by Neil Oliver
In 1892 the French were permitted to place a commemorative plaque on the low ruins of one partially surviving wall. It has these words on it:
Here there were fewer than 60 opposed to a whole army. Its mass crushed them. Life abandoned these French soldiers before courage.
The trouble with the truth
Whenever I try to tell someone the story of the Demons of Camerone—and I’m the sort of person who does that kind of thing—I find it hard to speak toward the end. When I get to the bit where Maudet and his men are trapped in that outbuilding, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, my throat thickens and my voice starts to break. It’s ridiculous and I know it. But that tale will never lose the power it has over me—and its power comes from the way it has become more than just another story from history, it has become a legend. (When I first told my wife, Trudi, the story of the Demons she said, “Stupid idiots,” but she’s a girl and girls don’t understand.)
Maybe events at the Hacienda Camarón didn’t unfold exactly as described here. But there are more important things to ask of great stories than the truth. Historians spend a lot of time on the details, winnowing the seed from the chaff, trying to pin down precisely who did what, and when, and why. That’s all very well, but sometimes it takes the thrill out of things. That’s the trouble with the truth. The message to be learned from the Demons of Camerone is about the power of the brotherhood. It has been passed down through the years because the people who bothered to remember it and retell it cared deeply about what those men represented. The story is bigger than the sum of its facts. The important thing is to believe such behavior is possible.
There’s no way of knowing if Scott ever heard about the Demons of Camerone—but he came from a world and a time when knowledge of such stories was commonplace among boys and men. Somewhere along the line he certainly learned about sticking together with his men to the bitter end—but he was a military man and military men are trained to be like that.
Men are always impressed by military types (whether they admit it or not, and even if they’re not especially manly). Markham was right—in certain situations, like trying to keep people organized and motivated when the temperature is 50 degrees below zero, the huskies’ paws are stuck to the ice and it’s seal stew for lunch for the 100th day in a row, you want leadership from someone who reverts to training without a second thought.
No one in their right mind thinks war is a good idea but, as Plato said, only the dead have seen the end of it. It’s no use pretending the real wide world will ever be any different and so it’s a good idea to have people trained to cope with the worst of times.
There’s also no denying that many of the great stories of manly men come out of war. By far the majority of American men alive today have never been to war and that’s the way any reasonable person would want things to stay. But there are lessons for us civilians to learn from hearing about the kind of men who’ve been forged in that furnace.
(The older I get, the more I realize how easy I’ve had it all my life. Having been born white and male, into a loving family, living in Great Britain in the last third of the 20th century, I’ve been dealt what amounts to a winning hand from the cosmic deck of cards. All of the opportunities of life have been available to me since day one. I’ve never had to live with poverty, or endemic disease. I’ve never experienced any kind of prejudice or disadvantage born out of race, religion or creed. I’ve been kept safe all of my life by nameless strangers, from dangers both foreign and domestic. Our politicians are as eager to send our soldiers into wars in foreign parts as they ever were, but having been born beyond the grasp of conscription or National Service, as I have, such dangers have always been the other guy’s problem. At 40, I’ve lived long enough to be too old to be drafted even if they reintroduced it tomorrow. My safety has been provided for me by people I don’t know and whom I haven’t bothered to thank. I have effectively enjoyed an endless childhood. I’ve acquired certain responsibilities along the way–jobs, mortgages, wife, children—but nothing on a par with the responsibilities borne by men of all the generations before me. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s deluded colonel in A Few Good Men, I’ve slept under the blanket of security provided for me by other people.)
Most 30 to 40-something men alive today started paying attention to war when they saw it in the form of action movies on screens both big and small. This is what it’s like when you live in perpetual childhood—the only deadly dangers you ever see are the fictional ones faced by fictional characters. And so you start to see everything as a made-up story. Danger is just a thrill. Who nowadays gets the chance to sit at a dinner table listening to a genuine old duffer recounting a tale of battle? It’s movies that have to get that job done now.
Who could resist the impact of watching The Wild Geese for the first time? A team of mercenaries handpicked by Richard Burton sets out to rescue an imprisoned African leader—only to find themselves betrayed by their employer, Stewart Granger, and left to fight for their lives against a bloodthirsty army of Simbas somewhere in the African bush.
At the climax, Burton’s best friend, Richard Harris, is running alongside a beat-up old DC-3 Dakota the team has managed to get hold of as their getaway vehicle. Roger Moore is at the controls (they’re all in this one), and Burton and the rest of the survivors are already aboard ready to take off and make their escape to victory. Only Harris is still on the runway, fighting a desperate rearguard action to keep the Simbas at bay. They’ve been sharpening their machetes and you just know they’re going to show Harris a pretty thin time if they can get their hands on him.
