AN ECHO FROM RORKE’S DRIFT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 147, 23 May 1934, Page 2

AN ECHO FROM RORKE’S DRIFT.

Tlie old Colours of the 24th Foot, the South Wales Borderers, have been laid up in the Regiment’s War Memorial Chapel at Brecon Cathedral; and in anticipation of that ceremony the Times revived the glorious memory of the saving of those Colours from the Zulus by Lieutenants Mevill and Coghill on January 22, 1879, after the disaster of Isandhlwana. It is now' announced (says the London Times Weekly Edition of April 12) that the new Colours, presented to the Regiment on behalf of the King at HongKong about a year ago, may henceforth bear, in addition to their “South Africa 1877-8-9,” tlie specific mention of another great event in the Regimental history, in which, on that same January 22, i 879, not many miles from Isandhlwana, almost incredible heroism was rewarded with almost incredible success. And the addition, should the King give his consent, will doubtless be all the more treasured for being initially due to a very friendly and graceful act, a unanimous motion by the Provincial Council of Natal, on whose frontier this historic battle of ltorke’s Drift was fought. Honours that begin with Blenheim and Rannllies and include Talavera, Salamanca, Nivelle and Chillianwallah, to say nothing of 1914-18, will take no derogation from the addition of Rorke’s Drift. From half-past four in the afternoon till midnight B Company of the Second Battalion, some eighty strong, with about sixty others, of whom more than half were sick or wounded, held at hay—partly behind ramparts made of biscuit-boxes and mealie-bags—some 4000 Zulus. Hacking their way through from room to room in a burning hospital, they saved nearly all their' sick and wounded. There was hand-to-hand fighting so fierce that bayonets were wrenched off rifles by the foe: and four men, with not a round of ammunition between them, held a doorway of the hospital against a raging mob. And at midnight the Zulus fled away, leaving one-tenth ot their number dead at the onely little ferry-post over the Buffalo River, where Natal was saved from invasion. Cetewayo—he was tlie villain ot tne piece. He had indeed been villain enough to plot and to plan mischief, arming his 40.000 warrior Zulus with rifles smuggled or stolen or illegally and secretly sold (though it is true that some military opinion held a Zulu with assegai and knobkerrie to be much more dangerous than a Zulu witli a gun) and determining to be truculent His was a bogyman’s name in those far-off days, and none tlie less alarming because no two people pronounced g it alike. To little boys at preparatory schools “Zulu” was the worst possible term of abuse (soon to be succeeded, about the time of Maiwand. by “Afghan”). Yet in a few years Cetewayo had become almost a pet; and from being a term of reproach the name Zola had come not so very far from being as honourable as Red Indian. Probably the novels of Rider Haggard had a good deal to do with that. AVlien we could all pronounce Umslopogaas and Maeuinazahn we made Zulu the general name for all native races in South Africa qualified by bravery in war and, whether friendly or unfriendly, able to count as heroes. Such are most of the enmities of this world; and few are the bogymen who, after a century or so, remain too dreadful to be used, like turnip-lanterns or golliwogs, for onr amusement.