The Horns of the Buffalo

by John Wilcox

  ‘How can you? How many years’ service have you left to do?’

  ‘Another three, I think. But don’t worry about that, bach. I’ll just desert.’

  Simon laughed. ‘They’d catch you and shoot you.’

  ‘No. No.’ The Welshman levered himself off the pillow again. ‘I can’t stay in the army without you. I was just beginnin’ to enjoy myself. Besides,’ his voice took on a plaintive tone, ‘who’s goin’ to look after you?’

  Simon looked at his friend for a moment. ‘Do you really want to come with me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes please. A gentleman needs a servant. An’ besides - without me you’ll keep fallin’ off your ’orse.’

  ‘Very well. I have money. I will buy you out.’

  ‘I’ll pay you back.’

  ‘No you won’t. Not on the wages I shall pay you.’

  The two men grinned at each other for a moment. Then Jenkins said, ‘Right. I’m grateful. Where are you goin’ now?’

  ‘I shall ride to the Lower Drift, where we first crossed the Tugela into Zululand. I want to see John Dunn to thank him. And . . .’ He mused for a moment. ‘He has a new job and it could be that we could be useful to him. Or maybe we will go to India, or even Burma. The Empire is alive with opportunity. But more of that when I get back. Now don’t leave this place and go wandering off. Do you think you could be out of here in five days?’

  Jenkins nodded. ‘Quicker’n that, I reckon.’

  ‘Good. I’ll be back for you then.’ A sudden thought struck Simon. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I can’t keep calling you 352 if you’re not in the army. What’s your first name?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. 352 is fine.’

  ‘No. I ought to know.’

  ‘Don’t bother yourself about it, bach sir.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I will need it to get your discharge papers. What is your first name?’

  Jenkins looked round the room in despair. He cleared his throat and muttered something inaudible.

  ‘What? I can’t hear.’

  ‘Cyril.’

  ‘Cyril!’

  The Welshman nodded, his eyes averted.

  Simon thought for a moment, his face very straight, then said, ‘Would you mind if I continued to call you 352?’

  Jenkins closed his eyes. ‘I would be very grateful, look you, if you would, sir.’

  Simon clasped Jenkins’s good hand and then walked out of the room. Outside, the sun sat complacently in a blue sky in which white puffball clouds gambolled-a sky that, improbably, reminded him of both Alice and Nandi. A slow column of volunteer cavalry, the riders dressed in an assortment of civilian clothes but all wearing slouch hats and bandoliers, trotted northwards, off to join the war and to avenge Isandlwana. The officer leading the column looked at Simon inquisitively but the ex-subaltern of the 24th Regiment of Foot paid no attention as he mounted his horse and set off to the south. As he left the storehouse hospital, he thought he heard the sound of singing coming from within.

  Author’s Note

  Any author who mixes fact and fiction has a responsibility to inform the reader which is which. The background to The Horns of the Buffalo is true enough, or as true as I can make it. The history sketched by Colonel Lamb and the events leading up to the Anglo-Zulu war as told in the book by John Dunn and Nandi did occur as they related them, and I have based Simon and Jenkins’s experiences at Isandlwana and Simon’s at the mission station on several well-respected accounts of the battles.

  The battles themselves, of course, were only the beginning of the war and not the end. King Cetswayo’s hope that the white man would retire with his bloody nose beyond the boundaries of Zululand and not invade again proved futile. Sir Bartle Frere was stingingly rebuked by Disraeli’s government for overreaching his powers in invading in the first place, but the British Empire, at the zenith of its pomp, could not be seen to allow the defeat of an army in the field to go unrevenged. Chelmsford therefore was sent reinforcements and re-invaded Zululand - this time displaying great caution - and defeated Cetswayo when the Zulus failed to break the British square at Ulundi. The assegai could not overcome the Martini-Henry a second time, not when it was reinforced by cannon and Gatling guns, firing from a secure defensive position.

  There were quite a few unharmed fugitives from Isandlwana who took the road past Rorke’s Drift, not staying to fight with the defenders, and it is possible that one of the fleeing officers was brought to court martial. Virtually all of the records of courts martial from the Zulu War, however, were destroyed when the Public Records Office was hit by a bomb in the Blitz on London, so there is uncertainty on this point. Only one official account of a court martial from that war has survived, and I have based the proceedings of Simon’s trial on that record. Incidentally, the officer concerned was, like Simon, shipwrecked on the voyage out to South Africa and was also mentioned in dispatches for his cool thinking on that occasion.

  John Dunn and his wife Catherine were real figures, and it is true that he became a Zulu inDuna, had a lavish lifestyle and numerous wives and progeny, and that he was reluctantly forced to become head of intelligence for the Eshowe relief force, although I have brought forward his appointment by a month or two. Simon, Alice, Nandi and Jenkins, of course, are fictitious characters, and the sardonic Covington bears no resemblance to the gallant officer who commanded the 2nd Battalion of the 24ths at the time. Colonel Lamb is another creation, but not Colonel Glyn (who was the chairman of the court martial referred to above), nor Lieutenant Colonel Pulleine and the other senior officers I have mentioned. Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead, of course, have gone down in history as the leaders of the famous defence of Rorke’s Drift, although it is less well known that Bromhead was, in fact, very deaf at the time. He, Chard and nine others at the Drift were awarded the Victoria Cross after the battle - the most awarded for any action in British history.

  To those who would say that imagination has run riot in allowing a young woman to be accepted, in Victorian times, as a war correspondent for a daily newspaper, I would point to Frances, Viscountess de Peyronnet (born in Suffolk plain Frances Whitfield), who reported the siege of Paris for The Times of London. The resourceful Frances used a balloon to float her dispatches over the lines of the besieging Germans in 1871, seven years before Alice arrived at the Cape. Then, in 1881 - only two years after the events recorded in this novel - the grand Morning Post, Alice’s own paper, commissioned the young and spirited Florence Dixie to travel to the Transvaal to cover the first Anglo-Boer War.

  If appetites have been whetted for more information about the Zulu War, then there are many books about this most fascinating and tragic of conflicts, but I would particularly commend the definitive The Washing of the Spears, by Donald R. Morris, or any of the many well-researched accounts written by Ian Wright.

  Finally, records show a bewildering multiplicity of spellings for Zulu names. For sanity’s sake, I have chosen the simplest form.