Posted on 08/13/2002 5:29:27 AM PDT by Billie
have you been to Crawford yet?
Driving in TexasAn El Paso policeman pulled a car over and told the driver he had just won $50 dollars in a city-wide competition. "What are you going to do with the money?" asked the policeman.
"Well, I guess I'm going to get a driver's license," he answered.
"Oh, don't listen to him," yelled a woman in the passenger seat. "He's a smart aleck when he's drunk."
This woke up the guy in the back-seat, who took one look at the cop and moaned, "I knew we wouldn't get far in a stolen car."
At that moment, there was a knock from the trunk and a voice said, in Spanish, "Are we over the border yet?"
During the retreat of Sam Houston through Central and East Texas, in what came to be known as the "Runaway Scrape", he managed to gather 1400 ill equipped and ill trained volunteers to supplement the Texas Army.
When the Army was showing signs of disintegrating because of a lack of action, Houston turned them around to face the enemy.
In the meantime, Santa Anna had continued on his mission to eliminate the American threat to Texas.
Burning the town of Harrisburg to the ground, he swung back to the San Jacinto River to meet Sam Houston.
Houston deliberately allowed himself to be trapped between the San Jacinto River and Buffalo Bayou, and burned all the bridges which might allow the Mexican forces to escape or his to retreat.
The Mexican Army, reinforced with troops from General Cos, numbered around 1200 men; Houston had only 918 men left by the time he pitched camp at San Jacinto.
On the afternoon of April 21st, while the Mexican Army was dozing in the heat and with the afternoon sun at it's back, the Texas Army walked almost a mile across open grasslands single file and charged the Mexican lines of bayonets and cannon.
The Mexican forces, with no sentries and no pickets, were taken completely by surprise.
The battle lasted only a few minutes.
The slaughter took much longer.
Houston could not control his men; they killed everyone that moved. When some of the Mexican forces attempted to swim away in the San Jacinto River, they were picked off by the expert riflemen.
At the end of the massacre, six hundred thirty Mexican soldiers lay dead and two hundred were wounded.
The diablos Tejanos, Devil Texans, lost TWO killed in action that day, and seven more would die later from wounds.
Texas had won it's independence.
"Lone Star" - T.R. Fehrenbach [para]
If anyone has a chance while in Houston, please go to see the San Jacinto Monument.
You can almost hear the sounds of battle and the crys from hundreds of throats, "REMEMBER THE ALAMO!", "REMEMBER GOLIAD!"
Do you mean this week? I plan to, but life keeps getting in the way. I want to check the t-shirt stock for everybody, lol.
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