A Day at the Alamo with David Crockett, 1836
The Time Travel Series
The Time Travel Series attempts to recreate past events as realistically as possible - Daily Episode Guide.
Historical Backdrop
David Crockett is a 49-year-old former United States Congressman from Tennessee. Crockett had arrived at the Alamo on February 8 with a dozen Tennessee Mounted Volunteers, seeking a fresh start after a bitter political defeat. He was no ordinary frontiersman: he was the most famous man in America, a living folk legend whose exploits — real and embellished — had been published in almanacs, plays, and a bestselling autobiography. He was a crack marksman, a gifted storyteller, a fiddler, and a man who had walked away from power in Washington with the immortal words, “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.”
Now, after twelve days of siege by General Antonio López de Santa Anna’s army of several thousand Mexican regulars, Crockett stood at the most vulnerable point in the Alamo’s defenses — a low wooden palisade of upright cedar timbers and packed earth stretching between the chapel and the low barracks on the compound’s south side. He was exhausted, filthy, underfed, and sleepless. He was also utterly unbroken. The night of March 5 would be his last, and the dawn of March 6 would write his name into the history books.
March 6, 1836 — 3:00 AM
The Alamo, South Palisade — San Antonio de Béxar, Mexican Texas
The cold sits in the bones. You lean against the rough cedar post of the palisade, your breath a thin ghost in the dark. Old Betsy rests across your thighs, the steel barrel cold even through your wool trousers. Behind you, the chapel is a black shape against a blacker sky. A few men sleep in the dirt beside the low wall, curled around their rifles. You can smell the latrine trench, the old cook-fire ash, the faint sweetness of decay from a dead mule somewhere near the cattle pen. Somewhere to the north, a coyote. Nothing else. Thirteen days of cannon fire and now this silence — heavy, wrong. Your back aches. Your gums bleed when you press your tongue to them. You have not slept more than an hour at a stretch in four days. You think of your children in Tennessee and the thought is a splinter you cannot pull free.
March 6, 1836 — 3:40 AM
Low Barracks, South Wall — The Alamo
You duck through the low doorway into the barracks room where Bowie lies. The air is thick — sweat, sickness, the sharp smell of the poultice someone pressed to his chest. Jim Bowie, the most dangerous knife-fighter on the frontier, lies on a wooden cot against the adobe wall, a wool blanket pulled to his chin, his face the color of candle wax. His famous blade rests on a stool within reach. Two pistols are loaded beside him. He opens his eyes when you kneel. His voice is a dry rasp. He asks if you hear anything out there. You tell him nothing. Just the quiet. He says that is what troubles him. You grip his wrist — the skin is hot and papery — and you tell him you will see him on the other side of this. He manages something between a smile and a grimace. You do not believe your own words.
March 6, 1836 — 4:30 AM
South Palisade, Looking South — The Alamo
