1879: The Bloodiest Battles Of The Anglo-Zulu War | History Of Warfare | Timeline

The British invasion of Zululand had all of the hallmarks of a classic Victorian military expedition. On a slim pretext, a strong British force was advancing upon a numerically superior but outgunned native force. Years of experience suggested that it was to be only a matter of time before the Union flag once again flew in triumph over a defeated foe. Within a few short days, this confident prediction was to be shattered by the last army of a proud warrior nation in what was to prove the most serious military reverse ever inflicted upon the British army appears, from a modern perspective, to carry not the faintest trace of legality or moral justification. But the rules of diplomacy under which Sir Henry Bartle Edward Frere was operating, although separated in time from us by only a hundred years or so, were so completely at odds with our modern values that they belonged to an altogether different age. The age of the British Empire. Despite the colourful and romantic associations which images of red-coated heroes can still stir in the blood of the British, the reality of foreign policy under the Victorian regime was often as brutal and barbaric as the fierce conquests of the Roman Empire or the worst outrages of Napoleon. Queen Victoria's Empire had been founded upon military strength and its continued expansion, even in 1879, was still dependent upon the use of naked force. As Governor of the King, Sir Bartle Frere had inherited the difficult task of bringing the fragmented South African colonies and states into a single confederation under the rule of the British Crown. He knew only too well that such a task could not be achieved by even the most skilful tact and diplomacy. As the events of the intervening 20 years were to prove, the only way in which the various Boer republics and independent native kingdoms could be brought under British sway was by subjugation through force of arms, culminating in the bloody Boer War of 1899. I think to understand why the Zulu War took place, we have to look a bit about the context in which 19th century Africa was being organised. There were really two sets of clashing problems. First of all, there was a clashing problem between different native tribes, but on top of that there is the international rivalries which we have to think about. It wasn't just the British of course creating an empire in Africa. As far as South Africa was concerned, we had the Dutch Boer Republic, so the Transvaal and the Orient Free State, because that would later in the century lead to the Boer Wars. Then there was, just to the north of the Zulu land, they had the Portuguese who also were having claims on Zulu territories. And there was a whole complete complex of international problems between different European powers superimposed on top of the local native troubles. And of course we have to look at what Britain was about in all this, but we are the prime movers of this war. There was a great concept which people like Cecil Rhodes were preaching at this time, that there was going to be, they hoped, a Cape to Cairo railway right down Africa therefore, going all the way through British territory. And it was going therefore to be necessary for us to drive a corridor right up the centre of Africa, and that would involve in part taking over parts of Zulu land. That was the big dream, which of course was never going to come into fruition. But these are the kind of problems which in my opinion make strife, warfare, whatever scale, inevitable. Frere knew that there could only ever be one outcome from such a war, the total British victory. Despite the many subsequent setbacks, this analysis was to prove correct. In reality, the Zulu people could never hope to defeat the resources of the British empire. Much of the evidence from the Zulu and Bantu wars against the Boers justified this analysis, as the Boers had often defeated an enemy which vastly outnumbered them. If you love history, then you'll love History Hit. Our extensive library of documentary features everything from the ancient origins of our earliest ancestors to the daring mission to sink the Bismarck. History Hit has hundreds of exclusive documentaries with unrivaled access to the world's best historians. We're committed to bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else. Sign up now for a free trial and timeline fans get 50% off their first three months. Just be sure to use the code TIMELINE at checkout. In 1836 at the Battle of Vegkop, less than 200 Boers armed with the old-style muzzle-loading muskets inflicted a crushing defeat on 5,000 Matabele warriors, killing 1,700 in the process with the loss of only two men. At Blood River in 1838, 3,000 Zulus were slain by a Boer force who in return lost not one single man. Such was the lethal superiority of gunpowder over native weaponry. Faced with this stark scenario, it seems almost incomprehensible in the late 20th century that the official representative of the reputedly civilizing British Empire could also be capable of the pig-headed tactics of the school bully. There seems to be no alternative description for Frere's undignified search for any pretext for war with the Zulu people and their king, Katswe, seen here after his final defeat by the British. The colonial office, struggling with a war in Afghanistan and faced with the prospect of further conflict with Russia, vetoed the proposed invasion of Zululand. However, communications between England and the Cape took some considerable time and as such the governor on the spot enjoyed a degree of independence of action which allowed him to react to local events with the use of force if necessary. Frere used his own authority and the flaws in the communication system