|
Post by davidpenrod on May 18, 2012 14:22:08 GMT -5
Lou, I didnt mean to give the impression that the Texans could have won the battle of the Alamo, only that by defending a smaller portion of it they could have made a more profound impact upon the Mexican Army, i.e., killed and wounded a hell of a lot more of them.
But I think Col. Sanchez-Navarro summed it up best when, in the key to his diagram of the Alamo, he described the Long Barracks and church complex this way:
"Two-story barracks with its gate and hallway; this building was in reasonable condition; because of its construction and because it was supported by the church, it formed a high "cavalier" position in the most important part of the fort - if the enemy had made a second line of defense here, more soldiers would have died than those that died as a result of attacking it."
Sanchez-Navarro, of course, participated in the final assault 'Nuff said.
|
|
|
Post by davidpenrod on May 16, 2012 18:40:35 GMT -5
Well, talk is cheap, of course, but history is on my side. Its replete with commanders who thought they could win a battle by pummeling the enemy with artillery and air power only to discover to their horror that infantryman are far more resilient than mere steel. Also, turning a city to rubble is the worst thing you could possibly do to it - just ask Paulus and the Germans.
As a former light infantry officer, myself, in the Berlin Brigade, I would be more than happy to set up in the Long Barracks and church and let you shoot 12 pounders at me all day long - all week long, if you even have that much ammo. And even if you do and the walls come tumblin' down, I'll still be there, alive and kickin', in all that nice rubble and you'll still be outside with empty caissons and a funny look on your face - because now your infantry can't even get to me because of all that nice rubble.
But let's get specific. Where exactly would you propose to set up your guns? On the river bank? La Vallita? To the north or to the east of the Alamo? How do you propose to even hit the Long Barracks with your fire when the west wall of the Plaza, the east wall of the convento courtyard, and the main gate are blocking your guns?
|
|
|
Post by davidpenrod on May 16, 2012 14:32:27 GMT -5
Lou, I don't think the point is moot. The men in the Alamo were defending themselves, not the Alamo. They didn't understand that fact. They were the key terrain in Bexar, not the old mission. The Alamo was nothing more than terrain that gave them, or should have given them, an advantage over Santa Anna's forces. It had no influence over Bexar or Santa Anna's forces. Clearly, Santa Anna, his staff, and soldiers moved in, out and around Bexar without hindrance from the Alamo's guns. By failing to defend themselves by defending the "key terrain" within the Alamo (i.e., the Long Barracks and church complex), the garrison was easily annihilated.
The argument against this is that Santa Anna's big guns arrived in Bexar on March 6 and they would have easily destroyed the Alamo's walls. There is an axiom in urban warfare that goes, the more you bombard urbanized terrain, the more defensible it becomes. The Alamo was urbanized terrain. The worst thing Santa Anna could have done was rely on those big guns to reduce it by fire.
|
|
|
Post by davidpenrod on May 15, 2012 16:15:33 GMT -5
Herb, what about Juan Seguin and the Tejanos? Wouldn't they have known that country and its people the best?
|
|
|
Post by davidpenrod on May 15, 2012 14:55:21 GMT -5
In other words, if we don't know what their intentions were, maybe they didn't know either.
|
|
|
Post by davidpenrod on May 15, 2012 14:36:08 GMT -5
I think it really all comes down to what you believe Bowie meant when he wrote of defending Bexar. Did he mean Bexar or the Alamo? Was he being figurative or literal?
Here is something to ponder: Crockett supposedly approached Travis after the garrison had absconded to the Alamo from Bexar and asked Travis where he wanted to place Crockett and his men (of course this may be apocryphal). If the Texans had given any thought at all to defending the Alamo before Santa Anna arrived, why would Crockett not know his battle position before hand?
