For decades after the Anglo-Zulu War, the dramatic stand at Rorke’s Drift in January 1879 lived on mostly in regimental memory until a 1964 film introduced a new generation to its heroes. That film, Zulu, gave starring roles to Lieutenants John Chard and Gonville Bromhead, played by Stanley Baker and a young Michael Caine. But for many viewers, the true heart of the story was Colour Sergeant Frank Bourne, portrayed by the actor Nigel Green as a towering, steely veteran whose calm professionalism steadied the garrison during their night of desperate combat. The film’s depiction made it all but impossible for audiences to understand why Bourne had never received the Victoria Cross when so many of his comrades had.
The answer lies in the real man, whose service and remarkable life were impressive, but whose actions did not match the strict criteria for Britain’s highest award for valour. Frank Bourne was born in Balcombe, Sussex, in 1854, the youngest of eight children of a labourer. In 1872, facing a life of agricultural work, the eighteen-year-old enlisted in the 2nd Battalion of the 24th Regiment of Foot. His pay was sixpence a day, with more than half of it deducted for mess and washing bills.
Upon joining, a Colour Sergeant placed him in A Company, which was reserved for the tallest recruits. Given what Bourne would later become, this seemed logical enough, except that the real Bourne was only five feet three inches tall. As he recalled in a 1936 radio interview, the Colour Sergeant who assigned him must have had a sense of humour. Promotion, however, came swiftly and entirely on merit.
Within three years he was a corporal, and within another three he had been made a sergeant. In 1878 the 2nd Battalion arrived in South Africa to fight the Xhosa in the so-called Kaffir War. When that campaign was concluded, the battalion joined the 1st Battalion in Natal as part of Lord Chelmsford’s planned invasion of Zululand. By then Bourne had risen again to Colour Sergeant of B Company, responsible for roughly one hundred men.
At just twenty-four years old, he was the youngest Colour Sergeant in the British Army and, standing only five feet three inches tall, he quickly earned the nickname “The Kid. ” He admitted to being nervous and unsure of his responsibilities, yet he proved a popular and effective non-commissioned officer, acting as something like a private unpaid secretary for the men in his company who could not read or write. He read their letters from home and wrote their replies. In January 1879, both battalions of the 24th provided the backbone for Chelmsford’s invasion of Zululand.
As the regiment crossed the Buffalo River, B Company was left behind to guard the supply depot at Rorke’s Drift on the British side of the water. Bourne was bitterly disappointed to see his comrades march off to battle while he and his men were stuck on guard duty. That frustration did not last long. On 22 January, just eleven days after the invasion began, a disciplined Zulu force of around 20,000 overwhelmed the British camp at Isandlwana.
Despite gallant resistance, the roughly 1,300 British soldiers were wiped out, including nearly 700 men of the 24th Regiment. No white soldier on foot escaped the disaster alive. A portion of the Zulu army, held in reserve, immediately turned toward the supply depot at Rorke’s Drift. The old mission station had been converted into both a supply depot and a hospital.
There were fewer than 150 British soldiers there when a Zulu force of around 4,000 attacked late on the afternoon of 22 January. Throughout the night, for nearly twelve hours, the defenders fought a desperate battle. Among the most remarkable acts of bravery were those performed in the hospital, where soldiers protecting the patients dug holes through the walls to move from room to room, holding the Zulus at bay while the roof burned above them. Shortly after dawn on 23 January, the Zulus withdrew across the Buffalo River.
More than 500 of their warriors had been killed or wounded. The British defenders lost just seventeen men. In the aftermath, eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded to the defenders of Rorke’s Drift. Colour Sergeant Bourne was not among them.
The omission has raised eyebrows ever since, not least because the Victoria Cross is awarded for conspicuous bravery, valour, self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty. No survivor mentioned Bourne’s actions in any of those categories. No one doubted the role he played as the backbone of B Company, but that was essentially the job of a Colour Sergeant, and performing his duties well, however admirably, was not in itself grounds for the VC. The film’s portrayal had coloured the perception of what he actually did.
Bourne did, however, receive one of the four Distinguished Conduct Medals awarded to the defenders, the second highest British military medal at the time, along with an annuity of ten pounds per year, the same amount that a Victoria Cross holder received. It was later reported that Bourne had been offered a choice between the VC or a commission as an officer. As the son of a labourer, he told interviewers, his family’s finances were empty, so he refused the commission. He stayed in the army.
Two years after Rorke’s Drift, the 24th became the South Wales Borderers and moved to India. There, in 1882, Bourne married Eliza Mary Fincham. Their first son, Percy, was born in India the following year, and another son, Sydney, arrived in 1885, followed by three daughters. By then Bourne was serving in the Third Anglo-Burmese War, as the South Wales Borderers took part in a force of 9,000 British and Indian troops ferried up the Irrawaddy River to attack the Burmese capital.
That old flotilla would later be immortalized in Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Mandalay. ”
Returning to Britain as a Quartermaster Sergeant, Bourne finally accepted the commission that had been offered eleven years earlier. In 1890 he became an officer, and in 1893, now a lieutenant, he was appointed adjutant at the School of Musketry at Hythe in Kent. He rose to captain and finally retired from the army in 1907 after thirty-five years of service.
Moving to Beckenham in Kent, he became assistant secretary of the National Miniature Rifle Club, founded by Field Marshal Lord Roberts after the Boer War to create a reserve of skilled marksmen. That reserve would soon be needed. When the First World War broke out in 1914, the sixty-year-old Bourne tried to re-enlist but was judged too old for active service. His experience, however, was considered too valuable to waste, and he was appointed adjutant at the School of Musketry in Dublin.
Promoted to lieutenant colonel, he trained roughly 10,000 British and Irish marksmen over the course of the war. When peace returned, he retired for a second time, having added the Order of the British Empire to his Distinguished Conduct Medal. After the death of Eliza in 1931, Bourne moved in with his eldest daughter, Beatrice. In 1936, he was interviewed for BBC Radio, recalling the events at Rorke’s Drift fifty-seven years earlier.
He expressed surprise that the Zulus had not simply slit the mealie bags to collapse the barricades, and he shared his admiration for them, noting that if the enemy had known how to use their rifles better, British casualties would have been much higher. He also spoke of his men from B Company: “Now just one word for the men who fought that night, I was moving amongst them all the time and not for one moment did they flinch, their courage and bravery cannot be expressed in words. For me they were an example of my soldiering days. ” Incredibly, someone at the BBC later discarded the recording because it was thought to have no historic value, although the transcript survived and was published in the magazine The Listener.
Frank Bourne, the last surviving defender of Rorke’s Drift, died on 9 May 1945, the day after Victory in Europe Day, at the age of ninety-one. The five-foot-three soldier known as “The Kid,” who had stood firm through one of the most famous defensive actions in British military history, lived long enough to see the end of the Second World War. His Victoria Cross never came, but his place among the defenders of that tiny mission station was never in doubt.