to act against the wishes of the colonial office and to his own ends. He thought he had finally found the excuse he had sought to justify war in July 1878 when a border commission was set up to arbitrate between the Boers of the Transvaal and the Zulus on the exact position of the border between the two regions. Both sides claimed ownership of large tracts of land in Natal and Frere felt confident that the commission would naturally come down on the side of the Boers. He intended to use this judgment as the springboard for immediate action to clear the Zulu people from the disputed territory. Frere anticipated that in the process the Zulu king would be provoked beyond restraint and war would inevitably result. He continued to lay these plans despite the expressed wishes of Her Majesty's government. It came as a great shock to Frere therefore when the border commission found in favor of the Zulus. Not one to be discouraged by legal or moral claims, Frere hedged the settlement with some additional terms which had nothing to do with the dispute but which he knew would prove unacceptable to the Zulus. Chief among these demands was an order for the effective disbandment of the Zulu army, an impossible request to make of a warrior nation. The army was the foundation of the Zulu state and the end of the army effectively meant the end of the nation. To ensure there could be no mistake this time, Frere allowed only 30 days for the Zulu king Katsueo to comply with his unreasonable demands. This contemporary image shows the delivery of the British ultimatum. On the 31st day after the delivery of the ultimatum, British forces preemptorily entered Zulu land. Frere had achieved his aim and the fate of the Zulu nation was sealed. Of course the case against Sir Harry Frere is complex. He had a dream of course, he was one of those individuals who thought they were going to influence history and there's no doubt I think we have to admit he had it in for the Zulus. He said sooner or later we will fight the Zulus and we know that General Chelmsford agreed with him so the senior military and the senior political man were acting in total accord on this particular matter. Sir Frere in my opinion has been made of course the scapegoat for the Zulu war which I think most people now would regard as an unjust war in fact, reasons we may get onto later, but he was made a scapegoat so he's brought back in fact in disgrace from South Africa the year after this particular war. On the other hand I think he was fairly pragmatic and a realist and had an idea of what had to be done in Southern Africa and was determined to do so. So to make him completely the villain of the piece I don't think is quite fair. He was a very conscientious, very hard-working civil servant who later on went into the business of writing his own memoirs and so forth to justify his actions in Africa and India and elsewhere, but I believe he was a very good servant of the British Empire as it then existed. That famous phrase which I must quote at this point, good the British Empire was not always but it was undeniably great. Surviving Zulu accounts make it abundantly clear that King Katsweo wanted peace and was even prepared to accept some of the less humiliating demands made by Frere, but he knew he was being goaded into war for reasons he could not understand. In November 1879, he had sent his own message to the British governor of Natal, Sir Henry Bourke. Increasing pressure was on Katsweo to resist the British incursion into Zululand. Already the British were burning Zulu homesteads and killing innocent civilians and warriors alike. On the 16th of January, five days after the commencement of the British invasion, he was forced to fully mobilize his army. The army which Katsweo called upon in this dire emergency was in fact not just one, but four separate armies, in response to a formidable and well-conceived British strategy of encirclement. Under the overall leadership of Lord Chelmsford, the available British forces had been split into five separate columns. Two columns were to remain behind to guard against Zulu counterattacks into Natal. The other three would each make a separate thrust into Zululand, ultimately to converge upon the Zulu capital at Ulundi. Number one column, commanded by Colonel C. K. Pearson of the Third Foot, later the Buffs, was to cross into Zululand across its southern border near the coast, and strike northwards for Ulundi, while number three column, commanded by Colonel Glynn and accompanied by Lord Chelmsford himself, would drive due east from Rorke's Drift. The third component in the encirclement of the Zulu capital was to be number four column, commanded by Colonel Wood. Number two column, under Lieutenant Colonel Durnford, was to remain stationary on the Tugela River to guard against Zulu incursions into Natal, while number five column would be based on Lunaberg to the north, to protect against a possible Zulu invasion from that direction. The news of the arrival of two fresh infantry battalions from England after the long sea journey caused a slight change of plan which was to have far-reaching consequences. With his rear now secured, Lord Chelmsford ordered Colonel Durnford's number two column to move up to join his own forces marching east from Rorke's Drift. Durnford was a reckless adventurer who was spoiling for a fight, so he lost no time in moving his men up. Even with the addition of Durnford's men, the forces which Chelmsford had at his disposal were not all that he would have hoped for to meet such a serious undertaking. However, with the Foreign Office openly opposed to an all-out war at that precise time, Frere and the military commander Lord Chelmsford decided to accept the compromise of an invasion with limited forces in January against