He’s at the door of the plane, just about to be hauled in by Burton, when a lucky bullet gets him in the leg. He falls away from the plane and as both he and Burton realize he’s a goner now for sure, soon to be taken and horribly murdered by the Simbas, he knows it’s his time to die.
Having already thrown away his own rifle, he begs Burton to do the necessary.
“For God’s sake, shoot me!” he cries.
Burton is horrified—unable at first to contemplate killing his friend.
“No, no—I can’t,” he says.
Finally, through tear-filled eyes, Burton turns his rifle on Harris and cuts him down with a burst of machine-gun fire.
Harris’s body falls lifeless to the runway and the plane lifts into the sky. Look out Stewart Granger, you evil swine!
On every occasion that The Wild Geese is repeated on TV, everyone watching for the second time or more prays things will work out differently—that Harris will somehow get on the plane. (Hollywood missed a trick by not filming alternative endings. Imagine the impact in the holiday season if Steve McQueen managed to leap his Triumph Bonneville over the last line of barbed wire and escape the Nazis! There’d be dancing in the streets.)
But of course it never happens. Richard Harris dies on the runway, Steve gets sent back to solitary confinement and Frank Sinatra’s Von Ryan never catches that blasted Express.
The point of this is that most boys nowadays begin learning about manly men by watching the way they’re portrayed in the movies. Eventually, though, boys grow old enough to understand that some of the movies are not fiction, but based on real-life events.
It’s quite a revelation—that some of those brave men had once been real, heroes made of blood and bone. And out of countless viewings of films about the truth, can come an obsession with wondering how it would really feel to know that this time your luck has run out.
The Battle of Isandlwana
In the Zulu language, “Isandlwana” is a word with more than one meaning. The most literal translation is something about “that hill looks like a little house”—and from some angles the steep-sided 300-foot-high bluff of rock that bears the name does suggest the outline of a Zulu hut. Sometimes it looks more like a weathered and rounded sphinx. Light and shade dress it in different colors as the sun passes across the sky. Little house, lion—in sunshine or in shadow—the hill is the central ch
aracter in a story that hangs around it like smoke. Isandlwana dominates the landscape, catching the eye from miles off and holding the gaze on the long approach down a deeply rutted dirt road. As visitors draw close, passing through the gates of the reserve, they emerge onto a stage always set for drama. The battle seems very close.
It’s easy to overlook the memorial lying off to the left, just beyond the gates. Low to the ground, it’s the most discreet of the many erected around the site in the years since January 22, 1879. It was unveiled in 1999, 120 years to the day after the fighting stopped, and takes the form of a necklace called an iziqu. Pronounced in the Zulu way, with a click forming part of the last syllable, iziqu sounds like the letters “e” and “c” followed by an exasperated “tut”—“e-c-tut!”
This decoration is the Zulu equivalent of the Medal of Honor—the highest award given by the king to the bravest of the brave. The iziqu monument at Isandlwana is modeled in bronze, 10 feet or so across and made up of thorn-shaped beads interspersed with lions’ claws. Lying on its foot-high circular plinth, it has the look of something cast aside—an afterthought—yet it’s the most poignant memorial of all on this battlefield, placed by a nation whose light burned brightest in its final moments.
Toward the end of 1878 the British High Commissioner in South Africa, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, set about provoking a war. His aim was to create a confederation of states in southern Africa, bringing the whole place under British influence without the trouble and expense of imposing direct rule. It was a land of opportunity and as far as Frere was concerned those opportunities ought to be at Britain’s disposal. As he and others saw it, the only obstacle was the independent kingdom of Zululand.
Zululand was and still is an astonishingly lovely place, ranging from the heights of the Drakensberg—the Dragon Mountains—in the west, through the gently rolling grasslands of the interior, down to the subtropical coast of the Indian Ocean. Legend has it that when the Bantu-speaking peoples first ventured into the area from further north, they were so struck by its beauty they called it kwaZulu, “the place where heaven is”—and themselves amaZulu, “the people of heaven.”
The Zulu king Cetshwayo kaMpande wanted to be left alone to rule this land and its people as he saw fit. The nation was young—created just 60 years before under the martial brilliance of Shaka—and had no need of trouble from a force as powerful as the British Empire. Cetshwayo had no clearly defined interest in any territory outside his own borders and just wanted to keep hold of what he had. But the boundary between Zululand and Natal had often been a blurred one, and toward the end of the 1870s the British authorities encouraged whites living in the northern fringes of their colony to fear imminent invasion by their black neighbors.
