Durnford had hardly departed when heavy firing was heard coming from the plateau; two companies of the 24th commanded by Lieutenants Cavaye and Mostyn and a company of the NNC were firing down at a large body of Zulus which was moving off and away from the plateau towards the undefended rear of the British camp, ignoring the British. The intention of this large body of Zulus, the right horn, was to seize the track back to Rorke’s Drift and deny the British any possibility of retreat or escape.
In readiness to defend the camp, the remaining companies of the 24th were extended 800 yards to the left and front of the north-facing position in order to cover the plateau and the plain towards Ulundi. The soldiers were positioned 3 yards apart in a double line. Men of the NNC also formed a section of the line, with the two 7 pound guns of the Royal Artillery between them and the Imperial troops. The garrison troops were elated; the Zulus were about to attack and they, not Chelmsford’s force, would have all the glory. In every previous battle fought by the 24th Regiment in Africa the attacking warriors fled when volley firing commenced. The British, though, had never fought the Zulus.
In the midst of the uncertainty, one of Chelmsford’s staff officers, Captain Alan Gardner, arrived at Pulleine’s tent with orders from Chelmsford to transfer the camp to the area beyond Mangeni waterfall, Chelmsford’s current position. The note arrived just as the Zulus began to advance on the camp. However, Pulleine could neither see nor communicate with his front line because his headquarters tent was located on the far side of camp. He had not realized that, in order to cover the extensive dead ground to their front, his front-line officers had advanced their troops over the lip of the plain and were now out of sight of the camp.11 Pulleine now faced a bewildering dilemma; he could see the rapidly approaching Zulu army sweeping off the Nqutu plateau but not his own front line. To add to his woes, his last order from Chelmsford was to strike the camp, and half Pulleine’s men were still occupied with packing. Pulleine knew that by initiating further defensive precautions he would seriously delay the move of the camp, and if the Zulu force proved to be only skirmishers, he would incur the derision of Chelmsford. Faced with too many alternatives Pulleine ordered the camp garrison to deploy according to Chelmsford’s orders; he appears to have taken no further part in the battle until he was killed when the camp was overrun.
The actual orders that Pulleine inherited from Glyn when he assumed command at Isandlwana were discovered in 2001; their content suggests that Pulleine was obeying to the letter the orders he had received from Chelmsford. Identical orders had been issued to all five column commanders and referred to the tactics to be used in the event of a Zulu attack. Apart from the existence of these orders, identical tactics to those used to defend Isandlwana had also been used that very same morning at two other locations: at Nyezane, only 50 miles from Isandlwana, where Colonel Pearson’s Coastal Column came under a sustained Zulu attack; and likewise during a skirmish 40 miles to the north near Hlobane, in which Colonel Wood was engaged by the Zulus. Pulleine had no battle experience and faithfully deployed his force in front of the Isandlwana camp according to Chelmsford’s orders. Such tactics were doomed to fail in a weakly defended position; interestingly, they were never used again against the Zulus.
All the while the massed ranks of Zulu warriors rapidly advanced towards Isandlwana across a 5 mile front before pouring down from the Nqutu plateau to attack the overextended British firing line protecting the camp. Meanwhile, some 3 miles out on the plain, Durnford and his men met with the rapidly advancing Zulu left horn. Heavily outnumbered, Durnford was forced into a tactical withdrawal back towards the camp. Durnford’s rocket battery, commanded by Major Francis Russell RA, had lagged behind and was completely taken by surprise when, over the brow of the plateau, the Zulus suddenly appeared less than 200 yards away; the battery managed to fire one ineffectual rocket before being overrun by the leading ranks of warriors. Retreating, Durnford gathered up the battery’s three shocked survivors and continued back towards the camp, now less than a mile distant.