the worrying prospect that they might, at some future date, be prevented from coming to grips with the Zulus at all. The five British columns, therefore, were a mixed force of 5,000 British regular infantry, 1,400 regular and irregular cavalry, and some 9,000 native troops who formed the Natal native contingent. Many of these men were disaffected Zulus. They were poorly equipped, armed, and dressed exactly as their Zulu opponents. They still carried shields and spears in the main and were distinguished only by the red headband they all wore. The British forces were supported by 16 artillery pieces, a rocket battery, and a lone Gatling gun. The British forces which went into Zululand under Chelmsford were divided into two parts. There were the regular forces, of course, who were very good, but above all there were the irregular forces who were a very substantial proportion of the whole. Now these, frankly, were not very good. They tended to be under-armed because they had assaulted last year's model muskets and so forth. They also had a tendency, I'm afraid, to run away on a few occasions during this campaign, and yet General Chelmsford relied on the native cavalry element for his intelligence, and this was going to be a vital thing that went wrong just before Isandlwana. The 5,000 British red-coated regulars who formed the backbone of this army were without doubt some of the best regular soldiers in the world. The British army, although comparatively small by Victorian standards, was even then a professional army composed entirely of volunteers. The men served through choice rather than conscription or impressment, so they were highly motivated, well-disciplined, and fiercely loyal to the crown which they served. By 1879, much of the British army had already discarded the conspicuous scarlet coats of old for khaki drab, but the forces serving in South Africa were among the last to change. The British troops in the Zulu Wars were, therefore, the last field army to wear the scarlet coats of Waterloo in a major war. On campaign, the soldiers who fought in the 24th Regiment would have borne little similarity to our fond perceptions of the smart British soldier. Their uniforms would have become torn and tatty over two years of active service without reissue, and many of the men sported full beards. But if the uniforms were outdated, the weapons were not. The British were armed with the new breech-loading Martini-Henry rifle, which had replaced the old muzzle-loading muskets which had served the British army up to the 1860s. The benefits of the Martini-Henry lay chiefly in the much greater rate of fire which it could deliver. Previously, the soldiers would have had to pour gunpowder down the barrel of their muskets, ram home a lead ball, then ram in a further piece of wadding to hold it in place, and replace the ramrod in its holder before a shot could be fired. Now it was simply a matter of feeding a brass bullet into the firing chamber and the rifle was loaded. It was this great advance in the rate of firepower which led to the confident assumption that if a small force armed with muzzle-loading muskets would inflict the enormous casualties suffered by the Zulus at Blood River, then what slaughter would a modern professional force equipped with breech-loaders be capable of? Nonetheless, despite their overall confidence, the men of the small British force held their adversaries in some measure of respect. I received your ever-loving and welcome letter of 23rd December, the one which you wrote on 20th November, and the one which you sent the Christmas compliments in. I was very pleased to hear from you and to hear that you are quite well in health, hoping that you will remain so. I don't think that we shall finish this war so soon and easy as the other, for there are a better lot of men and more of them, and they have got rifles the same as we have. I am very sorry to have to tell you that there will be many a poor wife lose her husband, and many father and mother lose their son. I am afraid, but I open trust to the Almighty that I shall not be one of them, for my own darling's sake. Encountering little opposition from the Zulus, the British 3rd Column had crossed the Buffalo River at Rourke's Drift and moved on to Isandlwana, where they arrived on 20th January, 1879. The peculiar shape of the mountain at Isandlwana reminded the men of the 24th of the Sphinx badge which they wore on their collars in memory of their regiment's gallantry in Egypt against Napoleon. The mountain under which Lord Chelmsford chose to pitch his camp therefore became known to the men as the Little Sphinx. To the Zulus, it was Isandlwana, the Little Hand. Having stationed one company of the 24th Regiment, later the South Wales Borderers, at Rourke's Drift to form a stores depot, Lord Chelmsford still commanded a reasonably strong force with which to confront a foe who was still only armed in the main with shields and spears. Although a few of the Zulus possessed rifles, their numbers were very few, a situation which King Katsweo was quick to recognise. Despite this obvious lack of firepower, Katsweo had at his disposal a sufficiently large force to command the respect of his enemies. To combat the threat of the column commanded by Colonel Glynn, the King could bring to bear some 20,000 fiercely loyal warriors. In advance of Lord Chelmsford's main column had gone two parties with orders to locate the main impi. The first of these was commanded by Rupert Lonsdale, with 16 companies of the Natal native contingent. The second under Major John Dartnell, with a much smaller party of Natal mounted police and volunteer horsemen. About 12 miles from the camp, Dartnell encountered a force of a thousand Zulus blocking his advance. With the limited forces available