On January 22, 1879, a British force of roughly 1,000 men was annihilated at the base of a large isolated hill in Zululand called Isandlwana. The Zulu army, estimated at 20,000 warriors, swept down upon them in relentless head-on attacks. By the end of the day, every infantry soldier present was dead, their bodies left strewn across the African plains. The defeat was the worst ever inflicted on a modern army by a native force.
But as the victorious Zulu turned their attention to a smaller British encampment a few miles away at a trading post and mission station called Rorke’s Drift, the outcome would be very different. The British had entered Zululand less than two weeks earlier. In December 1878, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, the British civil authority in South Africa, had issued the Zulu King Cetshwayo a list of ultimatums that included the disbanding of the entire Zulu military. Cetshwayo found the terms impossible and refused.
Frere had counted on this refusal, using it as evidence that a Zulu invasion of British territory was imminent and that the only way to stop it was to attack first. Major General Lord Chelmsford was appointed to command the operation. He divided his force of roughly 7,800 men into three columns and crossed the Buffalo River at a place called Rorke’s Drift on January 11, 1879. Chelmsford took the main force inland and made camp at the base of Isandlwana.
A smaller column of about 140 British troops, along with 11 colonial troops, was left behind at Rorke’s Drift under the command of Lieutenant John Chard of the Royal Engineers and Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead of the 24th Foot Regiment. Among these men was Private William Jones, a 48-year-old veteran of nearly two decades of British army service who had enlisted in Birmingham in 1858. He had served in Mauritius, Burma, and India but had never seen combat. His wife had died the previous year, and he had sent his young son, Willie, back to England to be cared for by his in-laws.
On the morning of January 22, Chelmsford assembled a contingent of troops and headed out from Isandlwana in search of the Zulu. A few hours later, a scouting detachment crested a nearby ridge and stumbled upon the entirety of the Zulu army, which had run more than 70 miles over harsh terrain to reach the British camp. The Zulu commander, having decided to give his men a day of rest during the new lunar cycle, was forced to rouse his forces for an immediate attack once they realized they had been spotted. Between 10,000 and 15,000 Zulu warriors swarmed down upon Isandlwana.
A solar eclipse took place in the middle of the attack, casting an eerie pall over the scene. In vicious close-quarter combat, the Zulu killed every infantry soldier present. The Zulu themselves suffered between 1,000 and 3,000 killed and 2,000 wounded, losses that would prove hugely consequential. But there were still 3,000 to 5,000 warriors who had not participated in the battle at all.
These men, still spoiling for a fight, turned their attention toward the smaller British encampment at Rorke’s Drift. The men at Rorke’s Drift were unaware that anything out of the ordinary had taken place. At just after 3:00 in the afternoon, a group of troops spotted a small group of riders coming around the hill toward the camp. The riders raced in and informed a shocked Lieutenant Bromhead of what had occurred at Isandlwana and that the Zulu were on their way.
Bromhead, Chard, and the other officers hurriedly convened inside the mission building, where a brief but heated debate was held on whether to flee or stay and fight. Assistant Commissary James Langley Dalton, a 46-year-old former sergeant in the 85th Foot Regiment, advised that they do all they could to fortify the mission building and hospital against attack and then stay and fight. He reasoned that fighting the Zulu from behind even the most meager of defenses gave them a better chance of survival than being caught on the open plains or in attempting to cross the Buffalo River. His rationale was agreed to.
William Jones and the rest of the men began building barriers with whatever they could find. Fifty-pound boxes of biscuits and hundred-pound boxes of cornmeal were stacked upon each other with urgency. The mission building and hospital were connected by one wall on the south side, with another wall building a longer perimeter along the north side and another wall cutting the courtyard in the middle in two. This would serve as a fallback position should the Zulu overwhelm the first wall.
Just after 4:00 p. m. , a lieutenant and 100 cavalrymen arrived from Isandlwana. They were asked to ride out toward the oncoming Zulu and do all they could to slow them down.
They rode out but were soon seen hurrying back toward the fort. They had spotted the Zulu warriors, thousands strong, swarming toward the small haphazard fortifications, and they decided they could take no more. The cavalrymen made a mad dash past the men now ensconced behind the walls, hoping to save their own lives. A group of native Natal soldiers also began to flee.
A young corporal named William Anderson began to run, and suddenly the retort of a Martini-Henry rifle rang out. The young corporal fell dead only a few dozen yards from the walls. Whether he was abandoning his post or simply confused by the retreat of those around him remains unclear. Either way, his death was the first the British at Rorke’s Drift would suffer that day.
Minutes later, the Zulu arrived, 3,000 to 5,000 warriors who had been denied Glory at Isandlwana and now came with the sole intention of wiping out every single British soldier and citizen there. They first peppered the compound with gunfire from a large hill that overlooked the camp. As the fire from the hilltop began to wither, the first Zulu attack swept around the south of the compound and made a direct assault on the low wall in front of the hospital. Inside the hospital were several men too sick to be moved, as well as the soldiers assigned to protect the building.
William Jones was among these soldiers, along with Corporal William Wilson Allen and Privates Cole, Dunbar, Hitch, Horgan, John Williams, Joseph Williams, Alfred Hook, and Robert Jones. The hospital building presented a daunting prospect to defend, as three of its rooms were disconnected from the main room and had only one door leading in and out. Should the Zulu break through the barricade and assault the hospital directly, the men inside would be trapped. But there was no time to address this now.
The British received the first attack by firing upon the charging warriors at about 600 yards, mostly to little effect. The successive volleys as the Zulu advanced nearer were more effective. Many Zulu fell, but the charge carried on until they were within 50 yards of the low barricade. Then the Zulu fell back to reorganize for another attack.
