ZULULAND.--HOW THEY HELD THE POST AT RORKE’S DRIFT.
The story of Rorke’s Drift is the story of one of the most heroic
defences in our military annals. At this small post on the Buffalo River
one hundred and thirty-nine men of the 24th (South Wales Borderers)
Regiment, Durnford’s Horse, and the Natal Mounted Police, kept off a
huge army of three thousand Zulus all through the afternoon and night
following the disaster at Isandhlana.
Modern history, I believe, contains no parallel to this brilliant feat of
arms, which stands for all time as an example of the splendid courage and
devotion of which Englishmen are capable when duty calls.
* * * * *
At three o’clock in the afternoon of that fateful January 22nd an officer
of the Royal Engineers was down at the drift watching the working of some
pontoons. This was Lieutenant John Rouse Merriott Chard, now on active
service for the first time after seven years spent at various dockyard
stations. He had reason enough to be thoughtful, as he paced slowly
along the bank, for the drift was a position of extreme importance. At
this spot, where the river was most easily fordable, the Zulus might be
expected to cross if they attempted the invasion of Natal. And to stay
them if they came was only a small garrison of less than a hundred and
fifty men.
The post itself was about a quarter of a mile distant, an old Swedish
mission-station converted into a commissariat depôt and hospital for the
use of Lord Chelmsford’s force. From where he stood Lieutenant Chard
could see the two low buildings of which it consisted, with a small
cluster of trees in front and at one side, and behind the white tents
where the soldiers were. It looked a poor means of defence indeed.
From the mission-station his thoughts wandered to the little force which
had crossed by that same ford eleven days previously and disappeared into
the Zulu country. What had been happening behind those distant hills? He
was not to be left long in doubt. Suddenly two horsemen appeared in sight
on the other side of the river, spurring furiously towards the ford. As
they dashed up, the pontoon was pulled across and the two were ferried
over to the Natal bank.
The new-comers were Lieutenant Adendorff, of Lonsdale’s corps, and a
carabineer who had escaped with him from the Zulus. The lieutenant was in
his shirt-sleeves and hatless, his only weapon being a revolver strapped
round his breast. As soon as he reached Chard’s side he poured out his
breathless tale of horror, the tale of the Isandhlana massacre. He
himself had come straight from the camp of death to tell the news of the
disaster and to warn the little garrison at the drift that a large body
of Zulus was advancing upon it.
Sending the carabineer on to Helpmakaar, twelve miles away, where
Major Spalding, the commandant of the post, had gone to fetch another
company of the 24th Regiment, Chard proceeded with Adendorff to the
mission-station. Here he found his brother-officer, Lieutenant Gonville
Bromhead, who commanded the company of the 24th, then encamped close
by, already engaged in putting the mission-house, or store-building as
it may more properly be called, and the hospital in a state of defence.
Barricades were being prepared, and loopholes made in the walls. Bromhead
had a few minutes before received a similar message of alarm.
As quickly as possible the tents were struck, and all who were able were
set to work to build up a wall of mealie-bags, about four feet high,
from one corner of the stone cattle-kraal to the wall of the hospital
building. This afforded a protection to the front of the post. The
waggons, which all the morning had been unloading the stores they had
brought from Helpmakaar, were called into requisition and made to form a
barricade between the two buildings.
Everything that was possible was done to render the position safe against
attack, but the proximity of a high hill (the Oscarberg), and a large
patch of bushes which there was no time to cut down, gave an enemy a
decided advantage.
Having seen that his directions were being carried out, Chard, who
succeeded to the command in Major Spalding’s absence, went back to
the drift to bring up the pontoon guard. To the honour of these brave
fellows, a sergeant and six men, it is said that they offered to moor the
boats in the stream and defend the ford as long as they could; but the
lieutenant would not permit such a sacrifice. So the party went up the
bank together to the station.
Half an hour had now elapsed. The next thing to be done was to send out
scouts to watch for the Zulus, and some of Durnford’s Horse rode out on
this duty. Their officer dashed back hastily soon after four to report
that an impi was marching rapidly towards the drift, and further that his
men were bolting along the road to Helpmakaar.
With the cowards went a detachment of the Natal Native Contingent, their
“gallant” officer, Captain Stevenson, flying with them. This desertion so
enraged the others that they fired a round after them, killing a European
non-commissioned officer of the Native Contingent. The garrison was now
sadly reduced, but there were no more desertions. Every man at the post
was prepared to stand by it to the last.
The line of defence appearing to Chard to be too extended for his few
defenders, he constructed an inner breastwork of--biscuit boxes! “We soon
had completed,” he says in his brief report, “a wall of about two boxes
high.” Behind this frail barrier was to be fought as fierce a fight as
history has ever recorded.
