The True Story Book

Now let us return to the camp. It will be remembered that Colonel Glyn's force, accompanied by General Lord Chelmsford, had left at dawn. About eight o'clock a picket placed some 1,500 yards distant reported that Zulus were approaching from the north-east. This information was despatched by mounted messengers to Colonel Glyn's column.

Lieut. – Colonel Durnford, with his mounted natives and a rocket battery arriving from Rorke's Drift about 10 A.M., took over the command of the camp from Colonel Pulleine. According to the evidence of Lieutenant Cochrane given at the court of inquiry, Colonel Pulleine thereupon stated to Colonel Durnford the orders that he had received, to 'defend the camp,' and it would appear that either then or subsequently some altercation took place between these two officers. In the issue, however, Colonel Durnford advanced his mounted force to ascertain the enemy's movements, and directed a company of the 1st battalion 24th regiment to occupy a hill about 1,200 yards to the north of the camp.

Other companies of the 24th were stationed at various points at a distance from the camp. It may be well to explain here, that to these movements of troops, which, so far as can be ascertained, were made by the direct orders of Colonel Durnford, must be attributed the terrible disaster that followed. There are two ways of fighting a savage or undisciplined enemy; the scientific way, such as is taught in staff colleges, and the unscientific way that is to be learned in the sterner school of experience. We English were not the first white men who had to deal with the rush of the Zulu impis. The Boers had encountered them before, at the battle of the Blood River, and armed only with muzzle-loading 'roers,' or elephant guns, despite their desperate valour, had worsted them, with fearful slaughter. But they did not advance bodies of men to this point or to that, according to the scientific method; they drew their ox waggons into a square, lashing them together with 'reims' or hide-ropes, and from behind this rough defence, with but trifling loss to themselves, rolled back charge after charge of the warriors of Dingaan.

Had this method been followed by our troops at the battle of Isandhlwana, who had ample waggons at hand to enable them to execute the manœuvre, had the soldiers even been collected in a square beneath the cliff of the mountain, it cannot be doubted but that, armed as they were with breech-loaders, they would have been able to drive back not only the impi sent against them, but, if necessary, the entire Zulu army. Indeed, that this would have been so is demonstrated by what happened on the same day at Rorke's Drift, where a hundred and thirty men repelled the desperate assaults of three or four thousand. Why, then, it may be asked, did Colonel Durnford, a man of considerable colonial experience, adopt the more risky, if the more scientific, mode of dealing with the present danger, and this in spite of Colonel Pulleine's direct intimation to him that his orders were 'to defend the camp'? As it chances, the writer of this account, who knew Colonel Durnford well, and has the greatest respect for the memory of that good officer, and honourable gentleman, is able to suggest an answer to the problem which at the time was freely offered by the Natal colonists. A few years before, it happened that Colonel Durnford was engaged upon some military operations against a rebellious native chief in Natal. Coming into contact with the followers of this chief, in the hope that matters might be arranged without bloodshed, Durnford ordered the white volunteers under his command not to fire, with the result that the rebels fired, killing several of his force and wounding him in the arm. This incident gave rise to an irrational indignation in the colony, and for a while he himself was designated by the ungenerous nickname of 'Don't fire Durnford.' It is alleged, none can know with what amount of truth, that it was the memory of this undeserved insult which caused Colonel Durnford to insist upon advancing the troops under his command to engage the Zulus in the open, instead of withdrawing them to await attack in the comparative safety of a 'laager.'

The events following the advance of the various British companies at Isandhlwana are exceedingly difficult to describe in their proper order, since the evidence of the survivors is confused.

