One hundred seventy-five years ago this morning, the Alamo fell.

We’ve remembered it ever since.

The story is a cornerstone of Texas history: With Santa Anna’s army storming toward San Antonio, 189 Texas revolutionaries ignore orders to abandon the Alamo.

They hold off the enemy for 13 days, then die as martyrs for liberty. And those 13 precious days give Sam Houston time to prepare his army for victory at San Jacinto.

Thirteen days of glory. Remember the Alamo. And so we do.

The thing is, the story isn’t that cut-and-dried.

The first movie I recall seeing was the 1960 production of “The Alamo.” It was faithful to the traditional Anglo version of the story: A handful of fearless Texans battle hordes of Mexican soldiers to pave the way for liberty.

What I’ve come to realize in the half-century since is that the reality of the Alamo is much more nuanced than John Wayne’s movie. But it’s still a grand and inspiring tale.

The Texas soldiers who died at the Alamo were pretty much everyday men. The overwhelming majority were Americans, but also among the defenders were natives of Mexico, England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Wales and Denmark.

Yes, they held convictions about representative government — some more passionately than others — but mostly they had a driving ambition to better their lives. And the guts to try.

If you go beyond the movie scripts and study the biographies of people like David Crockett (no, he didn’t go by “Davy”) and William B. Travis, you find that their presence in Texas was motivated more by ambition than a burning desire to spread democracy.

They saw Texas as a land of immense potential. Understandably, they wanted a piece of that.

For the most part, the Mexicans at the Alamo were rank-and-file emerging-nation soldiers who had the misfortune to serve under one of the most egomaniacal and cutthroat generals in history.

Many were poorly trained conscripts, but others were proud career soldiers. Like most warriors, they did what they were ordered to do with varying degrees of patriotism, expertise and enthusiasm.

Mexico had won its own independence only 15 years earlier, and Mexican pride ran deep. Many Mexicans — especially the corps of educated professional military officers — saw the Texas revolution as a treasonous act against their young nation.

Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was an insufferable dictator who called himself the “Napoleon of the West,” and he took full advantage of his countrymen’s nationalism.

After his brother-in-law lost San Antonio to the Texians — they weren’t called Texans just yet — he vowed to punish the rebels harshly and quickly. Santa Anna would show the rebels and the world that he — and Mexico — were not to be trifled with.

Santa Anna drove his troops to the breaking point, ordering a forced march in winter across hundreds of miles of desert. He moved his army so quickly that he outran his supply lines, leaving hundreds of men exhausted, starving and freezing along the trail. He also outran his heavy artillery, leaving the caissons to trudge along far behind.

Meanwhile, in Texas, there was a split over what to do about the Alamo. The fort held 21 cannon and howitzers — the largest concentration of artillery west of the Mississippi.

It was the Fort Hood of its day and was a major capital resource for the Texas army — or for the Mexicans, if they could retake it.

Holding the fort

The problem was that the Alamo would be hard to defend. Texas Gen. Sam Houston knew this, and wanted to abandon the fort and save its resources for other battles. The commanders of the Alamo — James Clinton Neill, then Jim Bowie and Travis — thought it was strategically important to hold the fort.

Eventually, their school of thought prevailed and Gov. Henry Smith declined Houston’s recommendation to abandon the fort.

The Alamo’s defenders held Santa Anna’s troops at bay for 12 days, sending out pleas for reinforcements and praying all the while that help would arrive soon.

The Napoleon of the West chafed at the resistance and grew weary of waiting for his heavy artillery, which could have knocked down the walls of the fort.

Also, he was concerned about intelligence reports that the Texians were planning an escape — which, of course, would ruin his opportunity to make a grand statement.

The men of the Alamo were running low on food and water, and there were no more reinforcements in sight.

Although some of his senior officers pointed out that the enemy was weakening, and that the Mexican heavy artillery was only a day or so away, Santa Anna was determined to move.

He ordered some 1,800 to 2,400 troops to storm the walls on the morning of the 13th day — March 6, 1836. Ninety horrific minutes later, all 189 Texas soldiers had been killed and about 600 Mexicans lay dead or wounded, with virtually no medical care available.

The Mexicans who survived were hurt, shell-shocked , exhausted and dispirited. It was an extraordinarily heavy price for victory — so heavy that Santa Anna would later lie about his casualties in reports sent back to Mexico City.

News of the fall of the Alamo sent Houston and his ragtag army reeling eastward toward Louisiana. Santa Anna followed, but his troops were weakened by the forced march into Texas and the 13 days of brutality at the Alamo.

When Houston launched a surprise attack at San Jacinto on April 21, the Mexican army was a shadow of its former self. Although they had lost the Battle of the Alamo after 13 days of glory, the Texians won the war in 18 minutes.

A complex tale

So the story of the Alamo isn’t simple. It’s a complex tale of horror and honor, of vanity and principal, of loss and victory. But that complexity reminds us that the characters in the story were truly human. And it makes the heroes even more heroic.

In 1834, two years before his death at the Alamo, Crockett published his personal motto in his autobiography: “I leave this rule for others when I’m dead: Be always sure you’re right — then go ahead.”

The meaning of the Alamo, whether you paint the picture in living color, black and white or shades of gray, is exactly that:

Do what you believe is right, even if it means putting everything on the line. And even if you won’t live to see the outcome.

That is why we remember the Alamo. And that is why the Alamo is worth remembering.

Donnis Baggett is publisher of the Waco Tribune-Herald . His e-mail address is dbaggett@wacotrib.com.