to him, he decided that there was no alternative but to where he was and send back to Chelmsford for reinforcements, so he could launch an attack the following morning. On receipt of the request, Chelmsford concluded that Dartnell had encountered the main Zulu impi, and he accordingly took the fateful decision to join Dartnell with a strong force, whilst leaving Major Pulleen and his men at the camp. Lord Chelmsford took with him six companies of the 2nd Battalion of the 24th, four guns and one company of Natal native horse. In the camp at Isandlwana, he left Major Pulleen and five companies of the 1st Battalion 24th, along with one company of the 2nd Battalion 24th, supported by two field guns, 100 mounted police and volunteers, and 600 Natal natives, in total some 1,200 men. Before he left the camp at Isandlwana, Lord Chelmsford had issued instructions to the reserve column under Colonel Durnford to make their way there. Although this force did not hold any British regular infantry, it did include the 1st Regiment of Natal native cavalry, which had fought with distinction in numerous frontier wars, along with a rocket battery commanded by Major Russell. This welcome addition to his forces should also in theory have relieved the unwelcome burden of command of the camp from the shoulders of Major Pulleen, who in 24 years as a regular soldier had never heard a shot fired in anger. Now Major Pulleen, in fact, was a soldier of considerable experience of being in the army, but as we know had very little, in fact no, military experience prior to this. He was therefore thought, wrongly as it turned out, to be a good man to be a camp commandant in the rear looking after the supplies. However, there are three factors about it. Not only his inexperience was the first, the second one is that of course he refused to entrench the position, which was in fact standard requirement, but because the men were very tired he decided that was not necessary, and in his favor General Chelmsford also said it was not necessary. But there was no attempt even to make a lager of wagons, which again was absolutely basic for fighting in native wars in Africa, particularly the southern part. That was an oversight. So I think we can say that rather like the situation in Tobruk in 1941-42, when General Clopper and the South African division were put into the, in brackets, safe garrison duty at Tobruk, somebody was suddenly found to be absolutely in the front line, in a crucial position, and just like General Clopper had to surrender to Rommel, so of course Pulleen and his garrison were not well prepared for an attack upon them. Lord Chelmsford was probably justified in his confidence that the camp he left behind was sufficiently well protected, and that his own force of well-armed regulars was enough to deal with the main Zulu impulse. But he was wrong in his assumption that the Zulus lay ahead. As he pressed east, they were already behind him, moving between his force and the camp, and closing all the time on the little Sphinx, the mountain of Iloma. The Zulu warriors who were bearing down on the unsuspecting British camp at Isandlwane, still fought using the weapons and tactics developed by Shaka Zulu, the warrior leader who had shaped the nation. Each warrior carried a hide shield, and a broad-bladed stabbing spear, the Iqbal. Additionally, some carried two light throwing spears, or the infamous wooden knob-carry, the Iwisa, a wooden club used to dispatch opponents with a fearsome skull-crushing blow. Katswayo's men were trained to close with their enemy, and to fight at close quarters. This tradition made them feared opponents in hand-to-hand combat, that rendered them almost totally ineffective against well-dug-in troops who could keep them at bay with superior firepower. Katswayo recognized these weaknesses, and specifically instructed his men to avoid battle with British forces in entrenched or fortified positions. The tactic which Katswayo relied upon to eat up the white man in the open, was the proven Zulu battle formation for the Impey, the Horns of the Bull. The Bull formation was composed of four separate elements, each comprised of thousands of warriors, who formed the horns, head, and torso of a gigantic imaginary African bull. The main body of experienced warriors formed the chest of the bull, as they charged towards the enemy. But as the formation neared its opponent, two horns, formed of the youngest, fittest men, would spread out from the main body, in an attempt to envelop the opposition. A reserve of veteran, well-drilled men, known as the Loins, would be held back in support of the chest or horns, as the situation demanded. This was the system which the great Shaka had perfected, and which was to serve Katswayo equally well on the fateful 22nd of January, 1879. Chelmsford was still confident that the main Zulu force lay ahead. His mind was therefore on a likely conflict between his own men and the Impey, which he believed would first have to defeat his own strong column before it could pose any threat to the camp. In fact, the Impey was at rest a mere four miles from the camp, hidden in a valley, and already some twelve miles to the rear of Chelmsford's force, who were all the time moving further away from the Zulu army. There's no doubt within warfare, ancient or modern, matters of intelligence are always of critical importance, and it's a breakdown in Chelmsford's intelligence at this juncture that really doomed the column of Durnford to disaster. Here we have Chelmsford acting on imperfect intelligence brought in by under-trained native horse, in particular one lieutenant who gave him a report saying the Impeys are over there, when in fact they're over there, which was no help to the commander. And in fact, as we know, while he was