It would appear, however, that Durnford's mounted Basutos discovered and fired on a portion of the Umcityu regiment, which, forgetting its orders, sprang up and began to charge. Thereon, accepting the position, the other Zulu regiments joined the movement. Very rapidly, and with the most perfect order, the impi adopted the traditional Zulu ox-head formation, namely, that of a centre and two horns, the centre representing the skull of the ox. In this order they advanced towards the English camp, slowly and without sound. Up to this time there had been no particular alarm in the camp. The day was bright and lovely, with a hot sun tempered by a gentle breeze that just stirred the tops of the grasses, and many men seem to have been strolling about quite unaware of their imminent danger, although orders were given to collect the transport oxen, which were at graze outside the camp; not for the purpose of inspanning the waggons, but to prevent them from being captured by the enemy. One officer (Captain, now Colonel, Essex) reports that after the company had been sent out, he retired to his tent to write letters, till, about twelve o'clock, a sergeant came to tell him that firing was to be heard behind a hill in face of the camp. He mounted a horse and rode up the slope, to find the company firing on a line of Zulus eight hundred paces away to their front. This line was about a thousand yards long, and shaped like a horn, tapering towards the point. It advanced slowly, taking shelter with great skill behind rocks, and opened a quite ineffective fire on the soldiers. Meanwhile the two guns were shelling the Zulu centre with great effect, the shells cutting lanes through their dense ranks, which closed up over the dead in perfect discipline and silence. The attack was now general, all the impi taking part in it except a reserve regiment that sat down upon the ground taking snuff, and never came into action, and the Undi corps, which moved off to the right with the object of passing round the north side of the Isandhlwana hill.

On came the Zulus in silence, and ever as they came the two horns crept further and further ahead of the black breast of their array. Hundreds of them fell beneath the fire of the breech-loaders, but they did not pause in their attack. Ammunition began to fail the soldiers, and orders having reached them – too late – to concentrate on the camp, they retired slowly to that position. Captain Essex also rode back, and assisted the quartermaster of the 24th to place boxes of ammunition in a mule cart, till presently the quartermaster was shot dead at his side. Now the horns or nippers of the foe were beginning to close on the doomed camp, and the friendly natives, who knew well what this meant, though as yet the white men had not understood their danger, began to steal away by twos and threes, and then, breaking into open rout, they rushed through the camp, seeking the waggon road to Rorke's Drift.

Then at last the Zulu generals saw that the points of the horns had met behind the white men, and the moment was ripe. Abandoning its silence and slow advance, the breast of the impi raised the war-cry and charged, rolling down upon the red coats like a wave of steel. So swift and sudden was this last charge, that many of the soldiers had no time to fix bayonets. For a few moments the scattered companies held the impi back, and the black stream flowed round them, then it flowed over them, sweeping them along like human wreckage. In a minute the defence had become an utter rout. Some of the defenders formed themselves into groups and fought back to back till they fell where they stood, to be found weeks afterwards mere huddled heaps of bones. Hundreds of others fled for the waggon road, to find that the Undi regiment, passing round the Isandhlwana mountain, had occupied it already. Back they rolled from the hedge of Undi spears to fall upon the spears of the attacking regiments. One path of retreat alone remained, a dry and precipitous 'donga' or watercourse, and into this plunged a rabble of men, white and black, mules, horses, guns, and waggons.

Meanwhile the last act of the tragedy was being played on the field of death. With a humming sound such as might be made by millions of bees, the Zulu swarms fell upon those of the soldiers who remained alive, and, after a desperate resistance, stabbed them. Wherever the eye looked, men were falling and spears flashing in the sunshine, while the ear was filled with groans of the dying and the savage S'gee S'gee of the Zulu warriors as they passed their assegais through and through the bodies of the fallen. Many a deed of valour was done there as white men and black grappled in the death-struggle, but their bones alone remained to tell the tale of them. Shortly after the disaster, one of the survivors told the present writer of a duel which he witnessed between a Zulu and an officer of the 24th regiment. The officer having emptied his revolver, set his back against the wheel of a waggon and drew his sword. Then the Zulu came at him with his shield up, turning and springing from side to side as he advanced. Presently he lowered the shield, exposing his head, and the white man falling into the trap aimed a fierce blow at it. As it fell the shield was raised again, and the sword sank deep into its edge, remaining fixed in the tough ox-hide. This was what the Zulu desired; with a twist of his strong arm he wrenched the sword from his opponent's hand, and in another instant the unfortunate officer was down with an assegai through his breast.

In a few minutes it was done, all resistance had been overpowered, the wounded had been murdered – for the Zulu on the war-path has no mercy – and the dead mutilated and cut open to satisfy the horrible native superstition. Then those regiments that remained upon the field began the work of plunder. Most of the bodies they stripped naked, clothing themselves in the uniforms of the dead soldiers. They stabbed the poor oxen that remained fastened to the 'trek-tows' of the waggons, and they drank all the spirits that they could find, some of them, it is said, perishing through the accidental consumption of the medical stores. Then, when the sun grew low, they retreated, laden with plunder, taking with them the most of their dead, of whom there are believed to have been about fifteen hundred, for the Martinis did their work well, and our soldiers had not died unavenged.

All this while Lord Chelmsford and the division which he accompanied were in ignorance of what had happened within a few miles of them, though rumours had reached them that a Zulu force was threatening the camp. The first to discover the dreadful truth was Commandant Lonsdale of the Natal Native Contingent. This officer had been ill, and was returning to camp alone, a fact that shows how little anything serious was expected. He reached it about the middle of the afternoon, and there was nothing to reveal to the casual observer that more than three thousand human beings had perished there that day. The sun shone, on the white tents and on the ox waggons, around and about which groups of red-coated men were walking, sitting, and lying. It did not chance to occur to him that those who were moving were Zulus wearing the coats of English soldiers, and those lying down, soldiers whom the Zulus had killed. As Commandant Lonsdale rode, a gun was fired, and he heard a bullet whizz past his head. Looking in the direction of the sound, he saw a native with a smoking rifle in his hand, and concluding that it was one of the men under his command who had discharged his piece accidentally, he took no more notice of the matter. Forward he rode, till he was within ten yards of what had been the headquarter tents, when suddenly out of one of them there stalked a great Zulu, bearing in his hand a broad assegai from which blood was dripping. Then his intelligence awoke, and he understood. The camp was in the possession of the enemy, and those who lay here and there upon the grass like holiday makers in a London park on a Sunday in summer, were English soldiers indeed, not living but dead.

Turning his horse, Commandant Lonsdale fled as swiftly as it could carry him. More than a hundred rifle-shots were fired after him, but the Zulu marksmanship was poor, and he escaped untouched. A while afterwards, a solitary horseman met Lord Chelmsford and his staff returning: he saluted, and said, 'The camp is in the possession of the enemy, sir!' None who heard those words will forget them, and few men can have experienced a more terrible shock than that which fell upon the English general in this hour.

Slowly, and with all military precaution, Lord Chelmsford and his force moved onward, till at length, when darkness had fallen, they encamped beneath the fatal hill of Isandhlwana. Here, momentarily expecting to be attacked, they remained all night amid the wreck, the ruin, and the dead, but not till the following dawn did they learn the magnitude of the disaster that had overtaken our arms. Then they saw, and in silence marched from that fatal field, heading for Rorke's Drift, and leaving its mutilated dead to the vulture and the jackal.

Now let us follow the fate of the mob of fugitives, who, driven back from the waggon road by the Undi, plunged desperately into the donga near it, the sole avenue of retreat which had not been besieged by the foe, in the hope that they might escape the slaughter by following the friendly natives who were mixed up with them. How many entered on that terrible race for life is not known, but it is certain that very few won through. Indeed, it is said that, with the exception of some natives, no single man who was not mounted lived to pass the Buffalo River. For five miles or more they rode and ran over paths that a goat would have found it difficult to keep his footing on, while by them, and mixed up with them, went the destroying Zulus. Very soon the guns became fixed among the boulders, and one by one the artillerymen were assegaied. On went the survivors, hopeless yet hoping. Now a savage sprang on this man, and now on that; the assegai flashed up, a cry of agony echoed among the rocks, and a corpse fell heavily to the red earth. Still, those whom it pleased Providence to protect struggled forward, clinging to their horses' manes as they leaped from boulder to boulder, till at length they came to a cliff, beneath which the Buffalo rolled in flood. Down this cliff they slid and stumbled, few of them can tell how; then, driven to it by the pitiless spears, they plunged into the raging river. Many were drowned in its waters, some were shot in the stream, some were stabbed upon the banks, yet a few, clinging to the manes and tails of their horses, gained the opposite shore in safety.

