Alamo Traces (46 page)

Mexican infantryman

Photo courtesy of Joseph Musso collection

Arroyo and his interns worked alone until help from the interior arrived in San Antonio. Previously, on Cos's December 1835 retreat, Dr. Moro and interns Eduardo Banegas, Victor Samarroni, and Narciso Gil had remained at Monclova. Santa Anna and his army arrived in that city on February 5. Soon afterward Moro informed Santa Anna of the medical
staff and supplies that were available for the army. Moro wrote: “I notified him that [of] the medical supplies that I took out of that capital, the greater part of it was running out (since requesting it from that city could not be done, because of the distance at which we were located and the continuation of the march of the army). At the same time he commanded me that, with intern Eduardo Banegas [interns Victor Samarroni and Narciso Gil also remained with Moro], I should remain in Monclova for the care of about ninety-some sick [from Santa Anna's force] whom the army had brought.” At that city, Santa Anna continued to upgrade the medical department. He appointed a number of interns to serve under Jose Reyes, a “skilled surgeon” who had joined the force at Saltillo on January 8. Strangely, when Santa Anna departed Monclova on February 8, he left Reyes and the medical staff behind. That section departed the city on February 23 with General Vincente Filisola's command. By that time surgeon Andres Urtado and two more interns had joined the force. Moro later wrote that these much-needed people arrived in San Antonio “many days after the battle,” which appears to have been on March 9.
⁴⁰

By March 9 the Mexican Military Health Brigade at San Antonio contained the following individuals: Second surgeon Mariano Arroyo, third surgeon Jose Maria Reyes, provisional surgeons Andres Urtado and N. Vidal, second class interns Jose Maria Ylisariturri, Jose Maria Rodriguez, Jose Cardenas, Ygnacio Romero, Jose Maria Rojas, and intern Francisco Martinez for a total of four surgeons and six interns. First surgeon Jose Faustino Moro, first intern Nazario Gil, and second intern Eduardo Banegas finally arrived in Bexar on May 15. A short time before Moro and his interns arrived, Dr. Urtado and his interns (Ygnacio Romero and Jose Maria Rojas) had been sent to Goliad with the corp's medical chest. Moro wrote that when he arrived in Bexar, he found all of the above individuals, except Urtado and his interns, in the Hospital of Bejar.
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According to the Pena memoir, he was aware of Dr. Moro being in San Antonio. The Pena account reads: “Among the few in the medical corps that finally found themselves in Texas, perhaps only Don Jose F. Moro is entitled to the name of surgeon.”
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It is strange that Pena would think so highly of Dr. Moro. First, Moro appears to have performed no surgery on the Alamo wounded. Second, Moro did not join the army at Bexar until May 15, 1836. Whereas, Pena departed the city at the end of March 1836 and would most likely not have been aware of Moro until early June 1836, when Colonel Juan
Andrade's force joined Filisola's retreating army south of Goliad. Dr. Arroyo appears to have continued to be the working surgeon at Matamoros. He completed the hospital report on the dead and wounded, not Moro. The fact that the Pena memoir credits Moro as a good surgeon suggests that the writer of the Pena memoir did not have sufficient source material dealing with the medical situation at the Alamo to be able to write about it with authority.
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Regardless, the evidence shows that the Mexican army had a surgeon and two interns in Bexar on March 6 and that three additional doctors and four interns arrived on March 9. Therefore, why does the Pena memoir report there were no surgeons to treat the wounded? The reason seems to be that the medical data found in the four-hundred-plus-page manuscript is based on other written sources, rather than on Pena's personal experience at Bexar or Pena's 109-page campaign diary. The Pena memoir has Pena quoting data about the medical situation at Bexar from two letters. The first alleged letter, for which there is no source citation and no author identification, was dated March 18, 1836, and perhaps was written at San Antonio. The writer claimed: “It is true that few among us are sick, but we have 257 wounded with no surgeons to treat them, no medicines, no bandages, no gauze, and very meager food.” The medicines were limited, but there were four surgeons at Bexar on March 18. Also, cotton gauze was on hand. The second missive quoted by the Pena memoir is Dr. Jose F. Moro's August 11, 1836 letter that appears in the appendix of the Spanish language edition of the Pena memoir.
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Then Pena is alleged to have written: “In fact, the plight of our wounded was quite grievous, and one could hardly enter the places erroneously called hospitals without trembling with horror. The wailing of the wounded and their just complaints penetrated the innermost recesses of the heart; [italics added]
there was no one to extract a bullet, no one to perform an amputation, and many unfortunates died whom medical science could have saved
.” It is true there was not an adequate building for a hospital in the city. The army, however, did have qualified medical people to extract bullets and cut limbs off when needed. So, why would Pena have made such untrue claims? Pena would not have made such allegations. He was in San Antonio, and he was one of the wounded soldiers. He made no such claims in the smaller campaign diary manuscript. More importantly, he would not have needed to use written sources to write about the army's medical services.
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The source for the previous Pena statement in the memoir appears to have been
Dr. J. H. Barnard's Journal
, first published in the
Goliad Guard
in 1883, over forty years after Pena's death. Barnard was one of the surgeons who had been with Colonel James W. Fannin's command at Goliad. He and several other doctors were spared so that they could treat the Mexican wounded. Barnard and Dr. Jack Shackelford were sent to San Antonio on April 16 to assist the Mexican surgeons. Barnard reported there were surgeons at San Antonio. Otherwise, he wrote the same thing about amputations, bullet wounds, and soldier deaths from the lack of surgical care that the Pena memoir reports.