marching further away from the camp area and Durnford, the mass of the Zulu Impeys had come around behind the great Esindwana feature and were about to attack his rear. So here we have a classical example of a great surprise attack being brought off by the Zulu Impeys and a British commander blinded by false intelligence making completely the wrong deductions. Once Chelmsford had gone, Pulleen set about making defensive arrangements for the camp. His mounted force was deployed on the plateau and a screen of infantry pickets was also posted in a rough semicircle about a mile from the camp. Soon after 8am, a mounted man from the plateau rode into camp with the news that a large body of Zulus was approaching from the northeast. The whole camp was ordered to stand to and the infantry arrayed in front of the tents in a defensive position. At this juncture, Durnford arrived from Rorke's Drift with a detachment from his column including a strong cavalry force with a rocket battery in tow. This raised a slight problem of military etiquette as Durnford was now effectively the senior officer in camp, but Chelmsford had left no clear orders for him on his arrival as he expected the camp to be struck soon to follow his own column. At that point, firing was heard from the direction taken by Chelmsford's column. Durnford therefore decided that Chelmsford had found the main Impey and that rather than take charge of the camp, he would move up to support Chelmsford, leaving command in the hands of Pulleen. The colourful Durnford viewed himself as a dashing knight-errant figure. He naturally felt it necessary therefore to ride to the aid of what he imagined to be the hard-pressed column commanded by his superior officer. The tedium of guarding the camp could safely be left in the hands of others. Colonel Durnford and his force had gone little more than two miles from Lysandloana, however, when they encountered the main Impey bearing down at a run towards the British lines. Their target was not Chelmsford, but Pulleen. In the panic, Major Russell was able to bring his rocket battery briefly into action, but such was the pace of the Zulu advance, the battery was overrun and all but three of the rocket crew killed. Durnford was able to carry out a fighting retreat with his well-drilled mounted men stopping occasionally to fire at the advancing Zulus. Eventually they retired to a deep donger, a dried-up water, about a mile from the camp on the British right, and from there they kept up a galling fire which held the Zulus at bay. By now the outlying companies had been drawn back, and the garrison had once again formed a line of defence, which despite being spread very thinly, was pouring forth a concentrated fire into the ranks of the Zulus, who were now unable to advance any further into the face of a murderous hail of lead. The Zulus stopped and took cover about 300 yards from the British line, where they could be heard murmuring like a gigantic swarm of angry bees. Had they been able to maintain their rate of fire, all might yet have been well for the men of the 24th Regiment, but weighed against them were a set of circumstances which together were to prove their undoing. The troops firing at the Zulus were some way from the camp, so the journey to and from the wagon lines to where the ammunition was held was a round trip which amounted to some half a mile. So the rate of resupply by hard-pressed runners was slow. The fastest aimed rate of the Martini-Henry rifle was some 12 rounds per minute, and it was this devastating fire which was keeping the Zulus at bay. The thin rolled brass cartridges were far from perfect, however, and when fired they frequently stuck in the overheated chambers of the rifles, and had to be prized free with the bayonet. Repeated firing also caused the barrel to foul up with gunpowder residue, which in turn caused more overheating, and unless scoured out, gave the rifle a recoil like the kick of a mule. After an hour's concentrated firing, many of the men already had severe bruising, and were having to fire their rifles at arm's length. Others were using rags to save burnt fingers from red-hot barrels. Isandlwana was the first major engagement for the British Army armed with breech-loading rifles, so no one could have known that the 70 rounds issued to each soldier would prove insufficient for a major engagement, and that the strict regulations for issue of fresh ammunition in action would prove woefully slow under an entirely new set of circumstances. The British wagons were filled with half a million rounds packed into strong mahogany boxes, secured with metal bands and tightly screwed down lids. Probably the most publicly known incident in the whole of the disaster of Isandlwana was the matter of the ammunition boxes. Once again, myth and fact have become irretrievably combined. This on my lap here is an actual box of ammunition, or ammunition box, from Isandlwana, which belongs to a colleague of mine at Sandhurst, and it's indicative of the problems they were having of getting into these ammunition boxes, because this has been attacked by a burnet from the near side to prise out, first of all, the screw, which is very bent and has been in that condition ever since the Battle of Isandlwana, and also on this side we have a piece of wood which the burners also split away, the desperate attempts to get into it, so that it would be made to slide and the ammunition extracted. The quartermaster and the quartermaster sergeants of the 24th Regiment were experienced and thorough soldiers, but they did their job by the book. At this critical juncture, they therefore refused to supply Colonel Durnford's black runners with ammunition, but they were not from the 1st Battalion, and as regulation stated, 1st Battalion ammunition was to