Among these were two men whose memory their country will not willingly let die, who, indeed (it is the first time in our military history), have been decreed the Victoria Cross although they were already dead: Lieutenants Coghill and Melvill of the 24th regiment. One of these, Lieutenant Coghill, the writer of this sketch had the good fortune to know well. A kindlier-hearted and merrier young English gentleman never lived. Melvill and Coghill were swept away upon the tide of flight, down the dreadful path that led to Fugitives' Drift, but Melvill bore with him the colours of the 24th regiment that were in his charge as adjutant, not tied round his waist, as has been reported, but upon the pole to which they were attached. He arrived in safety at the river, but, owing to the loss of his horse, was unable to cross it, and took refuge upon a rock in mid-stream, still holding the colours in his hand. Coghill, whose knee was disabled by an accident and who had reached the Natal bank already, saw the terrible position of his friend and brother officer, and, though spears flashed about him and bullets beat the water like hail, with a courage that has rarely been equalled, he turned his horse and swam back to his assistance. The worst was over; safety lay before him, there behind him in the river was almost certain death; but this gallant gentleman heeded none of these things, for there also were the colours of his regiment and his drowning friend. Back he swam to the rock through the boiling current. Soon his horse was shot dead beneath him, yet, though none knows how, the two of them came safe to shore. The colours were lost indeed, for they could no longer carry them and live, but these never fell into the hands of their savage foes: days afterwards they were searched for and found in the bed of the river. Breathless, desperate, lamed, and utterly outworn, the two friends struggled up the bank and the hill beyond. But Zulus had crossed that stream as well as the fugitive Englishmen. They staggered forward for a few hundred yards, then, unable to go further, the friends stood back to back and the foe closed in upon them. There they stood, and there, fighting desperately, the heroes died. Peace be with them in that land to which they have journeyed, and among men, immortal honour to their names!

They sold their lives dearly, for several Zulus were found lying about their bodies.

About forty white men lived to cross the river at Fugitives' Drift, and these, almost the only English survivors of the force at Isandhlwana, rode on, still followed by Zulus, to the provision depôt at Helpmakaar some fifteen miles away, where they mustered and entrenched themselves as best they were able, expecting to be attacked at any moment. But no attack was delivered, the Zulus being busily employed elsewhere.

Some little distance from the banks of the Buffalo, and on the Natal side near to a mountain called Tyana, stood two buildings erected by the Rev. Mr. Witt; Rorke's Drift, from which No. 3 column had advanced, being immediately in front of them. One of these buildings had been utilised as a storehouse and hospital, and in it were thirty-five sick men. The other was occupied by a company of the 2nd 24th regiment, under the command of the late Lieut. Bromhead.12

On January 22, the ponts at Rorke's Drift were left in charge of Lieut. Chard, R.E., with a few men. About a quarter-past three on that day an officer of Lonsdale's regiment, Lieut. Adendorff, and a carbineer, were seen galloping wildly towards the ponts. On coming to the bank of the river, they shouted to Lieut. Chard to take them across, and so soon as he reached them, they communicated to him the terrifying news that the general's camp had been captured and destroyed by a Zulu impi. A few minutes later a message arrived from Lieut. Bromhead, who also had learned the tidings of disaster, requesting Lieut. Chard to join him at the commissariat store. Mounting his horse he rode thither, to find Lieut. Bromhead, assisted by Mr. Dolton, of the commissariat, and the entire force at his command, amounting to about 130, inclusive of the sick and the chaplain, Mr. Smith, a Norfolk man, actively engaged in loopholing and barricading the house and hospital (both of which buildings were thatched), and in connecting them by means of a fortification of mealie bags and waggons. Having ridden round the position, Lieut. Chard returned to the Drift. Sergeant Milne and Mr. Daniells, who managed the ponts, offered to moor them in the middle of the stream, and with the assistance of a few men to defend them from their decks. This gallant suggestion being rejected as impracticable, Lieut. Chard withdrew to the buildings with the waggon and those under his command.