At about twenty minutes past four the leading files of the Zulus hove
in sight, and the garrison of Rorke’s Drift flew to their several
stations. Some went to the rampart of mealie-bags, others to the windows
of the store-building, and others to the hospital where there had been
forty-five men when the alarm first came, but where only twenty-three
now remained. Among those told off to guard the wounded were Privates
Henry Hook, Robert Jones, William Jones, and John Williams, of whom more
hereafter.
Following the few hundred Zulus who came leaping and dancing round the
base of the hill came a host more, their ox-hide shields in different
colours marking the regiments to which they belonged. In true Zulu
fashion they tried to “rush” the place at once, but a heavy volley drove
them back. Then they began to take up positions on the hillside, where
many rocky ledges and caves afforded them vantage-points, while others
dropped behind ant-hills and bushes, or sought cover in the two little
outhouses of the hospital.
“From my loophole,” says Hook, “I saw the Zulus approaching in thousands.
They began to fire, yelling as they did so, when they were five hundred
or six hundred yards off. More than half of them had muskets or rifles. I
began to fire when they were six hundred yards distant. I managed to clip
several of them, for I had an excellent rifle, and was a ‘marksman.’”
Hook in his account recollects particularly one Zulu whom he “clipped”
at four hundred yards while running from one ant-hill to another. The
warrior made a complete somersault and fell dead. Another Zulu who
sheltered himself behind an ant-hill gave Hook some trouble, for the
Gloucester man had to sight his rifle three times ere he got his enemy’s
range. The Zulu never showed his head round the heap again, and when Hook
went round to look at him after the fight was over he found the warrior
lying there with a bullet hole in his skull.
The hospital was the first building to receive the attack, but at
the outer wall of defence a fierce hand-to-hand struggle soon ensued.
Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead were fighting hard at the front, the
latter being conspicuous in many a bayonet charge at the dark-skinned
figures that climbed again and again over the mealie-bags. Prominent,
too, in repelling the Zulus at this position was one Corporal Schiess,
a Swiss, who left the hospital to join in the fight, and distinguished
himself by creeping along a wall to shoot a Zulu who was firing from the
end.
At last it was recognised that the defenders could not hope to hold this
rampart long. They fell back accordingly behind the inner defence of
biscuit boxes, after two hours of fighting.
We may leave them there for a little time while we take note of what
is happening at the hospital. Here the gallant six defenders have been
quickly reduced to four, two of the number having been killed out on the
verandah. Four men to get the patients safely out of the building which
the Zulus have rendered untenable by firing the thatch!
Hook and John Williams come to the front first with William and Robert
Jones (the last two not being related, by the way). As the Zulus burst in
the outer doors the two Jones guard these entrances with their bayonets,
their cartridges being expended. It is quick work; stabbing and thrusting
until the pile of corpses in the doorway itself helps to check the rush.
This gives time for Hook and Williams to carry the patients from the
first room to an inner one.
There are four apartments to be gone through before the sick men can be
carried out to the shelter of the barricade, for the inner rooms do not
communicate directly with the outside. Holes have to be made in the
partitions, and the poor sufferers passed through these in turn.
Driven back and back, Hook finds himself suddenly in a room where
there are several patients. Then a wounded man comes in with a bullet
hole in his arm which has to be bound up. A minute later John Williams
appears--John Williams who has just seen his brother Joseph hauled out
and assegaied before his eyes, and who is now a still more dangerous man
to deal with.
Williams breaks a hole in the partition with his bayonet, and whilst
he does this Hook takes his stand at the door. A few moments later the
rush comes. There is a fierce hammering at the door, it gives way, and
the sturdy Gloucester private drops the first man to enter. Shooting and
lunging with his bayonet, he soon accounts for four or five. Assegais fly
past, but only one touches him, inflicting a scalp wound. One Zulu seizes
his rifle and tries to drag it away, but while they are tussling Hook
slips in a cartridge, pulls the trigger, and another body is added to the
heap at his feet.
Every now and then a Zulu makes a rush to get through, for the narrow
entrance admits one man only at a time; but none pass the grim figure on
guard there. And when all the patients have been got out save one who has
a broken leg, Hook makes a jump for the hole himself, and gets through,
dragging the last wounded man after him--“in doing which,” he says, “I
broke his leg again!”
From this last room a window opens out on to the biscuit-box defences.
The patients are quickly passed out to willing hands below, the while
Hook with his reddened bayonet stands by the hole in the wall to see
that no Zulu follows. Then, still sticking to his particular charge, he
drags him out and takes up a position behind the barricade to do some
more useful work there before the morning dawns. Of the twenty-three
wounded who were in the hospital twenty have been saved. The remaining
three are believed to have wandered back, delirious from fever, into the
rooms that had been cleared.