At the same time, Captain Reginald Younghusband’s E Company was sent out from the camp to climb the spur to the plateau to support the retreat of Cavaye and Mostyn’s men, who were now in danger of being overrun; Cavaye and Mostyn retreated under fire but only one company reached the camp – which company it was remains unclear. Their withdrawal now left Younghusband’s men isolated on the spur. The NNC on the line were ill equipped with only one rifle per ten men; seeing the Zulus rapidly advancing upon them, they knew they faced certain death if they stayed so they fled across the camp and into rocky terrain towards Natal.
With the camp now surrounded by the two Zulu horns, the central body of the main Zulu force consisting of some 15,000 warriors came into view. They descended from the plateau and rapidly advanced upon the overextended line of British infantry. The two guns of the Royal Artillery, directed by Major Stuart Smith and Lieutenant Curling, began firing and several rounds of their case shot (shrapnel) scored direct hits on the advancing warriors before the Zulu front line swept over and surrounded the British guns. Curling’s gun was on the left of the front line when his detachment was suddenly silenced; hotly pursued by the closing Zulus, Curling’s men clung to the guns as they retreated back towards camp in search of another firing position. Being mounted, Curling was able to lead the way through the battle. His letters home confirm that many of Pulleine’s men were not deployed on the front line as historians had previously believed but were still engaged in packing the camp as the Zulus attacked. He wrote:
At 7.30 I got the message to turn out at once and we got ready in about 10 minutes forming up by the 1/24th on their parade ground. The companies were very weak, no more than 50 in each and there were only 6 of them in all. We congratulated ourselves on the chance of our being attacked and hoped that our small numbers might induce the Zulus to come on, I suppose that not more than half the men left in the camp took part in its defence as it was not considered necessary and they were left in as cooks etc.12
At this early stage of the battle, the three amabutho making up the main body, the uNokhenke, uKhandempemvu and uMbonambi, all suffered serious losses from the defenders’ sustained rifle fire. The officers and NCOs in the centre of the British front line calmly controlled their men’s volley fire to the extent that the main Zulu attack faltered, which encouraged the soldiers to laugh and joke about the drubbing they were giving the Zulus. Captain Edward Essex, one of the five Imperial officers to survive, later wrote:
I was surprised how relaxed the men in the ranks were despite the climactic tension of the battle. Loading as fast as they could and firing into the dense black masses that pressed in on them, the men were laughing and chatting, and obviously thought they were giving the Zulus an awful hammering.13
At the centre of the British front line the men’s spirits were momentarily high but on the left of the line the soldiers, like the artillery, were being overwhelmed. On the right of the line Durnford’s men had been forced to withdraw to a dried-up watercourse less than a mile from the camp. A party of colonial riders sped to Durnford’s assistance but the position quickly became untenable; Durnford’s men became seriously outnumbered as the Zulus’ left horn began outflanking them. Within minutes Durnford realized his men were running out of ammunition and sent several riders back to the camp with urgent requests for replenishments, but they were unable to find their allocated supplies. As ammunition supplies were not forthcoming Durnford requested a volunteer to warn Pulleine of his predicament; there were no volunteers, which left Durnford with no option but to give the order to withdraw back to the main camp.
G Company 2/24th under command of their monocled officer, Lieutenant Charles Pope, were now occupying the extreme right end of the British line. Pope saw that Durnford’s men were in danger of being engulfed by the Zulus’ flanking advance so he ordered his company to move towards Durnford’s position. However, as they left the extreme right of the British line Durnford simultaneously orde
red his men to retreat. Being mounted, Durnford’s force quickly vacated their position, leaving G Company fatally exposed. Pope’s company was swiftly overwhelmed by the charging mass of several thousand Zulus; not a single soldier survived.
