This week marks the 184th anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo.
Like many a Baby Boomer, I grew up with the image of Fess Parker as Davy Crockett swinging Old Betsy to the very end, dead Mexican soldiers piled around him.
However, about the time that Disney was memorializing Crockett as the King of the Wild Frontier, historians began evaluating documents written by Mexican soldiers that said Davy didn’t go down swinging, but instead was captured and almost immediately put to the sword at Santa Anna’s order.
If such is true, that he was captured, it doesn’t tarnish his legend.
His defense of the Alamo cost him life, either way. Whether felled by a bullet or killed by a sword, he remains a hero.
The fact that we’ll never know for sure is part of the enduring mystique of the Alamo.
Today, we have a good idea what happened inside the old mission walls on the morning of March 6, 1836, but we don’t know the stories of the individual defenders and what happened in their final moments.
The same is true of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where George Custer met his end.
Partly due to Hollywood’s telling of history, I had an enduring image of Custer fighting to the end, surrounded by his men and perhaps being the last to go down.
Turns out, according to historians, a likely case is that the portion of the Seventh Cavalry under Custer’s direct command was overwhelmed by a counter-attack, perhaps led by Crazy Horse.
The soldiers put up a running battle that turned into a retreat.
Again, as with Crockett, the specifics of how the individual soldiers meet their ends doesn’t change their legacy.
Courage in the face of imminent destruction deserves to be honored and celebrated, rather than turned into mythology.
Right, wrong or somewhere in between, the volunteers at the Alamo and the soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry - each had reasons for being where they were.
What interesting stories they would be able to tell and how nice it would be to spend part of the next life listening to them.