July 2000

I think that Vietnam was a major catalyst in how Americans of that generation forever after viewed war, and the Alamo. I know that my own perceptions about the Alamo shifted when I saw footage of our jungle war on the evening news, especially of the GIs who bled to death in that wet and muddy environment and, while never losing a battle there, could not seem to win the war as it was being tentatively waged by our government.

This Southeast Asian war was not John Wayne's pretty "Alamo" waróand I had seen "The Alamo" at least a dozen times by 1968óa Hollywood war in which the defenders were largely whiskey-guzzling clowns, in which they casually strolled the parapets without getting their heads torn off by Mexican guns, and in which the battle itself was fought under a blazingly blue Todd-AO sky. Wayne, who had never seen real war, didn't get it right in "The Green Berets" either: his battles were waged in a kind of Cloud Cuckooland not unlike the history paintings of the 18th century, in which great men died grandly and theatrically. His Travis must die like a D'Artagnan, his Bowie must die only after taking out ten of the enemy, his Crockett must not simply fall but rather blow himself to atoms. (The best review of "Green Berets" I ever read was in a letter from my brother, who was then stationed at Ton Son Nhut Airbase in Saigon. The theater in which he saw the film in was packed with fellow servicemen; and they roared with laughter all the way through it).

The irony is that Vietnam actually did a favor for Alamo scholarship: most men and women of common sense now approached the subject with a more analytical, less apologetic eye; and as a result the horizons of research expanded, thus bringing into sharper focus the true nature of the 13-day siege and battle. This is why the idea of Davy Crockett surviving the battle and being executed no longer sounded so strange or heretical; or why the evidence of defenders jumping the walls to save their skins when all was lost is no longer a shock. John Wayne himself might have joined the latter group, had he been there. Or, had he served in Vietnam in the late 60s, he might also have laughed at a film like "The Green Berets".

War is among the most dramatic and brutal and horrifying experiences in Man's history: this is not news. But we must be careful not to trivialize it when we explain it to our children. Gratefully, many scholars (though unfortunately not all) are now dealing with the history of the Alamo in a non-junvenile manner; and perhaps it is no coincidence that the Alamo story has never been as fascinating, or as disturbing, or as moving as it is today.

Gary S. Zaboly

An interesting question. I have a couple of thoughts. First, I think that recent histories are taking more time to truly define the social and economic make up of the defenders. Unlike the Disney movie, it appears to me that the defenders were made up of a diverse and complex group. For example, the radical war party group (Travis and his followers), newly arrived adventurers (Crockett) and Mexican citizens seeking a return to the rights of the Constitution of 1824 (Bowie and others both hispanic and white). I would like to see other comments on this. A second thought is that I have come to understand that the defenders really never knew that the Texas Congress had declared for independence. I believe that the defenders were fighting as Mexican citizens against their own leadership for a return to rights granted to them under the Constitution of 1824. It is my understanding that is the reason that the defenders' battle flag had "1824" on it. Thus, these men appeared to have died as Mexican citizens fighting for rights as Mexican citizens. I would also like to see some comments from other readers on this as well.

Jeff Yusen

The of the last 50 years have tried to undermine the heroes that must of us grew up with. Being a baby boomer, I was in love with the Crockett legend. The more I read, I see nothing wrong with Davy or others surrendering. Lots of people see this as an attempt to discredit their heroism. In the post-Watergate era ,where we've got to know every wart of our heroes life, this controversy seems natural. I disagree with the tearing down of heroes because we are judging them with 21st century criterion. I'm glad to see the Tejanos getting their due as are the African-American. This is part of the new multiculturalism. Lets celebrate our heroes and add to them not subtract from them.

Michael Wilson

Whereas I agree with the last paragraph of Mr. Zaboly's contribution, I am less inclined than he to believe that EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN who took the time to watch the evening news during the Vietnam conflict understood the full impact of its consequences. His statements also presuppose that EVERYONE watching the Vietnam conflict on the evening news knew IN DEPTH the events and consequences of the Battle of the Alamo, and that they were making analytical, objective and philosophical comparisons between Vietnam and the 1836 Texas/Mexican issues, giving them at the end a newly found awareness of both conflicts that they had not held before. It would be wonderful if our ENTIRE citizenry were that well informed and that they were equally objective about the issues that affect their lives. I am very happy though to know that at least for Mr. Zaboly watching the evening news has given him that breakthrough.

I am more inclined to agree with Mr. Yussen's opinion that many of "the defenders" might not have been aware that the goal was independence. Town meetings were being held throughout, and more than likely the issues at hand were topics of discussion, but can we assume that everyone attended those town meetings? There's another thought when we talk about "the defenders". Might it not be important to keep in mind not to clump all defenders into a single entity? There were two classes of "defenders" - residents vs. volunteers, some of whom arrived in Texas AFTER the Alamo, but are still called defenders. It is more likely that the volunteers were less informed about the 1836 issues than were the resident Texians/Tejanos. Return to the Constitution of 1824 was certainly an initial initiative, but it did change to Independence, and at least residents might have had a clue about that. Volunteers came filled with the patriotic rhetoric, the jingoism they heard from the soapboxes in their respective states. Land and a new life are strong attractions. It's thanks to the more objective and inclusive research being done, based on documentary evidence and responsible reporting on the part of today's historians that new awareness has come about, and hopefully will continue to come about. Myths can be fun and played with back and forth, and they certainly bring about many an after dinner discussion, but if myth and jingoism is all there is, and if fact, or as near fact as can be obtained is not offeredÖwellÖwhat else is there to say?

