by John Wilcox
‘Oh yes.’ His voice took on a sarcastic note. ‘Plenty of gallant soldiers have left Isandlwana to ride by us and break the news in Natal.’
Simon sighed. ‘I thought I would be the first,’ he said. ‘But look, I think you should get out right away and make for Helpmakaar.’
‘No, we thought about leaving, but we have sick and wounded here and we could never have made it to Helpmakaar by wagon. The Zulus would have overrun us in the open and cut us to pieces. We decided to stay here and fight it out. We have plenty of ammunition and we can hold them up all right.’
Simon looked around him. The little post hardly presented the appearance of an impregnable fortress. A shelf ran round the base of the Oskarberg about four hundred yards away, high enough to command the interior of the post - and Simon had seen the Zulus at Isandlwana picking up Martini-Henry rifles. If they could shoot accurately, they could cause problems. Mealie bags had been thrust underneath the wagons, and the two lines of boxes and sacks looked substantial enough, but they stood less than five feet high. The two buildings formed the end of the redoubt and jutted out vulnerably. As Simon watched, he saw bayonets breaking through the plaster walls as rifle loopholes were made from within.
‘How many men do you have?’ asked Simon.
Chard pulled at his beard. ‘I’ve got the eighty chaps of Bromhead’s B Company, plus about thirty odds and sods of sick and wounded, some who can fight, some who can’t.’ He nodded to the building at the western end of the post. ‘That’s the hospital and the weakest of them are in there. Difficult to defend - lots of little rooms with doors and windows facing outwards but no interconnecting corridor - but I’ve put a handful of men in with the sick to cover ’em. They’ve got the worst job but we’ve just got to do the best we can.’
He gestured to where a string of Natal Native Horse were trotting round the base of the Oskarberg to ride towards the drift. ‘These chaps are Durnford’s men who rode in from the battle and I’ve sent them out as a cavalry screen to hold up the Zulu attack. They are a godsend. And, as you can see,’ he pointed to where native troops armed with rifles outnumbered the infantrymen of the 24th at the barricades, ‘we have also picked up a whole bunch of the Natal Native Contingent. In all I’ve got about three hundred and fifty men. Just about enough to line the walls and keep the Zulus out. Now,’ he smiled at Simon, ‘you can probably make it if you ride to Helpmakaar. Or you can stay and help us. But you’d better make your mind up fast.’
Simon sighed. ‘Of course I’ll stay.’ He was tired, his shoulder throbbed and his mind was in turmoil. Jenkins had been killed and he had hit Covington. He might as well stay and die with the rest of them - there was certainly no hope of surviving in this ramshackle little fort. ‘Put me where I can be of most use.’
Chard was about to reply when the horsemen who had trotted out to defend the crossing and the base of the Oskarberg were seen galloping back to the post. But instead of reining in at the barricades, they rode straight past - their faces creased in fear and their eyes wide. Their European officer pulled up and shouted across the barrier to Chard: ‘There are thousands of the bastards coming, man, and my lot have had enough. They won’t take orders.’ And with that, he dug in his spurs and rode off towards Helpmakaar, following his men.
A patter of shots was heard as the last of the riders rounded the hill, and that was enough for the native infantrymen manning the barricades. They threw away their rifles, vaulted the barricades and followed the mounted troops up the track towards Helpmakaar and safety. An angry shout went up from the men of the 24th at the mealie bags and some of them fired their rifles after the running men.
Chard looked around in horror. His barricades were now stripped of more than half of their defenders and huge gaps had appeared in the line. ‘My God!’ he murmured, as much to himself as to Simon. ‘I’m down to a hundred and ten men.’
He turned to Simon. ‘I don’t have enough bodies to man three hundred yards of barricades now,’ he said. ‘Take six men and stretch a line of biscuit boxes across the middle of the compound from the front of the storehouse here to the middle of the wall over there, to bisect the yard. We can fall back here when we can’t hold the line any longer. We’ll just have to leave the poor devils in the hospital to look after themselves. Quickly now, they’ll be on us soon.’
