Part IV (for real this time, thanks John. I really need to proofread): Rorke’s Drift
Again, recommended music for reading.
On the morning of January 22nd, Lt. John Chard, Royal Engineers, road up to Isandlwana from his post at Rorke’s Drift. Freshly arrived in South Africa, only a few weeks out from getting off the boat in Durban, he was trying to find useful employment for himself. Unfortunately, he was stuck improving the road for Chelmsford’s clunky column, building a bridge at the mission post at Rorke’s Drift. He hoped to ask the lord baron for a more suitable assignment, but upon arrival at camp he found that Chelmsford had gone haring off that morning looking for fuzzies to fight and wouldn’t be back until nightfall. Plus, scouts were seeing groups of Zulu moving around on top of the Nqutu plateau and Durnford was checking it out. Figuring he better make sure his post was fortified in case the Zulu tried to cut the road, Chard rode back to the mission station at Rorke’s Drift.
The mission station is a tiny little outpost on the hill overlooking the ford over the Buffalo, significant only due to its location on the main road between Ulundi and central Natal. It was named after its founder, James Rorke, a missionary who had come to Natal a few decades before and drank himself to death on its grounds. The Zulu called it KwaJimu, “Jim’s Place.” Jim had built a small colonial house, facing west, and nearby a large stone storehouse and a few small cattle kraals. The entire complex isn’t much larger than a typical American house with a yard.
The mission station in January 2022, viewed from the north. The hospital is on the hill at center (note that it’s not flat ground!), the storehouse visible behind it at left. Shinane/Oskarberg at right center in the background.
When Chelmsford prepared his invasion, he had seized the drift from the Swedish missionaries who had taken over after Rorke shot himself out back and set it up as a supply base and hospital to support his attack. He garrisoned it with one unlucky company of the 24th and a company of NNC, under Lt. Bromhead, who was “stone-deaf” and considered “hopeless” by his superiors. The quiet posting would keep Bromhead out of trouble. There were about 80 redcoats in B Company (2/24), plus a gaggle of sick and wounded in the hospital, totaling ~120 effectives, on the afternoon of the 24th. There was a company of NNC present as well, but – well, you’ll see.
Prince Dabulamanzi commanded the Zulu reserve at Isandlwana. A brother of the king, Ntshingwayo had dispatched his undi (corps) on a wide flanking maneuver, but the damned British had all died or run off before his men got the chance to wash their spears. Unhappy at missing out on the greatest victory in Zulu history – imagine the boasts and fireside tales other warriors would have in years to come! (“And what did you do, grandpa, in the great invasion of the whites?” “Well, son, I squatted on my loins and watched everything from a safe distance.” Unthinkable!). So, when his men begged him – “Let’s go have a fight at Jim’s place!” – Dabulamanzi didn’t hesitate too much. Sure, he was violating his brother’s orders not to invade Natal. But that was the trouble with politicians – they always tied their soldiers’ hands with these idiotic “rules of engagement.” Let the fighting men fight, not hamstrung by the civvies! His soldiers would never be able to hold up their faces in society if they didn’t get some action. So, Dabulamanzi led his force towards KwaJimu to wipe out the garrison and supply post there. He had in his command four amabutho, the uThulwana, uDloko, uNdondlo, and uNdluyengwe, in total about 4,000 effectives.
Back at the drift, the officer in command, Major Spaulding, and some of his hangers-on could see something was up on Isandlwana – the hill was visible from the top of the Oskarberg, the eyebrow-shaped hill just south of the drift. Spaulding decided his lone company needed some backup and so he rode down and said to Chard and Bromhead, “Right, you chappies. I’m going to ride up to Helpmekaar and round up some reinforcements. Chard, you’re in charge.” With that, Spalding rode off, out of the drift and out of his place in history.
