  Col. Cross’s remains were found under a gathering of buzzards. A bullet hole in his skull, his watch and horse missing. The buzzards not thought to be responsible for the loss of those, as one low jester put it.

  Also Lt. Porter of the 4th and one of his soldiers out looking for the Colonel got killed in an ambush by Mexican ranchers.

  Lt. Porter shot three Mexicans before he fell, and is being called the “first hero” martyred in this confrontation with the “Papist Greasers.”

  Officers are ranting that when the report of Porter and Cross being killed reaches the U. States it will suffice as a reason to declare the war.

  Funerals with all honors to be held right away.

  I finished preparing the hide of my rattlesnake and sold it with its rattles to a captain of the 5th Regt., for $4.50.

  Before I could read any of the Dickens serial another rain leak ruined the papers.

  Too much fretting to read anyway. I can’t think of much but what’s sure to happen next.

  Also heard this day that John Riley himself was seen drilling a battery of guns outside of Matamoros! An officer watched him with a spyglass and was sure it was he, that although he was decked out fancy in a Mexican officer’s uniform, there was no mistaking him.

  The officer said that Mr. Riley’s battery was performing with great skill and rapidity, wheeling and unlimbering as well as anything he had ever witnessed. That if anyone had doubted his claim that he had been an artillery sergeant in the British Army, they wouldn’t doubt if they saw him.

  Most of the gunners in his battery looked like Americans or Irishmen, not Mexicans, the officer said, though he didn’t recognize any of them.

  Lt. Grant commented with some sarcasm that if those Irishmen had been treated by their officers like men instead of dogs, they might now be doing excellent gunnery for our Army, not the other. I was glad to hear him say it, for it was like my own notion of the matter.

  Like everything else in this idle camp, it’s being talked of by everyone, even as much as Col. Cross’s death, and Lt. Porter’s.

  Private Riley is on my mind, far too much. I never saw a soldier I liked more, and like fools we just threw him away!

  Sure and I don’t like being on the opposite side from him in a war. I miss going over to talk to him when I have things in mind.

  I think we’re past averting a war. The Mexican commander at Matamoros sent Gen. Taylor a letter telling us to pack up and move back to the other side of the Nueces River until the governments settle the Texas border question. Advised that if we don’t, we will be removed by force of arms. Old Rough and Ready wrote back that he was sorry to hear that threat, but he wasn’t afraid of it. General Taylor’s letter was read to the troops, and they gave the expected huzzahs.

  I wonder how many of our soldiers really want to fight, or how many just don’t want their fellows to know they’re scared.

  April 24, 1846

  A BIG HULLABALOO and clamor over at Matamoros at mid-morning. All the church bells tolled, an uproar of yelling, cannon salvo, and bands playing. Mexican troops parading wherever we could see up their streets into town. Rumor is that more reinforcements arrived. Their newspaper Matamoros Gaceta has been reporting that a higherranking general is taking over from the one named Ampudia. They already outnumber us all to hell.

  I think our officers are deluded. Call the Mexican soldiers Greasers and nigger Injuns, and monkeys in blue suits. Mexican officers they call Gypsy Dancers.

  Contempt, I guess, is what you have to feel for your enemy in order to keep your courage up before a fight. I saw that in the war with the Seminole Indians. Swamp niggers they called them. Hunting swamp niggers would be like ’coon hunting, all a lark. Until they outfought our soldiers for a number of years and earned respect.

  I look across the river and see those Mexicans all in their dark blue with their shiny muskets, all drilling and showing off to impress us, and I am damned well impressed. They have cavalry troops that look like so many princes. Lt. Grant said they ride like centaurs. Had to ask him what a centaur was, and then I understood what he meant. A centaur can’t fall off of his horse. Mister Grant is as good a horseman as any and he was impressed.

  Same with their artillery, at least the flying batteries with all their light cannons and horse teams, the ones they suppose Mister Riley is training over there. I watched them from the riverbank a day or two. Didn’t have a spyglass, but think I could tell Mister Riley even at that distance in all the dust and smoke they made, by the way he moves and carries himself. We have some of the best artillery in the world, our officers like to brag. Funny I used that word brag. Lt. Bragg strives to be the very best, and he can really make his gunners scamper. But I wouldn’t argue that he’s better than Mister Riley and his gunners over there, if that really was him.

  And I’ve seen something else that would make me bet on Mister Riley over Mister Bragg.

  It is the priests in their robes who come down with water and incense, and put their blessing on the Mexican cannons.

  I just think of those prayers and those chants, so pretty and mystical, and I believe it works. It’s supposed to be that all Christians have the same God, Protestant or Catholic, and what little I understand of God, He would favor a kindly man like Mister Riley, with blessed cannons, over a nasty, slave-whipping villain like Braxton Bragg whose cannons may be all polished and painted but never blessed by a priest.

  That’s why I would bet on John Riley.

  This seems odd: Here at Fort Texas, waiting for war, we get a newspaper from their side. The Matamoros Gazette.

  They print an English translation, and make sure we get it. Just like getting your hometown paper, same day it’s printed.

  We read all about ourselves. Pretty accurate, I’ll say.

  Well, they can see everything we do.

  Our army
is their big news. Their generals are always quoted in the paper. They are pretty cocksure.

  They report the number of deserters who show up over there. They say if the shooting starts, most of Gen. Taylor’s infantry will pop over onto their side, good Catholic Irish eager to defend a country of their own faith from an invasion by heretics. They say “Old Taylor” as they call him will desert, himself, because there’ll be no one to stand with him but Protestant officers who have come fresh from the West Point academy and never fought. That newspaper knows more about us than we do, I’d say.

  It seems sort of like reading your own home newspaper every day and finding out everybody in town considers you the village idiots.

  What is the truth? I gather from reading newspapers, the Mexican ones & the ones we get from the United States, there seems to be two versions of this Texas border thing, the U. States version and the way everybody else looks at it. The U.S. newspapers say the Mexicans are attacking Texas all along the border and President Polk is trying to protect America from Mexican aggression. But the Mexican paper says that most of the civilized nations of the world, in particular Europe, are scolding America for aggression. The European countries accuse us of what they call “imperialist designs” on Mexico.