Within minutes that attack came, and then another, again and again. Several attacks reached the wall and resulted in brutal hand-to-hand combat as the defenders desperately fought to hold their ground. Finally, at around 6:00 p. m.
, Lieutenant Chard pulled his men off the north wall, as the losses being inflicted were too heavy to continue its defense. This saved the majority of his troops but left the men in the isolated hospital rooms trapped, as their only route of escape was now blocked by thousands of Zulu warriors. The attacks continued with the greatest ferocity focused on the trapped and vulnerable men. As Privates Horgan and Joseph Williams pulled their revolvers and cut down the Zulu breaching the doorway, John Williams dug at the wall separating their room from the next.
Eventually he made it through, and the men were able to escape the room nearest the veranda, dragging the patients through the hole with them. The process was repeated for the better part of an hour as John Williams frantically dug. One patient was seized by the Zulu, dragged out the door, and stabbed to death in front of the hospital. Another had to be left, too delirious with fever to be moved.
Private Waters, a defender in the second room, panicked as the rest squeezed through into the third room just before the Zulu swarmed in. He managed to jump into a wardrobe, and in their haste to continue their assault, the Zulu did not find him. William Jones had been desperately defending his assigned position in the room closest to the courtyard and was unaware that the other soldiers had been tunneling their way toward him for nearly an hour. He was at first greatly panicked by the unexpected breaching of the wall and then quickly relieved at the sight of friendly faces.
But the relief was quickly replaced by the sickening smell of smoke. The Zulu had set fire to the building. The only means of escape now was for the defenders and patients to make a six-foot drop out of the window of the third room into the courtyard between the hospital and the mission building, where the rest of the British forces was. Seeing that this was the only possible course of action, two soldiers at the mission made a mad dash across the open courtyard and assisted in lowering the patients and then the soldiers through the window.
William Jones was one of the last defenders in the hospital, resolutely firing upon the Zulu attackers until the barrel of his rifle was so hot he had to wrap it in his red tunic to continue shooting. As smoke filled the room and the Zulu began to breach the door, Jones finally dropped through the window and into the courtyard. Of the 11 patients in the hospital, they managed to save nine. For the remainder of the night, attack after attack poured down upon the troops at the compound.
The men fought on desperately, with each soldier firing at least 100 rounds. Their accuracy was aided by the light of the flames coming from the hospital roof. The Zulu made desperate courageous charge after charge, but more and more were cut down by British rifle fire. Finally, just as dawn broke, the Zulu attacks began to slow, then cease altogether.
The Zulu commander present, Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande, had breached the orders of his brother, the Zulu King Cetshwayo, who had approved the attack on Isandlwana but not this additional attack on Rorke’s Drift. As his losses continued to mount, the prince began to fear more and more that he would incur the wrath of his king. At around 8:00 a. m.
, the Zulu were seen again, roughly half a mile away. They had lost an estimated 350 killed and 500 wounded. They had run what amounted to several marathons back to back only to carry out nearly 24 straight hours of the most ruthless costly combat they had likely ever seen. After a brief respite, the Zulu rose and departed.
Not long after, a line of horsemen in red coats and white helmets was seen on the horizon. It was General Chelmsford’s column. Finally the British could breathe a measured sigh of relief. Seventeen of their 141 troops had been killed in the fight, along with 15 men wounded.
They along with the other wounded had been tended to by Surgeon James Henry Reynolds, who worked fearlessly through the night treating the wounded and dying amidst the gunfire and screams. The battle at Rorke’s Drift would be held up in the British media as an example of some measure of British retribution in the face of their outright slaughter at Isandlwana. The Victoria Cross, the British Army’s highest award for valor in combat, was awarded to more British troops in this battle than any battle in British military history. In total, 11 Victoria Crosses were awarded, pinned to the chests of Lieutenant John Chard, Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead, Corporal William Wilson Allen, Private Frederick Hitch, Private Alfred Henry Hook, Private Robert Jones, Private John Williams, Surgeon Major James Henry Reynolds, Corporal Christian Ferdinand Schiess, and Private William Jones.
William left the Army in 1880 and moved back to Birmingham, attempting to restart his life with a series of menial labor jobs. Like many of the survivors, he struggled to readjust to the normalities of day-to-day life in Victorian England. He was unable to establish himself in a career, and in 1887 he signed on with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show as they made their tour through Europe. His job was to give his account of that terrible day.
Each time he did, his nostrils filled with the smell of the bodies that had been left to burn in the hospital. The funds from these performances lasted but a short time, and he continued to struggle financially. He was forced to pawn his Victoria Cross in 1910 and was admitted to a workhouse in Manchester. Many nights he woke in a panic and attempted to charge out of the building, believing that he was back at Rorke’s Drift and that the Zulu were attacking.
He passed away on April 15, 1913 and was buried in a pauper’s grave in Philips Park Cemetery in Manchester. He would finally receive a proper gravestone in 2007 after a four-year public campaign. His unfortunate ending was not at all unique amongst the survivors of Rorke’s Drift. The fight that saved their lives in many cases also permanently scarred them physically and psychologically, as it likely did their Zulu enemies who fought just as hard and suffered greatly.
The Anglo-Zulu War, as it would come to be known, would go on to be regarded as one of the most seminal campaigns in British military history. By midsummer of 1879, the Zulu Empire would be soundly routed by the British after several costly battles. But the battle at Rorke’s Drift would go on to shape the public view of the British involvement in Africa, and the expansion of British territory there would quickly come to be seen as an imperial necessity.