Chapter 25

 

Sunday, the twenty-ninth of March 1836 is not a day I will easily forget. One of the men, a preacher, told me it was Palm Sunday, the one before Easter. That gave me a pang of homesickness as I remembered services in the little local church. The preacher had planned to hold a service himself later that day, but he was not to get the chance. The Mexicans were busier than usual, the little sally port cut within the main gate that only allowed one person in or out at the same time was continually opening and closing. We could hear orders being shouted on the other side of the wall. From what I could make out, it sounded like the Mexicans were planning some sort of parade. Then there were commands for us to form up in ranks.

I cannot recall any fear or trepidation at the time, the immediate thought that occurred to all of us was that another ship had been found. There were exclamations of, “At last!!” and men laughed and joked as they grabbed their possessions and lined up with their fellows. I was just as pleased to depart from that wretched yard as the rest of them. In fact, I was vowing to myself that I would spend the next Palm Sunday safely in Leicestershire.

First, Captain Miller’s men were called forward. They were counted and then marched out of the sally port, each stooping his head under the low gateway. The rest of us shifted impatiently, waiting for our turn to leave. Instead, we were reorganised into three long ranks of equal length. While the men were being moved about a Mexican colonel arrived. We had seen him before and he spoke perfect English. He summoned the doctors from the ranks and a handful of their orderlies. There were groans at this, for we knew that the doctors spent much of their time with the Mexican wounded. It looked like they would be kept while the rest of us left. I remember the colonel repeating the name of one orderly who did not step forward. The man was not giving up his place in a ship to look after the injured. Impatiently, the colonel plucked a young Texian from the line to howls of protest and sent him with the others towards the gate as a replacement.

Our guards started to shuffle men about to make the rank lengths equal again after the departures, but I ceased to pay much attention. For coming in through the low gate was the first vision of beauty that I had seen in several weeks. She was a proud piece for she walked with her head high, another woman trailing in her wake. I nudged the man beside me and nodded at her. “Well if she is to be one of our shipmates, I don’t mind sharing a berth.”

He cackled back, “There will be plenty of Mexicans at the front of that queue. You’ll never get near the likes of her.”

I thought he was right for she appeared a passionate sort. One of the officers overseeing us had tried to get her to leave. She turned on him with such vigour that the fellow shrank back from the onslaught and allowed her to continue into the courtyard. She stood with her older companion in the middle, surveying us. As I was by chance in the front rank, I returned her inspection with interest. She was an officer’s wife if I was a judge, as was the woman beside her, for they were both well dressed in expensive gowns. Her dark eyes blazed at us as she ran her gaze up and down our lines, while many of us did the same to her. Then she pointed to young Ben Hughes, a lad of just fifteen, and two soldiers pulled him from the ranks to stand beside her. There were more groans of protest as it seemed yet another of us was to be detained. “Perhaps she wants the lad to warm her bed, lucky bastard,” called a voice from the ranks behind me and there were several more ribald comments.

“Do any of you speak Spanish?” The woman shouted out the question in that language and then looked for a response. I did, of course as did several others, but none of us volunteered; we all wanted to get home too. She watched us impatiently – she must have known that there were some Spanish speakers amongst us. Just then I was distracted by a disturbance at the gate. Several of the townsfolk from Goliad were looking at us through it and soldiers were shouting at them to go away. As one of the women turned to go, I distinctly saw tears on her cheek. She made the mark of the cross in our direction before crossing herself. I felt the first prickle of alarm then. I turned back to the yard to see that the pair of women were trying to detain two other young boys, but their father was with them and protesting that his sons stay with him.

Why were they trying to take the youngest men? I wondered. Even then I did not guess the truth, but I suspected that we were set for a more arduous ordeal than a short march to the coast. The gate had been shut. I looked at the other soldiers around us for some sign that my new fear was justified. Instead of their normal bored demeanour, they were tense and alert. There have been many times in my life when lust has led me astray, but this time I think it saved my life. Had she been some ugly harridan, I may not have been so quick to trust her, but now I found myself calling out, “I speak Spanish.”

She looked up at that and gestured for me to step out of the line and join them. I glanced at the officer and he reluctantly agreed. As I approached, I saw the older woman urgently whispering into the younger one’s ear while gesturing at me. My pretty new friend nodded in agreement. “Tell him to let his sons come with me,” she commanded.