A few minutes after Spalding left, two ragged survivors came galloping down the road – Gert Aldendorf, Lt., Natal Native Contingent, and a trooper from Durnford’s column – and gave the slightly disconcerting news that everyone Chard had talked to at camp that morning was dead. Well, no, maybe not everyone – no, yes, definitely everyone, all dead. Quite how Aldendorf and the other survivor had made it down the road after the right horn had cut off retreat has never been explained to me.
Conferring with each other and with Acting Commissary James Dalton, who despite his low rank was actually the most experienced soldier present (Dalton had retired and only come back to the colors for this invasion), Chard and Bromhead decided that trying to evacuate the sick and wounded on unwieldy wagons would just see them run down by the Zulu in open country.* Lots of unpleasant stabbing would ensue. No, their only chance was to fort up and pray to hold out until relief arrived.
A map of the fort from the same angle as the photo above – hospital at right center, storehouse at left.
Now, in their favor the men had a small perimeter to defend and a LOT of supplies to work with. In the hours before Dabulamanzi arrived with his warriors spoiling for a fight, the redcoats worked feverishly, tossing 200-pound bags of cornmeal out of the storehouse and into the yard. There, more dragged the heavy bags and formed two walls running between the storehouse and hospital, enclosing a small perimeter. At the same time, others boarded up the windows and doors of the hospital, piling up furniture and barricading the only entrances. Loopholes were dug in the walls to enable soldiers inside to shoot out. The sick were left in place – safer there than in the open yard.
A company of Durnford’s horse, posted to guard the supply wagons, was able to extricate itself nearly intact from the disaster up the road and came galloping down in some disorder early in the afternoon, but Chard was able to get them to join the defense – temporarily. Worn out mentally, worn out physically, and worn out of ammunition, the troopers skirmished at the drift a short while with the advancing Zulu, before they whirled away past the post towards Helpmekaar, 5 miles distant. “Here they come, black as hell and thick as grass!” one man shouted as they road past. This was enough for the NNC contingent at the post, who decided to sauve qui peut and raced off in the wake of the cavalry.**
With their numbers suddenly halved, Chard and Bromhead realized they would need a dramatically smaller perimeter. An outer fortification around the hospital was abandoned, leaving the building very exposed to attack, and a second, inner wall of 100-pound boxes of biscuit was started to cut their little fortress in half. Chard would defend in depth, abandoning his outer lines one by one as they were overwhelmed and holding an ever-smaller perimeter.
Chard’s map for his report, showing the full system (note that the map is flipped compared to above). Biscuit box inner line and a final redoubt.
Dabulamanzi arrived shortly past 4:30. In the summer in Natal, sunset is around 7:30, so he had a good couple hours of light to work with. His first warriors swept in from the south, around the Oskarberg (Shihane, “Eyebrow Hill”, in Zulu), and attacked the post from the southwest. Steely volleys of .45 caliber Martini-Henry fire met them, showing the warriors what they had missed out on at Isandlwana. Losses were heavy and the rampart was difficult to climb – the western face of the post actually sat atop a ledge some 3 feet above the gardens, Chard carefully siting his wall to take advantage of this fact. So, the Zulu couldn’t simply spring over the barrier, but would need to climb it with both hands, dodging rifle fire and bayonets wielded by very unfriendly whites in the process. And remember – the Zulu are not kamikazes. These were not suicidal human wave charges, but done by courageous men who nevertheless wished to live to celebrate the victory.
So, bloodied, the first attack recoiled and went to ground behind the trees in the garden southwest of the post. From Shihane, those Zulus with rifles*** began taking potshots at the garrison below them. This harassing fire and the fall of the hospital were responsible for the vast majority of British losses that night.
Right, the fall of the hospital. So, more the amabutho came up and joined the fight, and a second wave went in. This one was pressed home fiercely on both sides of the little fort. Time and again the Zulu would threaten to breach the rampart, only for Bromhead, leading a reserve platoon of bayonets, to charge in and drive them off. Chard was forced to pull his garrison almost entirely back from the hospital, defending only the short side within his perimeter, leaving the two long sides and third short side completely exposed. The Zulu pressed themselves into cover around the walls of the hospital and began trying to break in.