be reserved for 1st Battalion rifles. This was bad enough, but their refusal to supply any ammunition to anyone other than those men authorized to receive it was contributing to the slackening rate of British fire. Particularly on the right, Durnford's men were running dangerously low on ammunition, as his runners searched frantically in the chaos of the camp for their ammunition wagons. So once your ammunition handler was trying to get his ammunition out of this particular form of a box, he'd got the screw out, he'd made the slide work, he still faced several more tasks to do. First of all, there was this tin or metal type enclosure, had to strip that back, and then inside there, individually sealed, were all these packets of ammunition, which are not coming out very easily now, and it contained within them the typical brass round of the period. This had to be broken, the steel broken, and then the handful of ammunition put on each soldier's position of the firing step for him to carry on firing. It was a very complex idea, really. It had not been thought through, I don't think, in the industry of war back in England and the supply of people. It was a little bit too complex for actions, period. But we're still in the business of myth and fact. How far it was a problem of breaking into the box, how far it was a problem of being allowed to break into a box by a quartermaster sergeant, well, that will remain forever in dispute. All along the British line, the Zulus began to creep closer and closer as they perceived a diminishment in the rate of fire, until finally they were within charging distance of the British. As the Zulu empire reached the British lines, the courage of the Natal native contingent failed, and they fled the field. As he could not extend his line to close the gap as they left, Colonel Pulleen had no choice but to order his men to retreat closer to the camp. However, he committed a fatal error, pulling back almost half of his force at the same time. As the bugle sounded the withdrawal, the men turned to begin the move back towards the camp. The British fire slackened further, then stopped. As one man, the Zulu impi seemed to sense their moment had come. With a great shout, their massed ranks rose in unison and swept forward to meet the retreating British. The greatest military disaster at the hands of a native force was only moments away. By an eerie coincidence, in the sky overhead at that precise moment, there was a partial eclipse of the sun. The soldiers of the 24th fought valiantly to the bitter end, but as their ammunition ran low, they were gradually overpowered and massacred to a man. The bravery of the last stand of the 24th could not but win the respect of their fierce enemy. There were a few survivors from the debacle at Isandlwana from the staff officers and officers of the irregular formations. I took my escort to the front, which was then about a mile ahead of the camp. The Zulus were about 700 yards away. I placed my men in position and told them to fire low, while I sat down and watched the progress of affairs. After sitting so for about five minutes, I felt I myself must have some shots at them, and accordingly I went back to camp to get my gun. When I returned, I was just mounting to the top of the hill where my men were, when I saw the hill to the right of the camp, black with Zulus. I got into my place and began firing. When the Zulus got about 300 yards from me, I saw the mounted native contingent and the whole column to the right of the guns were retiring, and I followed, firing as I went, thinking they were falling back on the camp. The cannon here began to fire harder than ever, but the Zulus kept on pouring down, in our front and on our flank. They kept on advancing until within 100 yards, when the whole army made a simultaneous charge upon the camp. I had then retired as far as the wagons, when seeing the Zulus carrying everything before them, and everybody scattered and bolting, I naturally did the same. We all thought that had the general's column appeared, the day would have been ours. There would be an awful row back home. The Zulu victory at Isandlwana may have been the worst defeat for a British force by an opponent who fought without the advantage of firepower, but even in victory, the signs were ominous for Katzweil. Some 600 British soldiers lay dead on the field, but surrounding these sad figures lay 3,000 dead and wounded Zulus. Although the defeat was a huge setback for the British, the victory was even more costly for Katzweil, as it tore the fighting spirit from the hearts of his men. They had proved that given the right circumstances, their desperate courage could overcome the power of the Martini-Henry, but the horrendous toll of dead and wounded told its own story. At enormous cost, they could win one or two battles, but they could never hope to win the war. As the victorious impi limped home, the signs of the impending Zulu defeat were already apparent. Unaware of these appalling losses, the young men of the Zulu reserve force had slipped off to find an opportunity to prove themselves against the British foe, as had the rest of their king's mighty army. In their desperation to find an opponent, this force, led by Katzweil's half-brother broke the king's specific command never to attack an entrenched British force or one behind fortifications. Five miles from Isandlwana lay the mission station of Rorke's Drift, defended by B Company of the 2nd Battalion 24th, commanded by Lieutenant Bromhead. It was against these 100 men that the fury of the Zulu warriors would break. Katzweil was no fool. He realised the problem of going across a major obstacle would destroy his maximum ability of his men in action, which is their sheer mobility and their numbers. They'd pour down