Meanwhile the main Zulu attack in front of the camp had stalled. The Zulu commanders on the overlooking heights of the iNyoni cliffs dispatched Chief Mkosana of the uKhandempemvu to restart the attack. Under his direction the uKhandempemvu resumed their advance. Chief Mkosana was then shot dead but without his brave intervention, the Zulus could have lost the battle. Instead, they charged the thin line of British infantry. In an instant the Zulu masses closed with the entire British position; even sustained volley fire proved ineffective against such numbers. The Zulu left and right horns now joined up behind the British camp and then charged into the surviving soldiers from their undefended rear. Survivors from the centre companies in the line had fought their way back through the main camp to the wagon park where they tried to form a defensive square. At the same time Captain Younghusband’s E Company was steadily forced back along the base of the cliff wall of Isandlwana until the thirty or so survivors reached a small plateau overlooking the bloody struggle in the wagon park. Having been furthest from the main Zulu attack, Younghusband had managed to maintain good order and discipline until the Zulus were about to overwhelm them. One Zulu later reported:
The soldiers gave a shout and charged down upon us. There was an induna in front of the soldiers with a long flashing sword, which he whirled round his head as he ran. They killed themselves by running down.14
In less than one hour, the battle of Isandlwana was over. The Zulu attack had been brilliantly and courageously executed across many miles of rugged and difficult terrain; the British were powerless to engage the sheer number of Zulus and the challenge they posed. The officers in charge of the two 7 pound guns that day were Major Smith and Lieutenant Curling, both riding fine artillery horses. Smith was killed in the latter stage of his flight from Isandlwana while Curling, the only officer to have continuously engaged the Zulus until the British line broke under the force of the Zulu attack, survived to tell a remarkable tale. He wrote to his mother:
We trotted off to the camp thinking to take up another position there but found it was in possession of the enemy who were killing the men as they ran out of their tents. We went right through them and out the other side losing nearly all our gunners in doing so and one or two of the sergeants. The road to Rorke’s Drift that we hoped to retreat by was full of the enemy so no way being open we followed a crowd of natives and camp followers who were running down a ravine. The Zulus were all among them stabbing men as they ran … and finally the guns got stuck and could go no further. In a moment the Zulus closed in and the drivers who now alone remained were pulled off their horses and killed.15
Having successfully manoeuvred their right horn behind Isandlwana, the Zulus emerged in force from behind the mountain, driving the column’s bellowing and terrified cattle through the wagon park and into the undefended rear of the British position. Very quickly, the camp transformed itself from a scene of peaceful activity to a nightmare of gunfire, noise, terror, confusion and bloody slaughter everywhere. The pandemonium was further exaggerated by the lack of visibility, a vital component usually overlooked by authors and historians. According to Lieutenant Wilkinson, a veteran of several Zulu War battles, ‘independent firing means, in firing for twenty seconds, firing at nothing; and only helped our daring opponents to get close up under cover of our smoke’.16 Isandlwana sits in a wide bowl ringed by hills which, on a hot day, can be airless and so still that volley fire would soon have created a thick hanging smokescreen between the British line and the advancing Zulus. It could also account for the relatively few Zulu casualties, not only at Isandlwana but also at other Zulu War battles through to the final battle at Ulundi.
In order to avoid this problem, contemporary army instruction manuals recommended firing volleys by sections: ‘In firing volleys by sections it is well to commence from the section on the leeward flank, in order that the smoke may not inconvenience the remainder.’ 17 Private George Mossop perceptively wrote of volley fire:
We were armed with Martini-Henry rifles charged with black powder, and each shot belched out a cloud of smoke; it became so dense that we were almost choked by it – and simply fired blindly into it. There was one continuous roar from cannon, rifles and the voices of men on both sides shouting. The smoke blotted out all view. It made every man feel that all he could do was to shoot immediately in front of him – and not concern himself with what was taking place elsewhere.18
The British line at Isandlwana may well have fought and then withdrawn back to the camp in a fog of their own gunsmoke – only to encounter the massive Zulu right horn as its 4,000 warriors charged through the unprotected camp and into the rear of the retreating British troops.
As the Zulus smashed their way into the camp, panic quickly spread among the camp’s followers and within moments calm British discipline descended into serious rout; it was every man for himself amidst the fury and carnage of the Zulu attack. Surviving soldiers tried to rally by forming defensive groups but with the British force so outnumbered, it was remarkable that anyone could escape back to the safety of Natal, although of the estimated sixty Europeans who did escape Isandlwana and lived to tell the tale, the majority were camp followers who departed before the battle was under way, or were Colonials who were mounted and could outrun the Zulus. Several groups of red-coated soldiers valiantly fought their way out of the camp but all were soon overwhelmed; their graves can still be seen along the trail that had earlier been taken by the camp fugitives.
