â„–4208528[Quote]
John Riley slipped away from the American army facing Matamoros in April 1846 and went over to the Mexican side.
He was an Irishman from Clifden, in Connemara, a former British Army noncommissioned officer who had enlisted with the Americans in Michigan the previous September.
General Pedro de Ampudia made him a lieutenant.
Riley built a unit of artillerymen, most of them Irish Catholic immigrants, with Germans and many others among them, that grew to about 700 men.
Riley wrote that their green flag carried Saint Patrick, "the Harp of Erin, the Shamrock upon a green field."
The Mexicans called them the San Patricios.
They worked heavy guns at Monterrey and at Buena Vista, where about a third of them fell.
Every man among them who had deserted knew what the American army did with deserters it caught.
At Churubusco, on August 20, 1847, the Americans captured eighty-five of them.
Courts-martial at Tacubaya and San Angel sentenced forty-eight to hang.
Riley was spared, because he had deserted before Congress declared war.
Instead he received fifty lashes on his bare back, a brand of the letter D for deserter, and an iron yoke around his neck to wear for as long as the war lasted.
On September 13, thirty condemned men stood under a gallows facing the castle of Chapultepec, where the Americans were attacking.
Colonel William Harney waited for the American flag to rise over the castle, then gave the order.
â„–4208529[Quote]
Das all for 2day folx
â„–4208545[Quote]
Up
â„–4208561[Quote]
>>4208525 (OP)soviets vvqn BTW