THE ALAMO, UNVARNISHED
It's the first week in March. You've just survived a blue Texas winter with little to eat, no coat and just a wool blanket to make the difference between misery and hypothermia. You are one of the lucky ones...you have shoes. And now gathered around you, so close you can smell their breakfast cooking each day, are 4,000 men who daydream of putting a bayonet through your gut.
187. That number was set by Amelia Williams during her doctoral research in the late 1920s. We always knew the number was small, certainly less than 250, but she made it exact. All it took was poring over, one by one, tens of thousands of documents and manuscripts in the State Library and the General Land Office, as well as private collections.