TEXAS INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT HAD STATE'S FIRST JIHADIST

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

(The surrender of Col. James Walker Fannin Jr. on March 27, 1836 and the subsequent execution in Goliad of him and his force of some 344 men under orders from Santa Ana after the Battle of Coleto Creek in the struggle for Texas Independence was one of the darker moments in that conflict. After their capture, Herman Ehrenberg, a native of Germany who came to Texas with the New Orleans Grays gave an account of the suicide bomber with that unit who detonated a keg of powder after Fannin surrendered.)

From the Ehrenberg Diary
Published 1841

"Inwardly deeply humiliated, which showed itself on our faces, we walked up and down in our camp. casting ugly looks at Fannin and the others that had voted for the capitulation. Some sat lost in thought with eyes fixed stark on the ground and envied those who had died during the battle.

"Despair stood on the features of many of the men, who only too well foresaw our fate. Especially one American named Johnson made himself conspicuous because of his anger. Gnashing his teeth, he stamped on the ground. Thick clouds of smoke from his glowing Havana twirled about his head.

"Like the smoke from a steamboat cloud after cloud streamed from his mouth, and quicker and quicker they issued forth. Denser and denser did the cloud mass become until it seldom revealed the head, in which now, as it seemed, a terrible plan was being worked up.

"Curiosity had brought many Mexicans into our camp, and in company with the Greys they wandered over the field covered with debris and corpses. Nervously they glanced at the stern grey cannon, which had always been frightful to them, as if they were still afraid of this, although now unarmed, enemy that had driven their dried up soldiers from house to house in San Antonio.

"Group after group of the Mexicans crowded over into our camp to see the pretty guns that we had surrendered. Everybody was in fervent emotion in that the ones possessed with malicious joy of victory and the other with shameful despondency, and I have said what the Greys felt.

"Suddenly a light flashed through the misty morning, a dull report followed, and a terrible jarring of the air was combined with it. And then deadly stillness fell over the prairie, which was again covered with wounded men.

"Impenetrable suffocating smoke, held down by the damp air, rolled heavily over the dark, green prairie. Wildly the horses of several of the enemy officers reared up and frantic with fear rushed out with flying tails into the safe distance. All had either done so themselves or were thrown on the ground by the concussion and after a while, we still half stunned, went toward the place where the explosion seemed to have broken loose.

"The powder magazine had disappeared; only a part of the lower framework remained. Around the place lay several men wounded, although not severely, and about 15 yards away from the wagon lay a black body that barely looked like one of a human being. It was alive but not able to speak. It was burnt black like the color of a negro, and it was impossible to tell who the unfortunate one was. Our glances wandered searching around; the roll was called and the missing man was Johnson.

"No one had noticed him before. Was it an accident or was it really his plan to kill himself and as many Mexicans as possible at the same time? At what he considered the favorable moment, he must have ignited the magazine. But as the lid was closed, the main jar went upward and in this way the terrible plan missed its purpose."