into the ditch and then there'd be a hell of a mess trying to get out the other side, being shot down with their heads bent over the ridge. So if the British were entrenched correctly, Katzweil was absolutely right. He really did not have much chance of breaking through, providing British discipline held. And if there was one thing for which the British army was actually renowned for this period, it was for its training and its discipline, which were frustrating. Warned of the fate of the main camp by a few fleeing survivors of the disaster at Isandlwana, this tiny garrison of 100 men came under the command of Lieutenant Chard of the Royal Engineers, due to his seniority. They had only two hours to throw together a makeshift fort from grain sacks and biscuit boxes. But by a small miracle, the time and materials available were to prove just enough to thwart the determined Zulu onslaught. The embarrassed colonial office would have a much needed British victory to offset against the terrible outcome of the battle at the Mountain of Ilomen. Against an enemy force of 4,000, Lieutenant Chard had at his disposal 104 fit men, including B Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Bromhead. Of these, only 80 were combatants. The others were drivers, wagoners, or medical staff. The mission station which B Company was detailed to protect consisted of two small buildings, a small house converted into a hospital, and a store linked to two cattle pens called crowds. It was fortunate for the defenders that the senior officer present happened to be from the Royal Engineers. He was able to use the two hours which the garrison had available to oversee the construction of a semblance of a defensible fort. Private Hook, who was to be awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery in this action, takes up the story. Suddenly there was a commotion in our camp and we saw two men galloping towards us from the other side of the river, which was Zulu land. The horsemen shouted and were brought across the river and then we knew what had happened to our comrades at the camp. They'd been butchered to a man. That was awful enough news, but worse was to follow, for we were told that the Zulus were coming straight on from Misandwana to attack us. For some little time we were all stunned, then everything changed from perfect quietness to intense excitement and energy. Orders were given that we were to get the hospital and storehouse ready for defence and that we were never to say die or surrender. Not a minute was lost. Lieutenant Bromhead superintended the loopholding and barricading of the hospital and storehouse and the building of a connection of defences between the two buildings with walls of mealybags and wagons. The mealybags were good big heavy things weighing about 200 pounds each. Just before half past four we heard firing behind the conical hill at the back of the drift and suddenly about five or six hundred Zulus swept round, coming for us at a run. Private Hook in fact has been most badly treated by history and above all by the film industry. He was not a drunkard, he was not a ne'er-do-well. He had joined the League of Victorian Virtue, which was a non-drinking organisation, 15 years before the Battle of Rorke's Drift. He was a lay reader, he was meant to be a model private soldier and the only mystery about him is why he ever came into the army because he was a prosperous miner farmer in Wales and nobody's ever explained that. But poor old Hookie, you're no good Private Hook, you remember he's always, that's a phrase people always remember about him, was in fact totally travestied by that view. Lieutenant Chard's small garrison had constructed two separate lines of defence, an overall perimeter including the store and hospital and a second line of defence constructed of biscuit boxes, which the defenders could fall back on if it proved impossible to hold both the store and hospital. As at Isandlwana, the initial withering fire from the Martini-Henry rifles was sufficient to keep the Zulus at bay. But a number of rifle-armed Zulu snipers had climbed the escarpment behind the mission station and the fire began to cause casualties among the unprotected men manning the north wall with their backs to the Zulus. Worse still was the unrelenting surge of warriors which carried wave upon wave right up to the barricades, where fierce hand-to-hand fighting occurred as the men of B Company struggled desperately for their lives. As the warriors attacked, the soldiers were gradually pushed back from the perimeter to the breastwork outside the hospital, although they still clung frantically to the hospital itself. Time and time again the ferocious Zulu attacks were repulsed in the most desperate manner. Twice Lieutenant Bromhead led bayonet charges to clear the Zulus from the mission. Unobserved, however, a party of Zulus had managed to set fire to the roof of the hospital, which caused the defenders to withdraw to the line of biscuit boxes. Privates Henry Hook, Robert Jones, William Jones and John Williams were all awarded the Victoria Cross for their heroism in helping the hospital patients to safety whilst under intense attack from Zulu warriors, whose advance they held back with their bayonets, the butts of their rifles and even with their bare hands. The battle for the hospital was a siege within a siege and at first the flames which licked at the walls of the hospital seemed to bode ill for the defenders, but it was to prove otherwise, as Private Hook recalled, but it was the hospital they assaulted most fiercely. I had charge with a man that we called Old King Cole of a small room with only one patient in it. Cole kept with me for some time after the fight began, then he said he was not going to stay. He went outside and was instantly