Barely two months had passed since the tragedy at Goliad: the cold-blooded massacre of some 300 Texian men… ordered by General Santa Anna himself.
It was early summer. The revolution was over. The Republic had been won. But here, the charred bodies - hundreds of them - remained. Left unburied, staring skyward; a ghastly, reminder of the horror of the war.
It was June 3. And Thomas Rusk, a general in the Texas Army, now passes through Goliad with his troops… through here. And it was thenthey made the awful discovery.
General Rusk immediately organized a proper military burial for the dead soldiers. Standing at the mass grave, he gave a final farewell:
CHARACTER VOICE: Gen. Thomas
Rusk
In that mass of remains and fragments of
bones, many a mother might see her son; many a sister her brother; and many a
wife her own beloved and affectionate husband. But we have a consolation yet to
offer them: their murderers sank in death on the prairies of San Jacinto.
Yet somehow… somehow, even after the burial by General Rusk, the gravesite was almost forgotten.
The year is 1930 - nearly one hundred years after their burial. And a group of Boy Scouts walking past notices something…. odd; a rock pile, seemingly out of place. They explore it, and find… bones!
The mysterious mass grave of Goliad… had been found!
In 1936 - exactly 100 years after the revolution - the state of Texas built a fitting monument here, at the grave, to honor these men who died in the cause of liberty.