It may be that the we are arguing about details here when in fact Travis and company didn't actually have a detailed plan in mind (and certainly not in writing). Instead, the command group had a generally nebulous idea about defending "Bexar" but they really hadn't thought it out. After all, Santa Anna wasn't due until the Spring.
|
|
|
Post by davidpenrod on May 15, 2012 12:22:45 GMT -5
Defending a small part of the Alamo would have been easy. It would have included the Convento, the Courtyards, the Church and the campo santo. A nice little tight spot. And it allows for further compression of your position as the enemy clears a room or position. You then knock down any structure on the inside of the Plaza, such as along the west walls, so the Mexicans could not use them as cover. Defending this position doesn't mean that they would have not initially defended the perimeter of the plaza. By doing so, they would have kept the Mexicans at bay, deceived them about their intentions, slowed them down during an assault, and given time for the gunners, after a volley or two, to get the few guns still on the walls into the MDP. The five doors of the convento would not have been blocked by hide-bound dirt but by five cannons inside the rooms. As Sanchez-Navarro pointed out, if the Texans had properly prepared the 2 story convento, the result of the fight would have been much different.
|
|
|
Post by davidpenrod on May 15, 2012 11:19:04 GMT -5
I dont think there's any doubt that the Texans intended to defend both Bexar and the Alamo - with their main defenses in Bexar.
The fact that an urban area is approachable from three sides, or four sides for that matter, is irrelevant. What matters are the battle positions inside the town. The Mexican battalion defending the town had prepared excellent positions, inside Bexar around the plazas. The Texans could never have defended Bexar's perimeter, no more than 200 men could have defended the Alamo's perimeter. But perimeter defense is the last thing you want to do when defending urbanized terrain. The enemy can sit off and hammer you with artillery. But once inside the city, that artillery is rendered ineffective as the gun crews would be exposed to rifle fire.
The Texans relied almost exclusively upon the field fortifications prepared by the Mexicans as well as their concept of the operation. This was a mistake - but they didnt know it because they were not professional soldiers. They were amateurs. The only professionals they had encountered in battle were the Mexicans and so they followed their example. Unfortunately, Cos' concept of the operation was deficient on numerous levels - the worst of which was failing to concentrate his forces on a single piece of defensible terrain. By splitting his forces and dividing them by a river staked on either bank by large, hard-wood trees (For God sake, how stupid could one man be?) and then placing them in positions that provided no mutual support, Cos doomed his command before the Texans ever arrived on scene. The French Foreign Legion did the same thing at Dien Bien Phu.
The 5 day fight for Bexar, which the Texans never succeeded in clearing, would have served as an example of the ease with which one can defend barricaded buildings and streets. Given that experience, why would the Texans not defend Bexar? All those buildings in and around the plazas represented a greater obstacle to an attacking force than the Alamo. But they didn't have the men to defend it so they had to skedaddled to the Alamo.
Green Jameson may have been a trained civil engineer, but he was not a trained combat engineer and had no grasp of sound military engineering. If the copies of the plans he prepared of the Alamo defenses are accurate, he had a whimsical, school-boy approach to field fortifications. He was preparing for a dirt clod fight and not a defensive battle with cannon and rifle. You dont defend walls (or buildings) from the top, but at ground level where you get grazing fire. He had no concept of interlocking fields of fire, integration of obstacles within sectors of fire, the critical importance of enfilade fire, and the equally critical need for reducing or eliminating defilade along the walls. A combat engineer would have looked at all those vertical walls and burst into tears - and combat engineers are not known for expressing their emotions.
I am not aware of any entrenchments outside the walls of the Alamo - regardless of Sanchez Navarro. Jake Ivey has shown that the field fortifications drawn by Sanchez Navarro around the southwest corner of the plaza were never there. SN may simple have seen piles of dirt from the Mexican's acequia dig and assumed they were trenches. Regardless, external positions like that would only have been useful as cannon positions for establishing enfilading fire along the west wall - a really, really good idea. But they were not there.