Of the escaping British officers, only Lieutenant Curling RA and four mounted transport officers, Captains Essex and Gardner together with Lieutenants Cochrane and Smith-Dorrien, would see the end of the day. Apart from Curling who alone survived the front line, these officers had all been engaged on duties within the camp before they made good their escape. Curling later wrote:
They behaved splendidly in this fight. They were all killed in the ranks as they stood. Not a single man escaped from those companies that were placed to defend the camp. Indeed, they were completely cut off from any retreat and could not do as we did, gallop through the Zulus. When last I saw them, they were retreating steadily but I believe a rush was made and they were all killed in a few minutes.19
Beneath Isandlwana 52 officers, 810 white troops and 500 supporting black troops of the British column now lay dead among a probable 3,000 Zulu fatalities. At night, the hills around Isandlwana echoed with the baying of packs of dogs whose owners lay slain on the battlefield. Spaniels, pointers and mastiffs all packed together and, when tired of rotting human flesh, would hunt whatever they could, including sheep and cattle.20
In the early 1900s it was realized that a partial eclipse had occurred across southern Africa as the battle of Isandlwana drew to its bloody close. Although it featured in contemporary calendars, no mention of the event was made at the time by any of the British military in Zululand; it must therefore be presumed that the eclipse was not perceptible to the naked eye at the time.
Three months would elapse before the British could return to bury their dead.
CHAPTER 8
An Appalling Disaster
Never has such a disaster happened to the English Army.1
TROOPER RICHARD STEVENS
In the dying camp there was no one to give orders and no one to rally the men not that anyone could have been heard over the tumult and confusion of such terrible slaughter. Many of the camp civilians took the opportunity to flee for their lives and, finding the road back to Rorke’s Drift blocked by the closing Zulus, they fled through the gap made when a section of the iNgobamakhosi detached themselves from the closing left horn to chase the NNC who were also trying to flee across the rough, boulder-strewn terrain. This temporary gap enabled the last few escaping whites to follow through, only for most to run into the Zul
us who killed them; only a few riders would escape to reach the river 6 miles away. It was through this gap that Lieutenant Curling and Major Smith rode alongside the two artillery guns, only to see them being driven out of control down the steep slope behind the camp where the guns overturned amidst the Zulus. Curling and Smith rode on; Smith was caught and killed near the Buffalo river but Curling managed to reach the river and safety.
Only those whites on horseback had any chance of reaching the river and with little doubt many of the survivors, with the exception of Curling and two 24th Regimental officers, Lieutenants Coghill and Melvill, left Isandlwana before the main battle got under way. The majority of the survivors were also wearing blue jackets, including Coghill. The 24th’s officers had a choice of regimental jackets to wear in the field so there is no special significance in Coghill’s jacket being blue, other than the fact that it may have saved his life on the ride along the Fugitives’ Trail. King Cetshwayo had ordered the Zulus to concentrate on red-jacketed soldiers in the mistaken belief that only they were the Imperial troops.2
The surviving disciplined troops, those under Durnford and some of the 24th Regiment, probably no more than 200 men in all, made a hopeless but gallant stand in the area of Isandlwana wagon park. Durnford and his men were forced into a back-to-back struggle next to Black’s Koppie; all died making their final stand. The 24th similarly fought against overwhelming odds; the 24th then tried to effect a fighting retreat following the earlier fugitives; a few individuals managed to get as far as a mile to the rocky ledges overlooking the Manzimyama stream but all were cut down and died in the attempt. An unknown number of other fugitives were killed in the Buffalo river under the hail of Zulu gunfire or spears. Curling later wrote to his mother:
Crossing the Buffalo Page 13