The Shouting Sentry

The Alamo very nearly slept through the start of its own last battle. Santa Anna had timed the assault for the small hours precisely to catch the garrison in their blankets, and the three Texian pickets posted out in the dark were killed or overrun before they could fire a warning. What bought the defenders their few seconds was the noise of the attackers themselves — as the columns closed, Mexican soldiers broke into cheers of "¡Viva Santa Anna!", and a sentry on the wall caught the sound. The cry went up inside the mission — "The Mexicans are coming!" — and men rolled out of sleep and ran for the walls in the last moments before the columns reached them.

King & Country's figure is that sentry — a Tennessean of Crockett's company down on one knee, his long rifle grounded upright in one hand while the other cups his mouth to shout the warning. He wears a pale fringed buckskin hunting frock and a dark fur cap, with beaded leggings and moccasins in the frontier style. He makes a natural pair with Santa Anna's Shouting Soldier — the very cheers he has just heard coming out of the dark — and belongs alongside David Crockett and the Backwoods Rifleman in a diorama of the garrison waking to the assault.

Model: RTA153 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set