Indeed they were. Simon had hardly begun to detail a handful of men from the wall when he heard a cry from a look-out: ‘Here they come. Black as hell and thick as grass.’ He looked up and saw the first impi swing into view around the flank of the Oskarberg, running in that flat, loose lope and aiming straight for the back walls of the post.
Bromhead’s men opened fire at about 450 yards - the distance to the base of the hill had formed a good measuring point for the setting of the rifle sights - and the effect was immediate. Simon saw warriors leap high into the air as the heavy bullets hit them and then go somersaulting back into the ranks of the men running behind. The Zulus ran forward to within fifty or sixty yards of the storehouse, but the attack faltered as they were caught in the cruel crossfire from the wagons and the loopholes in the building. Many of them took whatever cover they could find in a ditch and behind a deserted little outhouse, but the remainder carried on running around to the little hospital, where they settled down and began a steady fire - Simon was right, many Martini-Henrys had been found to add to the muzzle-loaders - on the defenders within, and on the soldiers who manned the low biscuit and mealie bag wall that had been built to afford protection to the open veranda on that side.
The bisecting wall within the compound finished, Simon sent his men back to the wall on the north side, where the pressure seemed heaviest. The post was now surrounded, so he too ran to supplement the thin line of defenders at that north wall. Then he stopped. He realised he had no rifle, just the cavalry sabre that he had tucked awkwardly into his trouser belt. That, he knew, would be useless against the thrusting assegais, so he threw it away and hurried to Bromhead, who was just marshalling a small party to charge with bayonets to help the defenders at the wall by the hospital.
‘Bromhead,’ he screamed, ‘where can I get a rifle and bayonet?’
The older man peered at him. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Do come. But you’ll need a rifle and bayonet. Look.’ He pointed to where a young soldier lay behind the mealie bags, his shoulder shattered from a musket slug, his rifle and bayonet lying by his side. ‘Take that.’
Simon ran across to the infantryman, whom he recognised. ‘Jones,’ he asked, ‘are you all right?’
The young man grimaced but nodded. ‘Just ’urts me when I laugh, see, sir. Eh, where ’ave you come from, then?’
‘Just over there,’ said Simon, and he picked up the rifle, dug into Jones’s pouch for cartridges and doubled away to join Bromhead, who was forming up his little platoon.
‘Right,’ shouted Bromhead, ‘we’re going to drive those chaps off the wall by the hospital with bayonets. At the double - now!’ In the lead, carrying only a revolver, the deaf officer began to run, and Simon joined the charging group of some twenty men following him.
The box and sack wall at the northern face of the hospital bulged outwards where a little salient had been formed to protect the veranda. The defenders here had been driven back, and the Zulus, by sheer pressure of numbers, had mounted the barricade and were now stabbing and hacking at the little group of infantrymen, who had had no time to reload and were countering fiercely with bayonets. Bromhead’s men jumped over the back line of bags with a whoop and the sheer force of their charge and the extra bayonets drove the Zulus back over the wall.
Simon found himself lagging behind the charge, not for want of courage but because he could hardly summon breath or energy. Nevertheless, he plunged into the fray with a recklessness born of desperation. He thrust his bayonet into a grey-haired warrior who was raising his assegai to strike down Bromhead, who was himself coolly taking aim with his revolver to his left, seemingly unaware of his vulnerabil
ity. The few yards of cordoned ground between the barricade and the hospital veranda were now a cauldron of violence, and for the second time that day, Simon inhaled the sour scent of battle - the dust, the sweat, the indefinable smell of fear - and heard again the screams of men in pain and dying. Panting with exertion, but still caught in the madness of the charge, he climbed on to the mealie bags and jabbed down with his bloodstained bayonet at the hedge of assegais below him, stabbing again and again.
He felt someone tug at his jacket, and Bromhead shouted above the din: ‘We can’t hold this place. Fall back into the compound.’
The little party, together with the original defenders of the salient, ran back and scrambled over the short wall of bags and boxes running from the outer barricade to the inner corner of the hospital which had been erected as a fall-back line of defence. From it, they could still command the veranda, with its vulnerable doors and windows, but they could do nothing, of course, to take the pressure off the defenders manning the western and southern sides of the hospital. Their retreat set up a great howl from the Zulus facing them, who now climbed the outer line and hurled themselves against the second barricade.