killed by the Zulus, but it was impossible to do anything except fight and I blazed away as hard as I could. The Zulus were swarming around us and there was an extraordinary rattle as the bullets struck the biscuit boxes and queer thuds as they plumped into the bags of mealies. From the very first the enemy tried to rush the hospital and at last they managed to set fire to the thick grass which formed the roof. This put us in a terrible plight because it meant that we were either to be massacred or burnt alive or get out of the building. Suddenly in the thick smoke I saw John Williams and above the din of the battle and the cries of the wounded I heard him shout, the Zulus are swarming all over the place, they've dragged Joseph Williams out and killed him. John Williams had held the other room with Private William Horrigan for more than an hour until they had not a cartridge left. All this time the Zulus were trying to get into my room, their asser guys kept whizzing towards us and one struck me in the front of the helmet but the helmet tilted back under the blow, made the spear lose its power so that I escaped with a scout group which did not trouble me much then although it has often caused me illness since. Hook's hair never grew back. A later photograph of Private Hook clearly shows the scar which the asser guy left. The flames from the burning hospital provided a light in that dark African night by which the defenders were able to see the attacking Zulus as clear as day. It was probably this single factor which allowed the British to survive a night of intense fighting. Without the light from the hospital they would surely have been overrun in the darkness. As it was it was still a near-run thing and there were many acts of individual heroism still to be played out. Lieutenant Chard recalls the bravery of the men of the 24th. About 3.15 on that day I was at the ponds when two men came riding from Zululand at a gallop and shouted to be taken across the river. I was informed by one of them the disaster is Angwana camp and that the Zulus were advancing at Rourke's Drift. Almost immediately I received a message from Lieutenant Blomhead commanding the company of the 24th regiment of the camp asking me to come up at once. I held a hurried consultation with him entirely approving of the arrangements made. About 4.20 the sound of firing was heard behind the hill to our south. Then at about 4.30 five or six hundred of the enemy came in sight and advanced at a run against our south wall. They were met with a well-sustained fire but notwithstanding their heavy loss continued the advance to within 50 yards of the wall. When they met with such heavy fire from the wall and crossfire from the store that they were checked. The garrison of the hospital defended it room by room bringing out all the sick that could be moved before they retired. Privates Williams, Hook, Robert Jones and William Jones of the 24th regiment being the last men to leave holding the doorway with a band their own ammunition being expended. I consider the enemy who attacked us to have numbered about 3,000. We killed about 350. The steadiness and gallant behavior of the whole garrison I cannot speak to highly. I wish especially to bring to your notice the conduct of Lieutenant Blomhead 24th regiment and the splendid behavior of his B company. As the night wore on the garrison continued to doggedly defend the remainder of the perimeter and as daylight gradually approached the Zulu attacks declined in intensity until finally they stopped altogether and the frustrated warriors exhausted and hungry retreated over the piles of their dead into the night. They left behind the bodies of 351 of their comrades who had exchanged their lives for those of only 11 Redcoats. The heroic defense of Rorke's Drift was rewarded by the largest number of awards for bravery in a single action in the history of the British army. 11 Victoria Crosses and four distinguished conduct medals were awarded among them the valiant Private Hook. As we got the sick and wounded out they were taken to a veranda in front of the storehouse and Dr. Reynolds under a heavy fire and clouds of asagais did everything he could for them. All this time of course the storehouse was being valiantly defended by the rest of the garrison. When we got into the inner fort I took my post at a place where two men had been shot. While I was there another man was shot in the neck. Every now and then the Zulus would make a rush for it and get in. We had to charge them out. By this time it was dark and the hospital was all in flames but this gave us a splendid light to fight by. I believe it was this light which saved us. We could see them coming and they could not rush us and take us by surprise from any point. For the survivors of B Company the story was indeed to have a happy ending. They were relieved by Lord Chelmsford's column that very day. This historic picture shows the actual men who survived the fight at Rorke's Drift. For the Zulus however the real horror was about to begin. Despite the obvious hopelessness of the cause they again took on the might of the British army at the battles of and finally at Ilundi and each time the fearsome Zulu losses seemed to grow as British casualties declined. At Ilundi in a last dramatic gesture of heroic but futile defiance the last army of the Zulu nation threw themselves against a fully prepared British square. In less than half an hour 2,000 Zulu warriors lay dead upon the field and the 17th Lancers were pursuing the fleeing remnants of the army without mercy. The British lost 10 men. The warrior Zulu nation had as predicted been decisively defeated in a war which lasted only six months but with their fierce courage and independent spirit they had left their mark on history.