As you said, he who defends everything, defends nothing. The Texans didn't know that little axiom and they violated it the moment they decided to defend all of the Alamo instead of a concentrated position within it that could be defended by 150 to 200 men. Alamo Plaza and the church's campo santo would have been wonderful kill zones in which the assaulting Mexicans could have been trapped and slaughtered. And the Texans could have prepared them both during daylight hours without having to sortie.
|
|
|
Post by davidpenrod on May 14, 2012 16:44:26 GMT -5
Allen, I agree. I don't think James Bowie was an allegorical thinker. I think he was literal and when he wrote of "ditches," he meant trenches but didn't know the right word for it. I don't think he was trying to convey anything beyond that.
|
|
|
Post by davidpenrod on May 13, 2012 14:39:26 GMT -5
Bowie's reference to ditches, first or foremost, reveals a lack of military acumen, as would be expected from an untrained soldier. If Bowie had been a soldado in one of the Mexican Army infantry battalions during the assault of the Alamo, he would have been left behind as an untrained recruit - as per Santa Anna's operations order. That's not to say the man couldn't fight - we all know his skills in this arena - he certainly held his own against the Comanche, who were some of the best warriors around, and his aggressiveness at Concepcion exemplifies a professional soldier's fighting spirit. But the fact is, like Travis, he neither knew nor understood sound military tactics. He was an amateur, albeit a experienced one.
Second, the term ditches can apply to either the trenches dug by the Mexicans in the plazas of Bexar or around certain parts of the Alamo. I believe Bowie referred to the trenches in Bexar because the Texans intended to defend both Bexar and the Alamo, just as the Mexicans had done. Remember, the Texan's only experience with military professionalism and tactics, poor though they were (the tactics I mean; the battalion in Bexar fought with great determination in a fight for which no troops of that era trained, i.e., urban warfare), was the Mexican Army's defense of Bexar and the Alamo. Only God knows what would have happened if the Mexicans had been commanded by a man other than Cos - like that battalion commander in Bexar, for instance (I cant remember the battalion's name; somebody will help out here, I hope).
Neill, Travis and Bowie did not expect the main Mexican Army until late April or May of 1836, a reasonable expectation as grass for horse fodder would be plentiful by then and the weather milder, even warm. Remember, our forces during the Civil War rarely fought during the Winter with principal operations usually commencing in April and ending by November/December. Bowie et., al., expected no less from Santa Anna, whom they underestimated because of Cos, and their fellow Texans to reinforce them before then, another reasonable expectation. As we know, the arrival of the Mexican Army at Bexar after a forced march in horrible Winter conditions, including a blizzard, took the Texans by surprise. They made a bee-line for the Alamo from Bexar, having prepared it but little if at all.
Anyway, that's my $10 worth, the price for such opinions having gone up. No doubt some will disagree, but they are 5th Columnists, insurrectionists, or contrarions - or worse yet, people with different opinions. And evidence.
|
|
|
Post by davidpenrod on May 11, 2012 23:51:56 GMT -5
What happened to Kevin?
|
|
|
Cos Men
Apr 14, 2012 11:06:15 GMT -5
Post by davidpenrod on Apr 14, 2012 11:06:15 GMT -5
|
|
|
Cos Men
Apr 14, 2012 10:58:30 GMT -5
Post by davidpenrod on Apr 14, 2012 10:58:30 GMT -5
So, the Batallon Morelos did not return to Texas?
|
|
|
Cos Men
Apr 14, 2012 0:21:13 GMT -5
Post by davidpenrod on Apr 14, 2012 0:21:13 GMT -5
Which raises a question: wasn't the Morales battalion at San Jacinto? Or have I got that wrong?
|
|
|
Cos Men
Apr 14, 2012 0:15:56 GMT -5
Post by davidpenrod on Apr 14, 2012 0:15:56 GMT -5
All the more reason to massacre the Texans and the Tejanos. What an embarrassment! If word had gotten out that those perfidious pirates and their Tejano allies had treated a defeated Mexican Army with dignity and respect...
|
|