Simon stood at the wall firing as fast as he could at the black bodies in front of him. He pressed bullet after bullet into the breech, working the ejector lever rapidly until the rifle barrel began to burn his fingers with the heat of the firing. Still the Zulus came on, showing incredible bravery. However, the defenders at this shorter wall were now virtually elbow to elbow and, well supplied with ammunition, they were able to create a wall of gunfire that eventually daunted the warriors on this narrow front, forcing them to fall back and take cover behind the outer wall.
Behind him, Simon heard Chard’s deep voice: ‘Fonthill, take four men and support the wall behind you. Quickly, now.’
Tapping the shoulders of four men at intervals, Simon turned with them and ran to the north wall to fill ominous spaces there. The Zulus were massed in even greater density. Here they had to climb a ledge on which the barricade had been placed and they were dashing forward to clamber over their own dead and using the bodies to climb up the ledge, thrusting upwards with their assegais, trying to grab the rifles and bayonets that flashed above them, hacking and clawing until they were shot or bayoneted in their turn and fresh attackers pressed them down. Simon found now that there was little time to load his rifle, only time to jab with the long bayonet and often space enough only to swing the rifle butt up in a series of vicious uppercuts. He was cut in the thigh by a jabbing assegai but, in the frenzy and the desperate exhilaration of the fighting, he hardly noticed it.
The attackers fell away briefly and Simon became aware of a new danger. A group of warriors had scrambled up the lower slopes of the Oskarberg to a shelf high above the perimeter wall and now began a steady fire upon the defenders. The fire seemed to be coming mainly from old muzzle-loaders and the aim was inaccurate. It had little effect on the men manning the south wall, who presented only their heads for targets, but the hard-pressed defenders on the north wall could be seen more easily and several were now being hit in the back. Simon helped to carry a stricken man to the storehouse, where, on the inner veranda, a casualty station had been erected. He laid the man down, lifted his own head wearily and looked into the black eyes of Surgeon Major Reynolds, his face streaked with sweat, a bloody scalpel in his hand.
‘Good to see you again, Fonthill,’ said the surgeon with the faintest of smiles. ‘If you feel a little unwell, boy, take a few deep breaths and touch your toes with your hands.’
‘What?’ gasped Simon. ‘Oh no, sir. I’m quite all right now, thank you.’
‘Glad to hear it. Get back to the wall.’
The light was now fading and the threat from the snipers on the hill diminished as darkness crept over the mission at Rorke’s Drift. As it did so, however, a rosy glow began to light the compound. It came from the roof of the hospital, whose thatch began to crackle and roar as burning spears plunged into it, spreading the fire from end to end and turning the western end of the beleaguered post into a brightly lit amphitheatre. The flames illuminated the scarlet jackets of the defenders at the walls and gave a demonic aspect to the black faces of the attackers as they thrust and stabbed.
The ferocity of the attacks never faltered and now came without pause from every side. Wave after wave of Zulus flung themselves against the boxes and sacks of the barricades and the stone walls of the two buildings. As they were cut down by the fire and bayonets of the defenders, so their places were taken by equally fearless warriors who came surging forward under the direction of inDunas who were watching the mêlée from vantage points on the Oskarberg and from the gardens of the old mission.
Once, looking over the black faces confronting him at the wall, Simon caught a quick glimpse of a corpulent Zulu on a horse down on the track below and raised his rifle to bring him down, but the inDuna trotted away under cover before he could fire. Later, he was to learn that this was no inDuna, but the King’s brother, Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande, the commander of the three regiments who had disobeyed Cetswayo’s orders by crossing into Natal and were now attacking Rorke’s Drift. The only justification for such insubordination would be victory. The Prince had to keep urging his men forward, and in truth, there was every reason to do so. The mission post had never been built with defence in mind. It consisted merely of the two small buildings, set apart, and the line of boxes and bags that Chard had hurriedly thrown together to link them provided an insubstantial and artificial line of defence, too long at about 300 yards overall for the handful of men to defend adequately. The tiny post was an island, surrounded by a sea of black bodies stretching back twenty or thirty men deep, with further reserves waiting to take their turn in the next wave of attacks.