Six redcoats had volunteered to be barricaded into the building, to defend their sick and wounded buddies – some of whom could also carry a rifle. The men fired furiously ouf of their loopholes, while the Zulu tore through the walls and doors, slowly, dying as they did so. Private Harrigan, in the far western room, had his rifle seized and he was dragged outside to be speared to death. Another, Private Cole, tried to race out the front door of the hospital and around to the mealie bag rampart, but a bullet to the head checked his progress.
The yard and storehouse (now a chapel), viewed from the hospital. The main British defense was centered here.
Outside, the pressure was growing so severe, especially the fire from Shihane, that Chard had to abandon the western half of the perimeter – that part that included the hospital – and pull back to the line of biscuit boxes, so that now the British held a small perimeter in front of the storehouse only, while a few stubborn defenders held out in the hospital building. The yard between the biscuit boxes and the hospital was swept with bullets – no man could live long there.
Scale model of the attack on the hospital.
As darkness fell, some men raised a cheer – dust could be seen to the west, on the road to Helpmekaar. Major Spalding was back, with the two companies of redcoats left at that distant colonial town was reinforcements! However, Spalding rode up, saw the mass of Zulu around the station, and the hospital burning – did I mention the hospital was on fire by this point? – and concluded that poor hopeless Bromhead and Chard and all their lads were dead, just like Chelmsford’s entire column, and it was his patriotic duty to ensure he survived so word could be sent to London about the disaster. The 2 companies – 160 redcoats, twice as many men as were inside the little cornmeal fort – turned around and marched back to Helpmekaar.
Oh, yes, the hospital, on fire. So as night fell, what most likely happened is that one of the surviving defenders of the building, in the excitement of load – fire – load – fire – load – fire for hours at one point, wearily, accidentally discharged his weapon at the roof. See, it rains a lot in Zululand in January, and the outer thatch roof was pretty damp from the days of rain they’d been having that year of 1879. So it’s unlikely that anyone outside managed to set the roof on fire. But the inner thatch? Ah, that’s a different story – that was dry. Now, the Martini-Henry discharges a lot of hot gas and sparks when it fires, not just the bullet. The barrel gets so hot with extended firing that Zulu survivors of this fight reported seeing the rifles glow red at night – and the dry thatch would easily catch.
Scale model of the entire battle. Chard’s biscuit box inner wall at left center, hospital at right.
So yeah, for the defenders, now not only were there thousands of murderous savages trying to break into their building full of sick and unable to move comrades, who also happened to have them totally surrounded, but also said building was burning down around their ears. And, like most colonial houses of the day, there was little interior communication between rooms. Most houses on the frontier in Natal had rooms that only opened to the outside, since hallways took up space and the climate was so mild going outside was no problem. Usually. When the outside was full of 4 entire Zulu amabutho eager to wash their spears in your belly it becomes more of an inconvenience.
As the Zulu began to at last break through the barriers into the interior, then, the men inside staged a desperate race to safety. Privates John Williams and Henry Hook formed a fighting team – Hook singlehandedly holding off the Zulu as Williams hacked a hole in the wall to the next room. They dragged the men in their room through the hole, then fell back into the next room, Hook again fending off the Zulu while Williams madly dug at the wall. They eventually linked up with Privates R. Jones and W. Jones, who joined in the effort, eventually tunnelling all the way to the outer room of the hospital and a window that faced across the bullet-swept yard to Chard’s biscuit box inner wall.
Corporal William Allen and Pvt. Fred Hitch, seeing the men appear in the window, leapt over the wall and raced over, while the defenders behind the rampart kept the Zulu’s heads down. Together, the 4 surviving defenders worked with the two men to evacuate the majority of the sick and wounded, while the flames spread through the hospital. A handful of other men were able to hide in the hospital wardrobe and slip out behind the Zulus, concealing themselves among the dead until morning. The last man out was Henry Hook, who tried and failed to save one last patient, before the flames and Zulu were too much and forced him back. The British abandoned the building at last – all the surviving defenders were now concentrated in the small perimeter in front of the storehouse.
