Folks, I want to tell you a story
About some brave men, men who gave
          their lives
For the cause of Freedom, men who
          left wives
And children, so that people like you
          and me
Could breathe air rich with the glory
Of human sacrifice given for their
          fellow
Man: --- Folks, the story of the Alamo!

      In Eighteen hundred and Thirty-
          six,
In San Antonio, Texas,
A hundred and eighty-some-odd men,
In late winter of that year, would try
          to fend
Off some four thousand Mexican
          troops
At an old, former Catholic church
          called the Alamo.
Headed by the shrimp, Generalissimo
Santa Anna, the Mexicans, camped in
          groups
Around the makeshift fortress, were
          determined
To capture it, and it concerned them
Not whether the takeo'er was done
          thru surrender
Or destruction. The Texans would
          defender her,
Howe'er, down to the very last man,
And it would be the Alamo's last stand.
          ---

     The cause of the battle may be
          stated briefly
For it was a reason as old as
          Humanity:
A tyrant declares the freedoms of old
          are abolished
And his new powers must be
          acknowledged:
The Constitution of Eighteen twenty-
          four
Was swept away and replaced with a
          dictator sore:
The men of the Alamo then showed
         their defiance,
With God and Right for their Reliance.
         ---

     Now, tho the situation was
        hopeless,
And the Alamo was certain to fall,
Three fiercely independent men
        would stand tall,
And lead the defenders, and with a
         boldness
Hardly equaled in the annals of
         Human History,
They all valorously engaged the
         hateful enemy.
        
     Jim Bowie was there, knife and all,
Leading a rag-tag band of volunteers,
And tho he was sickly, bedrid, too, his
         peers
Would stand by him and come
         running to his call.
     Davy Crockett, a legend in his own
         time,
From Tennessee he came to fight
         alongside
The Texan Revolutionaries,
And become one of Law and Order's
         luminaries.
     William Travis, at age twenty-six,
         he
Was the young colonel, who, with the
         fateful breath
Of courage, laid down the sentiment
         tingly
Of all those Patriots with the fearless
         words, "Victory or Death!"

     Now, come Sunday, the Sixth of
         March, ere dawn,
In ice-cold weather, the hell-bent foe,
Prodded by a pulsating but fruitless
         siege
That caused not one of those gallants
         to cringe,
Launched a mindless, all-out assault
         on the Alamo.
With cannons and rifles flaring, with
         swords drawn,
Heroically, the men inside the battered
         mission
Were putting scores of Mexicans out of
         commission
As they greeted the tumultuous
         onslaught.
O! the bloodletting that was spilt as
         they fought!
The tidal wave of red uniforms scaling
The walls and being pushed back! --
         Failing! -- Failing! --
But then succeeding! as their great
         numbers
O'ercame the valiant but
         undermanned resistance.
Like an army of ants, the prodigious,
         pernicious persistence
Of the Mexicans paid off, as the
         Alamo's cumbers
They poured o'er. Hand-to-hand
         combat ensued,
 Until every single Texan stalwart was
         pursued,
And kilt! For ninety minutes, the Earth
         shook
On her axis, as the early mornin' Sun
         would brook
No interference of his sharp gaze
That on the momentous event he sent
         his rays
Faithful upon for want of deserved
         praise.

     The end had finally come: all the
         Texan
Warriors had died at the hands of the
         Mexican
Hostiles, but they did not perish
In vain! for, a deathblow was
         administered
On the abhorrent adversary --
         considered
One of the most repugnantly feverish
Armies e'er assembled -- in a
         Samsonian form,
For, for each Texan who the Jordan
         crossed and the Gates of Trust
Passed through, eight Mexicans bit the
         dust: ---
The Alamo fell, 'tis true, but Texas was
         born!

Now, my friends, no story about the
         Alamo would be complete
If the battle of the following month
         'twern't
Included: At the San Jacinto,
The Mexicans were taking a siesta,
When the Texan Army, under the
         tactical sheet
Of surprise, stormed them, and what
         that resting outfit heard,
Besides the fire of arms, was a war cry,
         cried
Louder and more powerful than that
         rising, sleepy-eyed
Belligerent could have e'er dreamed
         of, for --- lo! ---
It 'twere the God-like war cry of ... ----
         "Remember the Alamo!"

                         ---rmjt