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Turns out it was a whole month ago already (another month from now, me and my son expect to be in England, post TT races already )...

I left Refugio towards evening and to make it to the Fannin surrender site had to jet 30 miles northeast towards Victoria on 77, turn left to go north on 59, and then left again ten miles east to a wide spot on the highway called Fannin, TX.

Fortunately traffic was running at the usual Texas 80 - 90 mph (woulda been 80 to 100+ on an innerstate). East of Refugio I snapped this photo, this is the sort of terrain Ward and his 120 guys were facing trying to sneak from Refugio to Victoria....



Eastbound on 59, the infamous Coleto Creek, maybe six miles from the battle site, had Fannin pushed on for another hour, he would have reached cover and water and as Urrea himself acknowledged, been difficult or impossible to dislodge. Dunno how it woulda turned out, Urrea would still have been Urrea, but suffice to say it coulda been a whole different ballgame....



The battle site park was about two miles south of the highway, down a quiet backroad, small place, maybe ten acres. First thing you see across the fence by the gate it this, a strange piece of antique steel in the middle of a landscaped star....



Turns out there was one William Lockhart Hunter, late of Kentucky, 26 years old at the time of this battle and the subsequent Goliad massacre, who not only lived to tell the tale but prospered later in life as a resident of Goliad....

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/goliaddiverse3.htm

Hunter made an extraordinary escape from the "Fannin massacre." He was a member of the " New Orleans Grays"; he was shot down at the first fire, and remained for a considerable time unconscious. Upon reviving he could not move his body, as a dead comrade had fallen upon him. Being very weak from the loss of blood, he extricated himself with difficulty, and discovered that he had been stripped of his clothing, retaining only undershirt and drawers.

He summoned all his strength for one supreme effort to reach the river, and nearly failed in doing so. He submerged himelf in the water, and remained in that position all day. At night he crossed the river and struck out in an easterly direction. He came to a small stream the next morning, upon the banks of which he remained nearly all day, suffering excruciating pains from his wounds, and being rendered weak from the loss of blood and hunger.

He finally made another start, and soon came to another stream, and in following the course of this he came across his own tracks where he had crossed before. He then took down the creek, and came to a house, near the Coletto, where he found some Mexicans who could speak a few words of English, and received of them some clothing and food.

These people treated him with the utmost kindness and did all that they could to alleviate his pains. The owner of the jacal, Juan Reyna, had previously lived at the Goliad crossing, but had removed to avoid the unwelcome visits of the soldiers, who were continually passing between Goliad and Victoria.

With the aid of these Good Samaritans Hunter speedily recovered sufficient strength to resume his journey, when Señor Reyna himself accompanied him to the house of Mrs. Margaret Wright, wife of David R. Wright, five miles above Victoria, on the Guadalupe River....

She nursed Hunter with a mother's care, and sheltered him from the Mexicans until after the battle of San Jacinto. This statement I have from the lips of Judge Hunter himself, who now resides in Goliad, near the spot or that most terrible episode in his life.

Hunter had returned in subsequent decades and marked the site of the battle with a pile of rocks. In 1894, eight years after Hunter's death, a local landowner name of Sol Parks, concerned the exact spot would be forgotten, marked the spot with the cotton gin screw still there today.

The accuracy of Hunter's recollection was much more recently supported by a thorough archaeological exploration, the story told by 415 musket balls; .69 cal (Charleville and/or Springfield) for the Americans and .75 (Brown Bess)for the Mexicans (the following photos from the small but very good museum at the site)...



I was at first surprised that a single marker like that could mark a whole battle, but then I saw how small Fannin's formation really was; 250 men in a square, three deep (no doubt straight out of the Duke of Wellington's playbook at Waterloo). Subtracting the artillerymen at the four corners that gives a front line of no more than 20 men on each face of the square.

If figured 25 yards on a side, at it turned out that enclosed more area than that recalled in another survivor's account (same link)....

We drew our wagons into a cluster, formed ourselves into an oblong circle around them, and posted our artillery in positions to defend it: the circle was about 49 feet of shortest central diameter, and about 60 feet of longest diameter.

It was now 1 o'clock, P. M., at which time we were attacked on all sides by the enemy, with a brisk fire of musketry: we were ordered not to fire, until the word of command was given, in order to draw the enemy within rifle-shot. We reserved our fire for about ten minutes, and several were wounded in our ranks previous to our firing.

Two photos I took in the museum....





250 men corralled into that small space in the early afternoon; nowhere to run, no cover, no water, fully one in four of them dead or seriously wounded by the end of the day. Cold drizzle that night, enough to chill but not enough to drink, no fires possible because of rifle fire from the surrounding force. More than 100 enemy dead and wounded out in the darkness surrounding them.

Birdwatcher