View from the biscuit box line towards the hospital. Hitch and the others would have raced across this yard to the hospital to pull out survivors.
Chard had been active in the meantime, piling up his remaining mealie bags into a “final redoubt” in the center of his perimeter. The sick and wounded were safely ensconced in there, while the firing began to die down. The flames of the hospital brightly lit up the battlefield – they were visible to Chelmsford, dazedly wandering the battlefield at Isandlwana – and provided excellent illumination for the defenders to pick off Zulus trying their luck in the darkness. Chard even felt safe enough to lead a sortie and retrieve a water cart for his desperate garrison. Then his men bunkered up and braced themselves for the final rush at dawn, which they expected would finish them off.
The final redoubt (circle of stones at lower center) and the stone cattle kraal behind it.
By now, though, the fighting was fading away. Dabulamanzi’s men hadn’t eaten at all on the 21st or the 22nd. They had run twenty miles since that morning, over hill and valley and river, and now fought a fierce 8-hour battle at the end of it. They were even more worn out than the defenders, and as midnight rolled past the Zulus straggled to a halt and began to catch what sleep they could, huddling down in caves on Shihane or in the gardens near the mission station. Both sides caught their breath for a short couple of hours.
At dawn, the Zulus reappeared in force.
Now, to this day it’s debated what was in Dabulamanzi’s head at this point. He would later deny the entire affair ever happened – after all, he had greatly exceeded his brother’s orders to come here and could easily have been executed for this.**** ‘What, attack Rorke’s Drift? Nonono, that was never our intention!” he later claimed. “We were just after the cattle!” And to be sure, they did gather up hundreds of cattle, which was money, in the battle.
However, it is possible he did intend one last rush to overwhelm the defenders – except…from his position atop Shihane, Dabulamanzi could see the road to Isandlwana. Marching down it were…redcoated soldiers? Now that was a puzzler, and no mistake. The Zulu had killed all the redcoats the day before! There were no British soldiers left in Zululand. So who were they?
WIth his men worn out, hungry, thirsty, the prince decided not to take his chance with what was an apparently an army of ghosts marching up behind him. He rounded up his guys and marched down the road back to Zululand. On the way, they passed the ghost soldiers marching down the other side of the road. As the mysterious British army marched past on the far side, Dabulamanzi kept his men from attacking the undead. They wanted no part of this fresh army.
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Chelmsford had gotten his men up early that morning, just before dawn. THe camp was lost, he had no ammo for a fight, and he had no idea what had become of most of his army. Rorke’s Drift had been torched, presumably to the ground, the night before, and he wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of Zululand, as fast as possible. So the remnants of III Column were up and moving before the sunrise.
As they came down the road to Rorke’s Drift, moving fast now that all those damned wagons were, uh, stolen by the Zulu, he saw marching towards him a fresh impi of thousands of warriors. Chelmsford despaired. He had no ammunition for a fight with that many warriors, and his men were tired and demoralized. As the mysterious Zulu army marched past on the far side, Chelmsford kept his men from attacking the new enemy. They wanted no part of this fresh army.
*Actually, Bromhead was all for taking his chances in the open country and was in the process of getting the wagons ready to move when Dalton talked him and Chard out of it.
** B Company expressed its displeasure with this development by an unauthorized volley at the fugitives, killing one white officer.
***NOT looted from Isandlwana, like some claim – remember, Dabulamanzi’s men didn’t fight there!
****Shaka famously executed people for sneezing in his presence, or looking at him wrong. Cetshwayo would have been will within his rights to have Dabulamanzi’s head for such a blunder.
Gwangju Dreaming 