The Alamo

Author Frank Thompson

Published 2003

ISBN: 0-7868-9082-7

A Hollywood film of The Alamo starred John Wayne as legendary bear hunter Davy Crockett: Richard Widmark as knife-fighting-Jim Bowie and Lawrence Harvey: the stiff and starchy Colonel Travis, in charge of the fortress in the Spring of 1836.

A hundred or two assorted Texas settlers were besieged by thousands of battle-hardened Mexican troops, under the leadership of ruthless dictator: General Santa Anna: a trained army against a few stubborn fighters, who fought and died, refusing to surrender to force.

I’m sure this story of heroic bravery in the face of overwhelming odds is etched into the memory of schoolboys the world over and that for many years after, the stirring cry of: Remember the Alamo was repeated by American soldiers as they echoed the battle for freedom.

This superb novel by author-historian Frank Thompson is gripping from start to finish and fills in many of the gaps and questions left out of the film.

I wanted to know why, in spite of repeated messengers being sent from the Alamo, no armies came to their aid. Why Colonel Fannin refused all of Travis’s pleas for help and why the great Sam Houston, with all his men, turned his back on them and left his friends in the Alamo to be brutally butchered in a frenzy of killing.

I wanted to know what later happened to General Santa Anna and how Texas eventually became a free state.

   My copy of The Alamo was old and careworn before I aquired it, but none the less fascinating for all that and I’m pleased to say that my queries have been answered.

This is history just the way I like it, not dry as dust and overburdened with boring facts, but written in the form of an accomplished novel, so that characters are brought to life and leap right off the page.

Review by Harry Riley