They arrived there about 3.30, and shortly afterwards an officer of Durnford's native horse rode up, accompanied by about 100 mounted men, and asked for orders. He was requested to send out outposts in the direction of the enemy, and, having checked their advance as much as possible, to fall back, when forced so to do, upon the buildings and assist in their defence. Posts were then assigned to each man in the little garrison, and, this done, the defensive preparations went on, all doing their utmost, for they felt that the life of every one of them was at stake. Three-quarters of an hour went by, and the officer of Durnford's horse rode up, reporting that the Zulus were advancing in masses, and that his men were deserting in the direction of Helpmakaar. At this time some natives of the Natal contingent under the command of Capt. Stephenson also retired, an example which was followed by that officer himself.

Lieuts. Chard and Bromhead now saw that their lines of defence were too large for the number of men left to them, and at once began the erection of an inner entrenchment formed of biscuit boxes taken from the stores. When this wall was but two boxes high, suddenly there appeared five or six hundred Zulus advancing at a run against the southern side of their position. These were soldiers of the Undi regiment, the same that had turned the Isandhlwana mountain, cutting off all possibility of retreat by the waggon road, who, when they knew that the camp was taken, had advanced to destroy the guard of Rorke's Drift. On they came, to be met presently by a terrible and concentrated fire from the Martinis. Many fell, but they did not stay till, when within 50 yards of the wall, the cross fire from the store took them in flank. Their loss was now so heavy that, checking their advance, some of them took cover among the ovens, cookhouse, and outbuildings, whence they in turn opened fire upon the garrison. Hundreds more rushing round the hospital came at full speed against the north-west fortification of sacks filled with corn. In vain did the Martinis pump a hail of lead into them: on they came straight to the frail defence, striving to take it at the point of the assegai. But here they were met by British bayonets and a fire so terrible that even the courage of the Zulus could not prevail against it, and they fell back, that is, those of them who were left alive.

By this time the main force of the Undi had arrived, two thousand of them, perhaps, and having lined an overlooking ledge of rocks, took possession of the garden of the station and the bush surrounding it, from all of which the fire, though badly directed, was so continuous that at length the little garrison of white men were forced back into their inner entrenchment of biscuit boxes. Creeping up under cover of the bush, the Zulus now delivered assault after assault upon the wall. Each of these fierce rushes was repelled with the bayonets wielded by the brave white men on its further side. The assegais clashed against the rifle barrels, everywhere the musketry rang and rolled, the savage war-cries and the cheers of the Englishmen rose together through the din, while British soldier and Zulu warrior thrust and shot and tore at each other across the narrow wall, that wall which all the Undi could not climb.

Now it grew dark, for the night was closing in; the spears flashed dimly, and in place of smoke long tongues of flame shot from the rifle barrels, illumining the stern faces of those who held them as lightning does. But soon there was to be light. If any had leisure to observe, they may have seen flakes of fire flying upwards from the dim bush, and wondered what they were. They were bunches of burning grass being thrown on spears to fall in the thatch of the hospital roof. Presently something could be seen on this roof that shone like a star. It grew dim, then suddenly began to brighten and to increase till the star-like spot was a flame, and a hoarse cry passed from man to man of: 'O God! the hospital is on fire!'

The hospital was on fire, and in it were sick men, some of whom could not move. It was defended by a garrison, a handful of men, and at one and the same time these must bear away the sick to the store building, and hold the burning place against the Zulus, who now were upon them. They did it, but not all of it, for this was beyond the power of mortal bravery and devotion. When the thatch blazed above them, room after room did Privates Williams and Hook, R. and W. Jones, and some few others hold with the white arm – for their ammunition was spent – against the assegais of the Zulus, while their disabled comrades were borne away to the store building beneath the shelter of the connecting wall. One of them lost his life here, others were grievously wounded, but, dead or alive, their names should always be remembered among their countrymen, ay! and always will. Yet they could not save them every one; the fire scorched overhead and the assegais bit deep in front, and ever, as foes fell, fresh ones sprang into their places, and so, fighting furiously, those few gallant men were thrust back, alas! leaving some helpless comrades to die by fire and the spear.