Simon could see as much as he ran quickly back from the wall to intercept a chaplain, his dog collar smudged with blood, who was walking behind the lines coolly dispensing cartridges from a large open haversack hung round his neck.
‘Bullets please, Padre,’ he said. ‘God, this is damned warm work.’
‘Do not take the Lord’s name in vain, Lieutenant,’ chided the chaplain. ‘There is never, never any excuse for blasphemy. Help yourself and fill your pouches. Fire straight and true in the Lord’s name.’
‘Er, yes. Thank you, Padre.’ As Simon took handfuls of cartridges by the light of the burning thatch and filled his pouch he scanned the walls. It was obvious to him that the full length of the barricades could no longer be held by the number of men available. Would it be obvious to Chard? His question was answered immediately, as a sergeant ran to him. ‘Mr Chard’s compliments, sir,’ he said, ‘we are to instruct half the men manning the north and south walls to fall back behind the inner line of boxes on the first bugle and the rest on the second. You are to take the north wall and me the south. They will be covered in retreat. Understood, sir?’
‘Very good, Sergeant.’
Simon ran to the north wall and, as best he could during the fighting, gave the instructions. He saw that Chard had lined the inner bisecting wall with a reserve of infantrymen, who, rifles at the aim, were poised to give covering fire to the retreating defenders from the walls. Then a bugle sounded and every other man on each wall ducked and ran back to the inner bastion. As they did so, the first volley rang out, sending bullets into the spaces they had vacated at the barricades. Then the second call was made and the process was repeated. The fire was too hot for the Zulus to pursue and they stayed behind the bag and box ramparts, howling in derision at the retreat.
The defenders were now concentrated into the eastern end of the post, where the storehouse formed part of the southern and eastern face - luckily the veranda here faced inward and the stone walls of the building, pierced with rifle slots, formed a solid bastion. The hospital, however, was now isolated, thirty yards away across the compound, and was even more vulnerable than before, in that crossfire could no longer be brought to bear along the veranda with its outward-f
acing doors, against which the Zulus were now hurling themselves. The roof of the hospital was completely ablaze, sending flames shooting skywards and greasy black smoke curling across the empty compound.
Simon seized Chard, whose face was now stained as black as his beard. ‘What about the poor devils in there?’ He gestured. ‘Can’t we make a bayonet charge and get them out?’
Chard gave him a cool look and Simon wondered how much experience the engineer could possibly have had in this sort of hand-to-hand fighting. What would he know about a bayonet charge?
‘Don’t talk rot, man,’ said Chard. ‘To do that we would have to leave the perimeters and get out there amongst them. With our backs exposed we wouldn’t last five minutes. Even if we could last long enough to get to the doors and open them, it would take ages to drag out the sick and the wounded. We would be cut down in a flash. No.’ He bared his teeth in a grimace as he looked at the burning building. ‘We’ve just got to hope that they can cut their way through the walls inside from room to room and then get through that window there.’ He gestured to an opening facing into the inner compound, about six feet from the ground. ‘If they can get out, we might be able to cover them as they crawl across the ground to the wall. If not . . . no - look!’
He pointed to the window, and Simon saw the frame thrown back and an axe wielded from within, widening the opening. Bricks, stone and mortar crashed to the ground and a grim, smoke-blackened face peered out. ‘God,’ shouted Simon. ‘They’re alive!’
Immediately Chard sprang forward and gave instructions to the men lining the barricade facing inwards into the compound. The ground was clear of Zulus, who were still crouching on the outward sides of the deserted north and south barricades, fearful of the power of the Martini-Henrys at such short range - although their own sharpshooters were now levelling a spasmodic fire from the top of the walls. Then Simon saw that one man had refused to leave the compound when the bugles sounded. Corporal William Allen - Simon remembered him from Brecon - emerged from the corner and stood underneath the enlarged window, shooting at any Zulu who put his head above the parapet.