No . 136 The Trusty Servant
Ulundi , not Rorke ’ s Drift
Leo Aylen ( Coll , 47-53 ) writes regarding the Anglo Zulu War , reported on in TS 135 .
I am probably in a unique position to tell the full story of that terrible war . My father was a priest , elected Bishop of Zululand by the Zulus against opposition from the White priests , because he treated Zulus as equals not as inferiors , when even in the Anglican Church there was invisible Apartheid . As result , he became a legend to the Zulu people . I was born in KwaZulu , baptised in a Zulu church , thus making a vivid protest against Apartheid aged three weeks . I am a close friend of Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi , who has led the Zulu nation for the last seventy years , and who has called me a “ White Zulu .” We have corresponded regularly since the 1970s ; the first time I visited the most significant battle site of the 1879 war was with Mangosuthu .
The normal tours of the battlefield sites leave out the site of the most important battle .
We all know the story of Isandlwana . The incompetent aristocrat Lord Chelmsford left his soldiers to camp without laagering the wagons , so when the Zulus came the British were caught in the open and slaughtered . It was a sensational defeat , and panic overtook the British government . About 4000 troops of the Zulu army , who had already run fifty miles over rough hilly country before they fought at Isandlwana , ran another fifteen miles over even rougher country to the hospital at Rorke ’ s Drift , where there was a battle through the night in which a hundred British soldiers managed to hold the Zulus off until the morning . This was hailed in London as a Triumph of the Great British Empire : 11 VCs were awarded , the most for any one military engagement in British history . The battle has been romanticised ; above all , by Cy Enfield ’ s movie Zulu . It is a splendid movie , with its hints of reconciliation between British and Zulu ; my favourite moment is when Ivor Emmanuel starts singing a Welsh tenor ’ s answer to the thundering Zulu basses . Sadly , the 24 th was a Welsh regiment only in name ; the soldiers were recruited in Birmingham . In truth , Rorke ’ s Drift was an insignificant episode in the history of British imperial aggression . An unimportant skirmish , inflated to a major victory by the British PR machine .
Chelmsford escaped sacking because of his aristocratic birth , and was given charge of another army ; a couple of months later he was back in KwaZulu , and advanced on Ulundi , the Zulu capital , where King Cetshwayo had his kraal . The Zulu army formed up to charge the British as they had done at Isandlwana . Chelmsford , however , had brought two machine guns ; they fired on the Zulu warriors running towards them , and destroyed the entire army in half an hour . King Cetshwayo , who had never wanted war , and had had no intention of invading the settlers in Natal , was deposed and sent into exile . The Zulu state was dismembered .
There is a memorial at Ulundi to the four or five British soldiers killed in that one-sided battle , and a mention of the massacred Zulus , who , as the memorial reads “ died in defence of the old order .” The first time I visited the Ulundi memorial was with Prince Mangosuthu ; we discussed Cetshwayo , who was not aggressive , who did not want to fight the British , but who lost his kingdom and saw it destroyed . British people who visit the battlefields of the Anglo- Zulu war really must visit Ulundi , and acknowledge their descent from British people who treated the Zulu people with so little regard .
Locked in the Library
John Pusey ( Coll , 52-57 ) remembers the Coronation of 1953
I was 13 years old at the time of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II , and away from home at Winchester College . The College ’ s normal policy was only to allow boys out for the occasional day during term , to visit their homes or to meet relatives , but never to stay away overnight . In my case , home was too far away for me to travel there and back in a day , so on leave-out days I used to travel by train to meet my parents at my grandmother ’ s house in Oxford .
At the time of the Coronation , however , an exception was made , and we were allowed to go home for a whole weekend . My first priority was to make sure that I had something to read for when I got home , so I made a visit to the local public library , just before it closed . I was all alone in one of the reading rooms , when one of the library staff came into the room . She looked at me , but without saying anything . I looked at her , also saying nothing . She went out of the room again , and I went on reading .
When I finished what I had been reading , I slowly realised that there was no-one else left in the Library , and that the staff had locked up and gone home - for what was going to be a longer than usual weekend . Fortunately , one of the staff rooms was unlocked , and I found a phone there , and telephoned my father , who was , also fortunately , at home . What to do next ? There was obviously plenty of reading material available , so I just went on reading , quite enjoyably . Meanwhile , my father must have been making a series of rather desperate phone calls , trying to find his way through the local government network to reach someone who would have keys to the library , and could come and let me out .
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