Rorke’s Drift by Those Who Were There: Volume I Eyewitness British and Zulu Accounts
By Lee Stevenson, Ian Knight, Alan Baynham-Jones Greenhill Books, 2023, 266 pages, $34.95
January 22, 1879 began about as badly for the 1,800-man British Army and supporting colonial forces invading Zululand in South Africa as it possibly could. Approximately 20,000 Zulu warriors struck the unfortified British camp about mid-morning, and after several hours of fierce combat, overran the outnumbered British force, killing at least 1,300 of the defenders, including nearly all of the 750 redcoated officers and other ranks who constituted the backbone of the force. The overwhelming Zulu victory at the Battle of Isandlwana was the worst defeat the 19th century, Victorian-era British Army suffered against an indigenous, technologically-inferior enemy. By the end of that bloody day, however, another, much-smaller British force was engaged in winning a sequel to that larger battle—the Defense of Rorke’s Drift—that became a British
