Exodus From the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth by Phillip Thomas Tucker Page A

obscure a host of ugly, embarrassing realities. These included the fact that consecutive commanders of the Alamo needlessly lost the tiny garrison instead of withdrawing earlier to fight another day. The ensuing disaster was reinvented as a noble self-sacrifice in the cause to save Texas, ignoring the obvious fact that those leaders foolishly chose to fight and die at a place of no strategic importance and for no gain.
    Rather than mounting a climactic last stand with a well-organized, tenacious defense, a totally unprepared Alamo garrison was caught in its sleep by a well-conceived night attack that took the men completely by surprise. The garrison consisted of citizen-soldiers with little of the military training or experience of their well-honed Mexican opponents, whose attack left them so stunned that they never recovered from the shock. This initial tactical success ensured that hundreds of veteran Mexican troops had already reached the Alamo’s walls before garrison members were aroused from their sleeping quarters, negating any chance of an organized, effective, or sustained defense.
    More of a rout and a slaughter than a battle in the traditional sense, the struggle for the Alamo lasted only about twenty minutes, making it one of the shortest armed clashes in American military history for an iconic battle. Winning one of his easiest victories, Santa Anna’s success was ensured when his troops swiftly breached the walls. This tactical success directly contradicts the portrayal of the event as an epic conventional battle, as envisioned by generations of historians and writers, Hollywood filmmakers, painters and artists. Common depictions show the entire garrison aligned in their assigned defensive positions along the walls, manning their blazing artillery, offering organized resistance, and inflicting terrible damage on the attackers under daylight conditions. However, new evidence from the most reliable sources shows that even the heroic last stand immediately in front of the Alamo church and its famous facade is a romantic embellishment. Instead, a large percentage—perhaps the majority—of the garrison fled in multiple attempts to escape the slaughter, trying to quit the compound before the battle inside had ended. No unified, solid defense took place along the walls that dark, early morning. In fact, the defense of the perimeter was so relatively weak that some of the hardest fighting very likely occurred outside the garrison walls, resulting in the deaths of more defenders outside than inside the Alamo.
    Given that the Alamo was a fortified position possessing a formidable arsenal of around twenty artillery pieces, the Alamo’s defense was surprisingly weak, if not feeble. Had there been a tenacious last stand, Mexican casualties would have been far greater. They were, in fact, less than three hundred—and a very high percentage, perhaps even a majority, of these resulted from fratricide, or what we now call “friendly fire.” Contrary to legend, the greatest advantage for Santa Anna’s attackers was not their numbers, which American and Texas historians have endlessly inflated, just as they have inflated Mexican casualties, but the stealthy, surprise attack that worked exceedingly well under the cover of the late winter night.
    The truth of this “skirmish,” as one Mexican participant called it, not only differs from the myth, it directly contradicts it. Fought in a remote location more than a hundred miles from the United States border, the struggle at the Alamo was both unnecessary and pointless in overall strategic terms. The Mexican Army had only to bypass the Alamo to reach the east Texas settlements, or march north up the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to outflank the frontier outpost at San Antonio. Alternatively, Santa Anna could have conducted a lengthier siege to reap a victory over the tiny garrison, making an assault entirely unnecessary.
    Why were Mexican casualties in a frontal assault on a