This book is mostly about the massacre at iSandlwana on January 22 1879, which claimed more than 1,300 lives on the British side. But I came to it, as I suspect many readers will, largely because I wanted to know more about Rorke’s Drift, the heroic defence depicted in the gripping 1964 movie Zulu and a beacon of light after the darkest military disaster of the Victorian age.
In the film, iSandlwana is the backdrop to the battle at Rorke’s Drift the following day in which 150 men, most of them from B Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Foot, held out against 3,500 Zulus. But in this book the struggle for the little South African mission station is something of a sideshow, despite the contemporary belief that victory there may have halted a full scale Zulu invasion of Natal.
It would be foolhardy to quarrel with Ian Knight’s historical assessment of the relative importance of the two engagements. The author is an expert on the Zulu War and this book is the product of 30 years of research. But I do take him to task for not giving us what it says on the tin.
Whether the subtitle, which allows Rorke’s Drift equal billing with iSandlwana, was the publisher’s idea, or that of the author, I expected to read more about it. The description of the fighting there is strangely flat as if Knight resents devoting even the pages he does to it, although he concedes more VCs might have been awarded on top of the record 11 which were. So I’m tempted to recommend watching the film – again – if you want a refresher course. Aside from a few minor details, changed for dramatic effect, it appears to be gratifyingly accurate.
But that is a personal quibble. This is an otherwise excellent account of the wider conflict which saw two such diverse cultures as Imperial Britain and Zulu tribesmen crashing into each other with tragic consequences for both. Wright is particularly good on the Zulus; their rituals, their politics and their military acumen.
Much was made at the time of their barbarity in disembowelling the British dead, yet this was not gratuitous mutilation but a practical necessity. Bodies bloated quickly in the hot sun and were split to release the gases – and to enable their earthly spirits to leave. True, some soldiers had their bearded chins hacked off and taken as trophies, but most warriors were disgusted by this.
The Zulus were armed with rifles but they were ancient and unreliable pieces, and their assegais were more deadly. The British had the latest Martini-Henrys which would always ultimately triumph. A trained soldier could manage 12 rounds a minute at a range of 730 metres and volley fire was devastating. The experienced men of the 24th were above average shots so it is no wonder 1,000 Zulus were killed and wounded at Rorke’s Drift while only 15 of the defenders were slain outright.
As for the characters known to us from the film, Private Hook was not a hard-drinking Eastender but a teetotal Gloucestershire lad. Lieutenant Gonville ‘Gunny’ Bromhead did indeed come from a distinguished military family but, until Rorke’s Drift, was not considered much good at his ancestral vocation. “Bromhead is a great favourite in his regiment and a capital fellow at everything except soldiering,” wrote a fellow officer.
The engineer, Lieutenant John Chard, a combat virgin, rose to the occasion just as Stanley Baker does in the movie, and enjoyed the fame it brought him afterwards, posing for paintings and dining with Queen Victoria. But the real hero was the acting assistant commissary James Dalton, who persuaded Chard that the only way to survive was to stand and fight.
The British commander, Lord Chelmsford, could not escape blame for the iSandlwana debacle and his career never recovered, but he helped to ensure the legend of Rorke’s Drift by insisting “that little gleam of sunshine” that was Chard’s report of the defence was sent home at the earliest opportunity. The newspapers of the day took the tale up with gusto, to the surprise of the military. “They had endured a serious defeat and been repulsed from Zululand,” says Wright. “And Rorke’s Drift was little more than an afterthought.” But he accepts that it would be a simplification to suggest “that the high number of awards was deliberately sanctioned to distract public attention from the failure of iSandlwana.”
As Major Francis Clery, who chose the site of the ill-fated iSandlwana camp, wrote home: “The fact is that until the accounts came out from England nobody had thought of the Rorke’s Drift affair except as one in which the private soldiers of the 24th behaved so well. For as a matter of fact they all stayed there to defend the place because there was nowhere else to go, and in defending it they fought most determinedly.”
So whatever you think of the morality of Britain’s subjugation of the Zulu nation, or the motives of the few who fought at Rorke’s Drift, this was British soldiery at its heroic best.
