[Destructor]

Bull! The defenders of the Alamo stood against overwhelming odds knowing that they were fighting a hopeless battle. The very act of standing their ground under those circumstances was an act of heroism.

[Pitchfork]

It is all part of the grand tradition of turning into heroes those senselessly killed in battle.

The Charge of the Light Brigade (immortalized in the Lord Tennyson poem) and the Alamo legend are similar in that they use heroic mythology to shield us from recognizing the waste of life that is war. There are innumerable other examples. The loss of 3000 of 5000 Canadian soldiers at Dieppe--a failed percursor to D-Day--has similarly been turned into a story of heroism because "so much was learned that made D-Day successful".


Rather than say: "These men were needlessly sacrificed largely due to poor decision-making by military leaders", we instead say "they died heroically fighting for a great cause" because it makes their loss more palatable.