“They are worried that if they go with you, they will not board the ships,” I told her. Then I looked her in the eye and added, “Are there any ships?”

“Yes, there are ships, but in different ports. These men will be marched to Matamoros, it will be a long and arduous journey. But if the man lets his sons stay with me, I will put them on the first ships to arrive at Copano or Port Lavaca.”

She was a good liar, I’ll say that for her. If her companion had not twitched at the explanation, I might have believed it. “Are you sure that they are not being marched all the way to incarceration in Mexico City?” I asked suspiciously, for that was my first thought. It was a journey of nearly a thousand miles and many were likely to die on the way.

“Please, señor,” she implored me. “Help me take the boys, it will be better for them.”

So I did. I took the old man aside and told him her explanation and my fear that they might be marched a whole lot further. I also told him that I thought the woman was genuine in trying to protect his sons. I think he sensed that as well, for he nodded when I had finished and gave his boys a hug each before pushing them towards me.

The woman told me that the Mexicans needed carpenters and we persuaded the guards that two other slightly bewildered young men were in that trade, even though one loudly protested in English that he was a farmer. We might have got more, but an angry captain appeared through the gate and put an end to our recruitment drive. Here was an officer who was not going to be browbeaten by the woman and he kept referring to the orders of a Colonel Portilla. Initially, he wanted us all returned to the ranks, but she hissed furiously at him something I did not catch and eventually he relented. We were all marched to the gate and as I stooped under the low threshold, I was surprised to find most of General Urrea’s army waiting outside. Dismounted cavalry troopers were arranged to form three huge pens while beyond them lines of Mexican infantry stretched out of sight.

“What is going on?” I asked once we were outside. “What are these orders of Colonel Portilla?”

She blanched slightly at the mention of the name and then brushed a sergeant aside who had moved forward to drive us into one of the enclosures. “They come with me,” she told the man before turning in my direction. “These orders are no longer your concern,” she announced, then she frowned. “Your accent is not Mexican, where did you learn Spanish?”

I told her that my mother had been Spanish and that I had also been an officer in the British army in Spain. “So why have you joined the forces invading Mexico?” she demanded.

“I came here with an American just to trade. I wanted no part of the war and certainly do not want to farm here. I have land in England.” We were walking briskly through the town and I noticed several of the passers-by watching us with curiosity. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“You are joining Captain Miller’s men.” She stopped suddenly, grabbed me by the arm and looked into my eyes. “Whatever happens today,” she urged, “you must stay with them, your life depends on it.” That brought me up sharp. I remember looking back down the street to the cavalry and long lines of infantry. Only then did realisation of what was going to happen sink in.

“Oh God,” I gasped. “They are not marching them south, they are going to kill them, aren’t they?”

Her gaze dropped and she whispered, “Nobody here wants to. General Urrea has ordered that it should not happen, but the president has overridden him. Colonel Portilla fears he will be killed himself if he disobeys. Colonel Garay and I are trying to save as many as we can.”

“But how?” My mind could not get over the sheer scale of it. There were still over four hundred men left in the fortress and I was damn sure that they would not wait patiently for their turn in front of a firing squad. “Why did you not tell us back there?” I pointed back to the now ironically named Fort Defiance. “We could have rushed the gate – at least some might have got away.”

“Did you not see the men guarding the gateway?” she demanded. “You would have been stopped and everyone would have been killed. This way at least some will survive.” We turned a corner and I saw all of Captain Miller’s men sitting out in an orchard on the edge of town. With them were the doctors and orderlies who had volunteered earlier, as well as the one fortunate replacement. Including our group, there would be close to a hundred who had been saved. The officer guarding them clearly knew the woman and smiled in greeting.

“Wait in there with them,” she told me, “I must go back and see if I can find more.” With that she was gone, and I realised that I did not even know her name.

As we entered the orchard, the guards gave each of us a strip of white sheet. We were told to tie it around our arms and not to take it off under any circumstances. I saw that all of Miller’s men were wearing similar armbands and guessed it was the symbol to show that we were to be spared. None of my new companions had any idea what was happening. They were sitting around, talking, laughing, playing cards, apparently without a care in the world. I almost blurted out what the woman had told me, but I still could not quite believe it would happen at all. I had seen mass executions before. In Spain, General Cuesta had shot forty of his soldiers for desertion, but nothing on this scale. I could not see how they could shoot four hundred men without the event turning into a pitched battle.

In the end I decided that it would not serve anything by telling them. They would find out soon enough and there was nothing we could do to stop the bloodshed. Quite the reverse; if they knew, then they were likely to rush to the aid of their comrades, which would almost certainly see more of them killed. Perhaps Colonel Portilla would then decide that no one should be excused execution at all.

I was just pondering the awful horror of it when one of Miller’s men came up to me.

“I see you know our guardian angel, then.”

“Eh, what’s that?” I asked, distracted.

The man leaned against an apple barrel and pointed with his homemade pipe down the hill at the street I had come up. “Francita, the woman who brought you here,” he elaborated before puffing on his tobacco.

“You know her?” I asked, surprised.

“I would be missing a hand now if it were not for her,” he explained waving his pipe in the air again.”

“How?” I asked puzzled. “Who is she?”

“Her name is Francita,” he repeated. “Francita Alavez. Her husband is one of the cavalry officers who captured us at Copano.” He lowered his voice and added, “The man is a cruel swine if you ask me, but his wife is an angel, pretty as one too,” he grinned.

I could not disagree there, yet I was still confused. “But how did she save your hand?”

“When we were captured her husband ordered our hands roped behind our backs and he got his men to tie the knots tight. That was bad enough, but then it rained and the knots got even tighter. We were all in agony, I couldn’t feel my fingers at all but Francita heard our moaning. She got her husband to loosen our cords. I think she has been looking after us ever since.”

“I believe you are right,” I agreed with feeling, looking around at the men sitting under the trees with no idea how fortunate they were.

“Do you think we are going to be put on this ship?” the man asked. “Some reckon as we arrived last, we will be boarded last too.” Before I could reply, he looked up and gestured down the road, “Hello, that must be the first of them going.”

I turned to see a procession of men headed up by twenty mounted Mexican cavalry coming down the road. Beyond the horses were three files of marching men. The middle one was made up of the Texians, and each was flanked on either side by a Mexican infantryman. It was clear that they still had no idea of their fate, for they were chatting amiably amongst themselves. The father of the two boys spotted his sons in the orchard and was shouting at them what to do if they got to New Orleans before him. Then Shackelford came out of the tent he had been sitting in and called out to the column. His company was among it. The doctor was shouting, calling out to his friends and kin, giving them messages to pass on to his wife as he was sure he would be tending to the Mexican wounded a while longer.

I watched still in partial disbelief as the column reached the road south and turned onto the Matamoros trail. Perhaps this Francita had got it wrong. Perhaps they really were being marched to the southern port. There were bound to be ships they could board there. Then as the last of the men disappeared behind the scrub lining the road, I heard more people shouting from the other side of the orchard. They were pointing north, where another identical column could be seen marching away from us, following the river northwest. While Shackelford had returned to his tent, Ward’s men at last started to question and debate what on earth was going on. If the Mexicans were taking Fannin’s command to a ship, why were they marching in opposite directions and, still uppermost in their thoughts, when would they be allowed to board a vessel too? Soon both groups had disappeared into the countryside and I stood leaning on the fence rail, waiting to see what would happen next.

Twenty minutes later, my worst fears were confirmed when there was the sound of a long stuttering volley from the south. Over half a mile away musket smoke drifted up above the mesquite trees that lined the road. Ward’s men all ran to the fence to look. Mercifully, the column was out of view, but now men stared in horror as an awful realisation began to sink in.

“They can’t be,” gasped the man beside me, still unable to articulate the possibility. As he spoke, we suddenly glimpsed around twenty men running full tilt away from the road as distant screams and shouts carried to us on the wind. The men dashing through the scrub were just dark tiny figures to us, it was impossible to make out uniforms, but no one doubted who they were now. For close on their heels appeared Mexican cavalry. We watched as one raised a sabre above his head. When he passed, his victim had fallen into the dirt.

There were shouts and yells aplenty then, with men cursing, running about and swearing vengeance. Mexican soldiers, who must have been placed ready, rushed up to the fence to keep us in the orchard, but no one tried to leave, for it was too late. The noise was so loud that we almost did not hear a similar volley coming from the northeast where we had seen the second column go. I remember sinking my head into my hands, horrified at the scale of the slaughter. Then when I looked up again, I saw Shackelford. In all my life I don’t think I have ever seen a man look more stricken. He was staring to the south where he now knew his son, two nephews and nearly sixty other friends from his town were either dead or dying. He had raised the company and brought them there. You could tell he was not only picturing the fallen, but the widows and fatherless children that had now been left behind. If ever a man was inconsolable, it was he.

Beyond him I saw Francita and the English-speaking colonel rushing into the orchard, they had with them two more of Fannin’s men that they had saved. The pair had been beaten from the look of them and stared about bewildered, but at least they were alive. The colonel was immediately surrounded by angry men, demanding to know what was going on even though it was now obvious.

“Gentlemen,” he shouted and waited for some silence to fall. “It is my deep regret to inform you that the men who took up arms against the forces of Mexico are being executed.”

There was a roar of rage at this confirmation and then one of the orderlies pushed his way forward and shouted, “But what about the terms of our surrender? You promised to put us on a ship.”

“I can assure you that the orders did not come from any officers here or from General Urrea,” the colonel stated sadly. He gestured to Francita and added, “We have tried to save as many of you as we could, but the instruction came directly from President Santa Anna.”

The anger dissipated immediately, for we all knew that we owed our own lives to these extraordinary individuals. At the same time, I suspect in every heart there grew a burning hatred of el Presidente. I know it did in mine. As you know, I do not get ardent about much beyond saving my own precious skin, but I’ll admit that I gave a silent prayer that I would get the opportunity to settle the score. Not just for the Goliad men, who I had only known for a couple of weeks, but also for Crockett, Bowie, Travis, Martin, Bonham and all those other brave men at the Alamo.

As I fumed and swore vengeance, the colonel spotted Shackelford, now kneeling and weeping on the ground. The Mexican gently helped him to his feet and steered him back towards the tent. I heard him explaining to Francita that Shackelford’s son was among the fallen. She threw up at that, demanding to know why he had not told her before and swearing that she would have got him out too.

If we thought that the horror of that morning was over, we were wrong. For a while later we heard more shooting, this time from the fort. It was just two or three muskets being fired at a time and only every couple of minutes. For a while we were puzzled and then one of the orderlies announced, “They must be shooting the wounded.” Given the number butchered already it might sound strange, but that thought made us angrier than ever. What kind of creature could shoot a wounded man lying on a stretcher?

We sat there now in almost total silence as we pondered the twists of fate that had brought us to that green orchard surrounded in bloodshed. I noticed that as the distant shots rang out now, men would flinch as they imagined the slaughter they could not see, or perhaps thought about how their time would come. The colonel had assured us all that we would be safe as long as we stayed there and wore the white armbands. Yet as one of the orderlies reminded us, “We have heard such promises before, haven’t we.”

That afternoon two of the doctors and the orderlies were marched back to the chapel to look after the Mexican wounded and two of Fannin’s men who had miraculously survived. Shackelford was excused, they must have been worried that he would run amok and murder the lot of them. No one in that orchard would have blamed him if he had. While they were gone, a steady stream of Mexican soldiers and their camp followers walked back into town after completing their grisly work. Many of them looked shaken and I saw a couple weeping. Others did not look the slightest bit remorseful; they were laden with bundles of clothes, some still bloodstained, and other loot that they had pillaged from our dead. I well remember one old crone holding up a silver watch she had plundered and shouting to us in Spanish that we would be next.

In the evening the doctors and orderlies returned. To our surprise there were three extra orderlies including old Abel Morgan. He had seen the wounded being blindfolded and shot at close range. He owed his survival to a Mexican officer, who had spared him, as most of the other orderlies on duty that morning had been shot along with their patients. They also brought with them news of Fannin. After virtually all of his command had been executed, he too was dragged off his bed and taken out into the yard, where the corpses of the other wounded still lay. He was told that he too was to be killed. According to the man who saw it, he took the news well; he would have heard the volleys and been expecting it. He still struggled to stand and so was led to a chair in a corner of the yard. Then he was blindfolded and shot in the face. The largest army Texas possessed, had just been utterly destroyed.