Although Hook and Williams have escaped injury of any serious nature, the
gallant Welshman, Robert Jones, has not been so fortunate. Three assegais
have struck him in the body. He and his namesake William, as I have said,
have been most busy in the front of the building, and how many Zulus they
have put to their account is not known, but the number is large judging
from the heaps of dead warriors whose bodies are found in the ruins of
the building next day.
In this last stage of the rescue of the wounded William Allen and
Frederick Hitch, fellow-soldiers of the 24th Regiment (to which, by
the way, the four brave privates above-named belong), make good their
claim to glory. Taking up an exposed position on some steps leading to a
granary, these two men keep the ground clear between the burning hospital
and the barricade, their accurate fire making it certain death for a Zulu
to venture near.
By their courageous stand, for which they pay dearly, every one of the
rescued twenty is brought into safety. And even when incapacitated by
their wounds from taking part in the fighting, the two brave fellows
stand by all night to serve out ammunition to their comrades.
At the rampart of biscuit boxes were several vacant places ere the
first beams of light showed in the sky. Where Hook knelt three men had
previously been shot. But under the cool direction of Chard, Bromhead,
and Assistant-Commissary Dalton, another of the garrison, the line of
defenders kept up a deadly fire against the Zulus which stayed the rushes
time and time again, and drove back the picked warriors of Cetewayo’s
army to the shelter of their rocks and ant-heaps. Thirteen hours in all
the fight lasted, until the Zulus drew off, baffled, beaten.
Several times they had seemed to be retiring, but after renewed
war-dances and that stamping of the earth peculiar to Zulu warriors,
accompanied with much shouting and waving of assegais, they came on
again with a fierce yell of “Usutu!” which is a far more fearsome cry to
hear in battle than the war-whoop of the painted Sioux. At last, just
after four a.m., there was a long pause, and then the impis were seen to
sullenly roll back out of sight behind the Oscarberg.
The grim, smoke-blackened defenders peered wonderingly after them from
behind the barricade, hardly believing that the host was actually in
retreat. But such was the case. After some time, those who went out to
reconnoitre and look for the wounded saw no signs of the enemy. The Zulus
had gone, leaving some 350 dead behind them. On our side the losses were
but fifteen, though two of the wounded died afterwards.
With the fear of a renewed attack later on, the weary soldiers laid their
rifles aside, and at once began to strengthen the defences where they had
been broken down. Lest the store-building itself should be threatened
with fire, they set to work to remove the thatch from its roof, and while
engaged in doing so the watchers announced that another large body of
Zulus were in sight some distance to the south-west. Immediately the
men flew to their stations, but the alarm fortunately turned out to
be a false one. The enemy, after advancing a little way, swung round
and disappeared behind the hills. They had seen the column under Lord
Chelmsford marching towards the drift, and had had their stomachful of
fighting.
A little later the British force, which had seen the flames of the
burning hospital as far off as Isandhlana and had marched from the
fatal camp to relieve their comrades at Rorke’s Drift, came round the
Oscarberg, to be greeted with wild cheers and waving of helmets.
“Men,” said the General, as he surveyed the group before him and heard
the story of their great stand, “I thank you all for your gallant
defence.”
It was not a moment for fine speeches. The hearts of all present were
too full to find utterance in words. But every man knew what was in Lord
Chelmsford’s heart as he thanked them simply for himself and for his
country.
For that defence, gallant indeed, eleven Crosses were awarded, to
Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead, to Assistant-Commissary Dalton, Corporals
Allen and Schiess, Privates Hook, Williams, Hitch, and W. and R. Jones,
and to Surgeon-Major Reynolds, whom I have not mentioned in my account,
but who showed great devotion to the wounded under fire.
Private Henry Hook, one of the principal heroes of the defence, was
called up at once before Lord Chelmsford, just as he was, in shirt
sleeves and with his braces hanging down behind, to receive the
General’s praise for his conduct. He was the only one of the eleven to
receive his V.C. at Rorke’s Drift, on the very scene of his gallantry,
Sir Garnet Wolseley pinning the little bronze Cross on to Hook’s breast
with his own hands on the following 3rd of August.
Until a few years ago Hook was a familiar figure to frequenters of the
British Museum Reading Room, where, on retiring from the service, he
obtained an appointment.
Of the rest, Lieutenant Bromhead died in 1891, and Lieutenant (afterwards
Colonel) Chard in 1897. I find only the names of Brigadier-Surgeon
Lieutenant-Colonel J. H. Reynolds, and Privates J. Williams, F. Hitch,
and W. Jones, in the list of surviving recipients. To those who have
the opportunity I would say, seek out these heroes while they are still
in the land of the living and hear from their lips, if they can be led
to speak, the full story of Rorke’s Drift, which I feel I have told but
baldly here.