Free Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys by Neil Oliver

remained vulnerable to the snipers in the main building, but Danjou did not have enough men to risk trying to draw them out. Again and again enemy horsemen rushed at the barricades and each time the Legionnaires drove them back.
    Now a Mexican officer, Lieutenant Ramón Laine, approached the walls under the flag of truce. The Legionnaires held their fire and Laine was permitted to offer terms for the defenders’ honorable surrender. The encircling force numbered 2,000—what hope did the Legionnaires have in the face of such odds? Danjou went to each of his men in turn and told them he would accept the terms if just one Legionnaire thought it the right thing to do. Each man told Danjou what the captain already knew, that they would rather fight. Laine was informed of the decision and sent on his way.
    The sun was hot now as the morning advanced. The Mexicans came on. Milan was enraged by the refusal of his terms and the force of these fresh attacks was greater than before. Again the enemy was driven back but this time at a terrible cost. Captain Danjou had fallen—shot and mortally wounded. The bullet probably came from a sniper, seizing his moment while Danjou rallied his men in the face of the latest attack. He died there in the courtyard, but not before winning from his men their vow to fight on. And so it was and so they did.
    Lieutenant Vilain, the hated pay officer, now stepped up into command. “Mes enfants!” he cried. “I command you now. We may die, but never will surrender!”
    By now Camarón was besieged not just by cavalry but by infantry soldiers, 1,200 of them and crack shots all. The firing was as hot asthe day. The sun rose ever higher in the sky and so the suffering of the defenders increased. Within the walls musket smoke coiled and hung like a shroud. Muskets grew so hot with incessant firing that it was almost impossible to hold them. There was no water in any of the buildings and a run to the well in the courtyard, into the sights of the snipers, was to invite certain death. It was said later that the men of the 3rd Company were reduced to drinking their own blood and urine before it was over. Again Milan offered terms of surrender. This time it was Vilain who went from man to man, asking what was in their hearts. They had fought for Danjou, they said, and now they fought for Vilain. There would be no surrender.
    Some time in the middle of the afternoon a bullet took Vilain. History does not record whether he was loved or loathed at the end. In any case the Legionnaires fought for him and died beside him. What is true is that Lieutenant Maudet stepped up now and asked the survivors if they would surrender or fight on. They chose to fight, of course.
    Now came a desperate attack by the Mexican infantry to test the defenders’ mettle once more. Steady and disciplined fire from the remaining 70-caliber muskets drove the Mexicans back.
    Unable to clear the defenders from the hacienda, the besieging soldiers set fire to the place instead. Now the smoke and flames of burning straw and timber were added to the heat of the sun. By late afternoon Maudet commanded no more than a dozen Legionnaires and they stood or lay in a manmade hell of thirst and fire and dying.
    Beyond the walls they could hear the fury of Colonel Milan as he demanded of his officers how it could be that 2,000 men and cavalry had not yet accounted for the defenders of Camarón? There was no answer to be had.
    Finally, with bugles sounding, rifles blazing fire and men howling, the Mexicans began a final desperate push. Maudet and his survivorsmade it into an outbuilding. The officer looked around at his fellows. There were five men still alive beside him—Corporals Berg and Maine and Legionnaires Constantin, Leonard and Wensel. Between them they had a handful of ammunition. Still the attackers came on, frenzied now as the defenders pulled back from one ruined outbuilding to another.
    At bay, in a lull in the firing, Maudet looked into