Rorke's Drift

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We woke early and sat on our balcony with a cup of tea watching the birds in the trees just in front of us. Then we spotted some small brown creatures that looked like a cross between a rabbit and a guinea pig, racing back and forth. These turned out to be rock rabbits, which are not, in fact, rabbits at all.

Dalton picked us up at 9am and we set off in the hotel’s 4WD for Rorke’s Drift, 23km away on dirt roads. We drove past the local primary school where the children were dressed in Zulu costumes as part of South African heritage week. As soon as they saw us they all abandoned their dancing and rushed to the wire fence to wave to and give us a little dance! Dalton was very amused by their reaction.

We stopped along the way for him to indicate the terrain and the lines of attack and describe the events immediately preceding the battle, and were assailed by an appalling smell which turned out to be a dead, rotting cow. It gave us a small idea of how dreadful the various battlefields must have smelt, with not only the pack animals but also the dead soldiers whose bodies were not recovered for several months, as they rotted in the heat. We crossed the Buffalo River which was the boundary between the Zulu Kingdom and Natal. The British crossed here on their initial advance from Rorke’s Drift to Isandlwana. This winter and spring have been unusually dry so the river was very low, but Dalton told us that in January he had been guiding an English group tour and they had been unable to cross the river as it had risen so high it had covered the bridge. How disappointing must that have been!

The few survivors of Isandlwana had made it back to Rorke's Drift on 22 January 1879, and told the garrison of 240 men who were there what had happened. The senior British office present, Lieutenant Chard (Michael Caine to those who have watched Zulu), agreed with his fellow officers that the best chance of survival was to fortify the position as best they could and fight rather than flee and certainly be cut down in the open as many of the fleeing soldiers had been.

The approaching force of 4,000 were reserve regiments that not been engaged in the battle, but who were keen to “wash their spears” in British blood. They were under specific orders from the King and his generals not to cross the Buffalo river into Natal, but their blood lust was up and they wanted a warrior's story to tell their families and fellow warriors. If they had obeyed their King's orders, Rorke's Drift would never have happened.

Rorke's Drift was named after Jim Rorke, an Irish trader who had for many years traded across the borders with the Zulus with whom he had good relations, and he did with the people in Natal. He had died a few years earlier and his widow had sold his home to Otto Witt, who founded a Swedish Lutheran church there, from where to carry out missionary work among the Zulus. When the British moved up to the border they took over his home, and turned it into a hospital for their sick and wounded who needed medical attention having crossed Natal to this point. Reverend Witt was not happy but could do nothing about it.

The area of the battle is really very small, bounded on one side by what we call the hospital and in the opposite corner by what was then the store house but is now the church. The area was hastily fortified by crude walls made of mealie bags taken from the store room and arranged in a defensive perimeter delineated by those two buildings. The rectangle within that boundary is about 50 yards by 40 yards.

The Zulus attacked about 5pm on the 22^nd. The assegai rained down on the soldiers within the perimeter. The Zulus breached the walls of the hospital and the fighting within it as the men defended each room until they inevitably withdrew to the next room must have been terrifying beyond belief. Eventually as the Zulus lit the thatch, the men within used pickaxes to breach the outside wall and drag the surviving wounded into the rectangle.

The ferocious fighting went on through the night for about 11 hours, but just as the British ammunition was running dangerously low, the Zulu withdrew. They suffered around 500 dead, for the loss of an unbelievably low 17 British soldiers. Later that day they were relieved by an advancing British detachment. 11 Victoria Crosses and four Distinguished Conduct Medals were awarded to the men of the garrison.

Tour over, we headed back to the hotel for lunch and a leisurely afternoon sitting on our balcony, reading and watching village life play out in front of us.

Scroll down for more photos.

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