According to Barnard on April 21, 1836: “Yesterday and today we have been around with the surgeons of the place [San Antonio] to visit the wounded, and a pretty piece of work ‘Travis, and his faithful few' have made of them. There are now about a hundred here of the wounded. The surgeon tells us that there were four hundred of them brought into the hospital the morning they stormed the Alamo, but I should think from [the] appearance that there must have been more. I see many around the town, who were crippled there, apparently, two or three hundred and the citizens tell me that three or four hundred have died of their wounds.

“We have two colonels and a major and eight captains under our charge, who were wounded in the assault. We have taken one ward of the hospital under our charge. Their surgical department is shockingly conducted,
not an amputation performed before we arrived
[italics added], although there are several cases even now, that should have been operated upon at the first, and
how many have died from the want of operation is impossible to tell, though it is a fair inference that there has not been a few
[italics added].

“
There had been scarcely a ball cut out as yet
[italics added], and almost every patient carrying the lead he received that morning.”
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In regard to the personal experience of a combat soldier, David H. Hackworth, a highly decorated combat soldier observed: “In battle, your perception is often only as wide as your battle sights. Five participants in the same action, fighting side by side, will often tell entirely different stories of what happened, even within hours of the fight. The story each man tells might be virtually unrecognizable to the others.” Then Napoleon wrote: “A soldier seldom looks beyond his own company and an officer can, at most, give account of the position or movements of the division to which his regiment belongs.” Therefore, if the Pena memoir
is authentic, one would think it would be limited to what he experienced and witnessed himself.
⁴⁷

Yet, the Alamo chapters in the Pena memoir are totally based on other written sources. One can argue that Pena, like other soldiers who have written memoirs, decided to pad and embellish his story with research. That is a possibility, but it conflicts with what Pena said about his diary in an authentic letter. He claimed that his diary alone was sufficiently detailed to serve as a history and that he planned to publish his campaign diary, not a political and military history of the war based on other written sources from participants, both Mexican and Texian. Granted there is an alleged Pena document that claims Pena used other written sources in writing the memoir. However, that missive is not in Pena's handwriting and is among the documents that are suspected of being forgeries. In other words, the letter appears to have been created to explain why the Pena account is so obviously based on other accounts. Which also happens to be the only way a forger could have created the Pena final draft narrative.
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The Pena memoir information about the Mexican dead and wounded at the Alamo supports a forgery explanation for the creation of the Pena memoir manuscript. The Pena data about the Mexican dead and wounded and the army's medical services appears to be a compilation of data found in Filisola's
Memoirs
, Ramon Caro's account of the Texas campaign, Barnard's diary, Dr. Moro's letter of August 11, 1836, and an alleged letter from an unknown person.

Today historians recognize that the Pena memoir is based on other sources. Randy Roberts and James S. Olson: “It [the fact that the Pena narrative was not published in 1836] meant that his [Pena's] story was not constructed immediately after the war but rather written and rewritten over a period of years, during a time when other Mexican officers were publishing their accounts and de la Pena was languishing in prison for opposing the centralist regime. Although the diary is almost certainly not a forgery, it is a highly charged political document, aimed at discrediting the centralist and defending the federalists. As a whole, de la Pena's description of the look, smell, and feel of the campaign is unsurpassed; his grasp of grand strategy, his description of leaders, and his sympathy for the plight of the soldiers is outstanding. But in many cases he clearly drew from a deep pool of rumors, details, and stories that suited his overarching interpretation of the campaign and Mexican politics.” Thus, Pena
supporters can argue that Pena might have seen Caro's account and Moro's letter. That is true. Pena, however, could not have seen Filisola's
Memoirs
and Barnard's journal.
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Pena true believers may argue that Pena did not need to see the Barnard diary. They will say that both Pena and Barnard were correct in their assessment of the medical situation at San Antonio and that Barnard verifies the Pena claim. Thus, the Pena memoir is authentic. An authentic primary account, however, shows that the Pena and Barnard accounts are wrong in their claims about the Mexican surgical care at San Antonio in the days following the fall of the Alamo. The document is Dr. Mariano Arroyo's report on the medical corp's activities at San Antonio and Matamoros between December 12, 1835, and August 1, 1836. It reads: