Rorke's Drift 1879: Mealie Bags, Biscuit Boxes and a Night Under Siege

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On January 22, 1879, the main British column under Lord Chelmsford was destroyed at Isandlwana. A few miles away, Lieutenants John Chard of the Royal Engineers and Gonville Bromhead held Rorke's Drift, a former trading post serving as a hospital and supply depot. The Zulu reserve, the Undi corps of 3,000 to 4,000 men under Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande, had missed the fighting and crossed into Natal against King Cetshwayo's order. When survivors brought the news, commissary officer James Dalton argued that ox wagons carrying the sick would be run down in the open, so the garrison built walls of 200-pound mealie bags and biscuit boxes.

When colonial troops fled, the defenders fell from about 400 to just over 150, including 39 patients. From about 4:30 in the afternoon the Zulu attacked for over 11 hours. The hospital's thatched roof caught fire, and Privates John Williams and Henry Hook and others hacked through wattle and daub walls with bayonets, dragging patients from room to room; nine of 11 got out. The garrison fired 19,100 rounds before the Zulu withdrew at dawn. Seventeen British died, against 351 counted Zulu dead and perhaps 500. Wounded Zulu were then killed, and 11 Victoria Crosses followed amid accusations that the awards masked Isandlwana.

• In the Zulu military system a man often could not marry until he had washed his spear in battle.
• Zulu warriors could cover up to 50 miles a day on foot and still fight at the end of it.
• Pinned below the barricade, Zulu fighters grabbed rifle barrels and stabbed upward with the assegai.
• Martini-Henry barrels grew so hot that men wrapped them in rags, and recoil bruised shoulders to the bone.
• Sir Garnet Wolseley called it monstrous to make heroes of men who fought like rats for their lives, while Victor Davis Hanson defends the feat.