Dora Elizondo Guerra

From: Gary Zaboly
Date: 07/06/ 2000

Miss Guerra misses the very simple point I was making. I did not intend to correlate the POLITICAL issues of the Texas War for Independence with the Vietnam War; but rather to note that Vietnam caused many Americans–most certainly not ALL, that being too broad a brush to paint with–to view WAR itself in a much different light. No longer could thinking and feeling Americans see the shedding of their soldiers' blood as the kind of convenient sacrificial commodity it had been thought of in the past. Just look at the endless debates in the U.S. Senate before it was finally agreed upon, by a close vote, to send our troops to the Gulf to fight Saddam Hussein, or how swiftly we pulled out of Somalia after our Rangers were badly mauled in a Mogadishu street battle, or how we abruptly ended our presence in Beirut following that disastrous car bombing of our soldiers' barracks.

Politically, obviously Vietnam did not alter the way many people looked back at the issues concerning Texas and Mexico in 1835 and 1836. From the vantagepoint of better understanding the nature of war, however, and how absurd so many films were that depicted war before Vietnam, it made all the difference in the world.

Gary S. Zaboly

From: Steffen White
Date: 07/08/2000

Each generation must not only learn history for itself but re-interpret history for itself. Americans today live in a completely different world from the one existing in 1836. Then, the country was not quite half-settled, and Indians and Mexicans were seen as lethal competitors for the land. The "winning of the West" was seen as our "Manifest Destiny." Nor could the country have become what it is without a series of deadly military adventures–against the Indians, the Mexicans and, finally, between the North and South.

Today, the United States stretches literally "from sea to shining sea," and Mexicans and Indians are seen as fellow citizens with rich, unique pasts. Thus, many Americans, even while appreciating what their nation has become, feel guilt-ridden over this.

The battle of the Alamo lies at the heart of the struggle for the West. It represents not only a ferocious struggle between Anglos and Mexicans at that time, but heralds the events leading to the Mexican War and a far greater loss of territory and influence for Mexico. As Hispanics come to form a greater part of the American population, their growing social and economic influence will inevitably color the way Anglo-Mexican history is seen and understood.

Steffen White

From: Brian Huberman
Date: 07/15/2000

To Gary Zaboly,

Interesting observations about how Vietnam changed our way of understading & imaging war. [John] Wayne of course made The Alamo prior to that war & his film really conforms to the clarity of a World Wart II sensibility…that of Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr. & Jr. etc.

That aside, I'm interested in [a] better understanding how the Vietnam conflict (as presented to the world via TV & newsprint) has impacted your own art. In particular, the illustrations used by Stephen Hardin in his book Texian Illiad.

Yours,

Brian Huberman

In response to Brian Huberman's submission to the War Room, it's fairly clear how the "living room war" that was Vietnam impacted both my own as well as many Americans' attitudes about the nature of war (and, in effect, how I forever after approached military art). It changed the concept of war as something very cut and dry, or black and white, or romantic and always honorable.

During World War II, there were no newsreel films screened in theaters that recorded any spoken dissension or grumblings by our GIs on campaign; nor did you see torn limbs and severed heads lying in roads, or soldiers drenched in blood from head to foot.

During Vietnam, you saw a network reporter huddling with Marines behind a wall in Hue as they engaged the NVA for control of the city. You heard the reporter ask one of them what he thought of all this. "I think it stinks," was the soldier's reply, who then stood up to fire an automatic round over the wall.

You could also see, while eating dinner with the TV on, a South Vietnamese officer shoot a captured VC infiltrator point-blank in the head; and the network did not censor the fountain of blood that suddenly shot out of the prisoner's skull as he fell to earth.

This was nothing like the splendid "Charge of the Light Brigade" as Hollywood and Errol Flynn had filmed it in 1936. It was more like Tony Richardson's cynical and gory treatment of 1968, one in which senile or irresponsible leaders kept sending their men into the jaws of death with little purpose and even less support; and in which the survivors came limping back armless, blinded, or holding back their entrails.

Of course, if I thereafter depicted the REAL conditions of warfare in my art, it would be unpublishable. But I have little patience for the school of military art that has reduced war to a glorious defense of regimental colors, or as an excuse for showing healthy, smiling men dressed in pretty uniforms marching off to noble war.

Prior to Vietnam, my Alamo artwork essentially reflected the John Wayne and Walt Disney viewpoints: colorful blood and thunder depictions in supremely heroic tableaux (Tiomkin's score rushing through my head all the while) in which brave men sacrificed themselves willingly on the altar of a just, and unambiguous, cause. After Vietnam, that very simplistic concept was forever changed in my mind, which explains why I could not again illustrate the Alamo in any substantial way until the 1980s.

Now enough time has passed to enable me to appreciate Wayne and Disney again on their own terms—as fantasies to be enjoyed in the manner one enjoys "King Kong"—while still better understanding the real nature of combat. Without doubt, the old concept of war was simpler, more stirring, and even "fun" at times. But in honor of all the men and women who have fallen in wars, especially during the last century, and to prepare those who will yet become engaged in it, we must endeavor never again to be so untruthful and frivolous when we portray it.

Gary S. Zaboly

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