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Post by gtj222 on Mar 26, 2011 20:50:23 GMT -5
Well, I doubt recovery from an illness as bad as he had would be so quick as to provide his strength back so quick. Remember he was confined to his bed on the second day of the siege. That is eleven days. Medicine was not real good back then and I think recovery would take a while longer. Not to mention the fort was under siege and he did not have access to real good food and medical care. It is always possible he was able to shoot a couple of the soldados, but I really doubt he could do much more than that. He was, after all too sick to man the walls.
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Post by Paul Sylvain on Mar 26, 2011 21:00:26 GMT -5
Certainly anything is possible, and I tend to agree with you. I, too, think he would have been too weak to do much when the soldatos entered his room. However, adrenaline or the will to survive can move people to do incredible things despite illness. It may well be that as sick as Jim was, he was able to muster enough strength up in those final moments to take several men down before being overwhelmed by the enemy at his door.
We will never know for certain, of course, but it is fun to speculate.
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Post by gtj222 on Mar 26, 2011 21:17:11 GMT -5
Another thing to consider is, if any of the soldados had a loaded musket, they could have just stood in the door way and just shot him. They did not have to charge in.
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Post by mjbrathwaite on Mar 26, 2011 21:19:10 GMT -5
That's a point!
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Post by Allen Wiener on Mar 26, 2011 23:17:24 GMT -5
I think Jack Davis has made the "best guess" on this to date, but it's still anyone's guess.
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Post by Mike Harris on Mar 27, 2011 1:37:44 GMT -5
Mjbrathwaite, Remember Bowie was so sick he had to be confined to his bed. He probably had chills and fever and maybe a really hard time breathing. Chances are he was dead when the mexicans entered his room or was too weak to put up much of a fight. I would like to believe he fought to his last breath, but the man was really sick. I agree. I've had pneumonia for the last 2-3 weeks. I didn't go to the doctor for antibiotics until at least a week into it, but I had been basically in bed for close to 4-5 days until then. Everytime I got up, I was dizzy, lethargic...just whipped. I think a lot of that stemmed from just being down and inactive for that long. Bowie sounds like he had more than a touch of pneumonia and was down for 11 or 12 days without, I assume, any meaningful medicine. Even if he could get "up" to protect himself, he would have been so groggy from just being down so long, he would have been totally ineffective. If he wasn't dead already, he was probably relieved they finally made their way to his room to put him out of misery.
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Post by stuart on Mar 27, 2011 4:00:46 GMT -5
There was too much in my article to go into fully here, but essentially after reading a memoir by a Confederate soldier who came down with Typhoid Pneumonia on the retreat from Shiloh and described the experience in some detail I did a bit of digging
(Google is good).
Mike's experience (and my own from years back) isn't too far off, but the point I made in the article is that if this thing was going to kill somebody it generally did so within a few days. However if the patient/sufferer made it through that crucial early period, he/she would start to recover although it would be a very slow process, characterised by very little stamina, ie; the patient would feel capable of getting up and doing things only to be exhausted after a ridiculously short period of time.
Now the way I interpret this therefore is that if Bowie made it through to March 5 he would have been clear of the initial and potentially fatal stage and into the long slow weak as a kitten recovery stage. That in turn means on the morning of March 6 he may have been sitting up in bed, or may even have managed to stand up, but beyond that I wouldn't like to hazard anything beyond the fact that it was the Mexicans who killed him rather than the Typhoid Pneumonia.
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Post by Paul Sylvain on Mar 27, 2011 7:48:41 GMT -5
Another thing to consider is, if any of the soldados had a loaded musket, they could have just stood in the door way and just shot him. They did not have to charge in. This kind of brings back the image from the first "Raiders of the Lost Ark" film where Indie Jones is confronted by that sword wielding dude. Just when you think our hero is in a fix , our hero simply gives a "WTF" look , whips out a pistol and shoots him dead . Yuppers. Guess it could have been as simple as that -- kick the door open, BOOM, and move on .....
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Post by Allen Wiener on Mar 27, 2011 8:51:43 GMT -5
Wouldn't he have been dispatched in the same way the other sick and wounded were? That is, simply shot down while in a generally helpless state?
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Post by stuart on Mar 27, 2011 9:58:55 GMT -5
I think its fairly academic up to a point.
He could well have been sitting up in bed with or without a pair of pistols, or he could have been on his feet - as I've said by this stage in the illness its perfectly possible to get up, move around for a bit and then need to sit down again exhausted. He might even have made it out of the door... but he wasn't capable of fighting like a tiger and I'm disinclined to dismiss Mexican claims that he died in his bed.
All I am sure of or at least as sure as any of us can be, is that he wasn't dead or dying before they arrived.
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Post by Bill Yowell on Mar 27, 2011 9:59:27 GMT -5
While I realize it is far less than probable, In my mind I still like to think that Jim died ala "The Last Command".
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Post by loucapitano on Mar 27, 2011 12:15:41 GMT -5
AlamoBill, I too prefer to think Bowie died ala Last Command, or like Ken Toby in the Disney version. I also consider that it was probably still dark and who knows if Jim had candles burning in his room. Soldier who appeared at his door had probably already discharged their muskets and Mexican officers tended to discourage taking time to reload when the bayonet wielded by hundreds of men could be quite effective. I doubt the soldados would rush into a dark room until they had an idea what was in it. If at that moment two pistol shots rang out, it's likely they would stand aside for soldiers with loaded rifles to to shoot into the darkness and follow up with their bayonets. And, they wouldn't know it was Bowie until hours later when bodies were identified by the officers and surviving non-combatents. Of course, I still prefer the romantic death of Sterling Haden's interpretation. PS: Too bad he didn't have that nifty blunderbus John Wayne let Widmark use. PSS: Welcome to our new friend from New Zealand! Hope to hear more from you.
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Post by mjbrathwaite on Mar 27, 2011 17:08:33 GMT -5
Thanks Loucapitano. On rereading the accounts, it seems we have three in which Bowie fired a shot - one attributed to Joe, who heard about it from someone else, one from Madam Candelaria, who claimed elsewhere that he died before the attack, and one from Andrew Smyth (on page 1 of this thread), who wasn't there, but heard a rumour that Bowie had shot himself. Since Madam Candelaria's accounts of Bowie's death contradict each other, I am not inclined to put any trust in them, although I'm not saying that none of her statements about the Alamo are worthy of consideration. I suppose the shot Joe heard about could have been Bowie shooting himself, but a rumour of unknown origin is not enough for me to accept it as a fact. It would be good to know Bowie's state of mind at the time, but obviously we are never going to.
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Post by Tom Nuckols on Mar 28, 2011 1:53:38 GMT -5
It's fascinating to compare the Crockett death myths with the Bowie death myths. By some accounts each protaganist (Crockett and Bowie) died heroically. By other accounts, each protaganist (Crockett and Bowie) died less heroically. Given that history documents two sides of each story, what's the difference between their deaths? Why have so many books been written about Crockett's death and so few about Bowie's? Because Walt Disney made Crockett the star of the TX revolution, while in reality he just stumbled on the stage? Bowie was a cad, but he did more for the TX revolution than just wander into it. A cad who did what Bowie did and died sick in his bed without raising a pistol is as much a hero to me as Crockett, whichever way Davy died.
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Post by gtj222 on Mar 28, 2011 10:47:39 GMT -5
You are correct!! After all, Bowie was probably the real the leader of the Texas force in San Antonio until he took ill.
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