This anxiety on the part of the whites was based largely upon a British misunderstanding of the nature of the Zulu “army.” Men like Frere believed Cetshwayo held a force of as many as 40,000 warriors in constant readiness, eager to do his bidding—a weapon of mass destruction, if you will. More unsettling still was the knowledge that Zulu warriors were forbidden to marry without the express permission of the king. It was widely believed this permission was only granted once braves had “washed their spears” in enemy blood. Not only was this army huge, then, it consisted of sexually frustrated young men whose only hope of relief lay in the murder of white men, women and children! The continued existence of such a volatile force could hardly be tolerated. The sooner those restless warriors were stood down from their perpetual state of military readiness, and returned to the life of peaceful farmers, the better. And as peaceful farmers they could of course be put busily to work for the good of Britain, the Empire and the confederation.
The truth of the matter was rather different. Cetshwayo’s authority did depend upon his control of the young men of his kingdom, but it was hardly a standing army. From about the age of 18 every Zulu boy was placed in an ibutho, or regiment, made up of other boys the same age. He would owe allegiance to this same regiment for the rest of his life. Throughout the year the king might call upon one or more of the regiments—collectively the amabutho—to come to his capital at Ulundi and provide some service or other for him. It might occasionally be military service but was just as likely to be laboring in the king’s fields, repairing his huts or hunting for his food. For the rest of the time, the men were returned to their homes and families to tend their own animals and crops. It was true that Zulu men could not marry without the king’s permission—and this permission was unlikely to be granted before the age of 30—but Zulu society allowed a fair degree of sexual activity outside marriage, provided no pregnancy resulted. In effect, the Zulu army was not the permanent fighting force the British imagined, but something more like a version of the US National Guard.
Nonetheless, British minds were made up and Cetshwayo was handed an ultimatum. By January 11, 1879, he was to do away with all the regiments. Zulu men were to be freed from any obligation to the king and allowed to marry whenever they pleased. There were other similarly humiliating conditions, and the king had also to accept a representative who would live in the royal homestead at Ulundi, enforcing the British will. Failure to submit to all of this would be interpreted as an act of war and would swiftly be followed by invasion.
As Frere well knew, all of this trapped Cetshwayo between a rock and a hard place. If he met the demands he would make himself powerless within his own kingdom. If he refused he would be invaded by a vastly superior military force and have his power taken forcibly from him. Left with no room for maneuver, he summoned the amabutho to his kraal. He told them to bring only their weapons and to be ready for war. The deadline for the ultimatum came and went without word from Cetshwayo—as Frere had always known it would—and a British force promptly crossed from Natal into Zululand.
Lieutenant General Frederic Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford, the senior British commander in southern Africa, was the man in charge of the invasion. He was a 51-year-old career soldier, tall and statesmanlike with a carefully trimmed goatee. Well liked by his men, he had a reputation for being cool under fire. He had fought in India and Abyssinia and, more importantly, had already drawn blood on African soil—fighting the warriors of the Xhosa tribe on the Cape Frontier of southern Africa.
For the invasion of Zululand Chelmsford had split his force into three columns. The right crossed the Thukela River and headed toward the country’s east coast, while the left was directed toward the west. Chelmsford himself rode at the head of the center column as it splashed through the Mzinyathi River into Zululand at a crossing called Rorke’s Drift. As the General watched his 4,000-strong force step out on to the Zulu bank, he was planning to deal with the new foe like he’d dealt with the Xhosa. In that earlier, ultimately successful campaign, he’d had to cope with the guerrilla tactics of a people who avoided pitched battle at all costs. Chelmsford put this down to cowardice as much as anything and firmly believed the Zulus would behave the same way. As the men and wagons progressed slowly into Zululand, he was convinced its inhabitants would flee before him, forcing him to hunt them down.
As it turned out, the Zulus had different tactics in mind. These were not soldiers who ran from a fight. Rather they ran toward it, barefoot over thorn and rock, thinking nothing of covering tens of miles before engaging the enemy. This was no standing army, but each man within it understood and venerated personal bravery above all things. Not for him the relative security of standing back from an enemy and firing bullets at him either. Instead the Zulu brave did his killing face-to-face. To do anything less was to show a lack of respect for self and foe. He was armed with shield, spear and club. Training had taught him to use the outside edge of his six-foot-tall hide-covered war-shield to drag down the weapon of his foe, while with the other hand he plunged his short, broad-bladed stabbing spear into the exposed upper body. We give those spears the name assegai, but to the Zulu they were iklwa—the sucking sound made by the blade as it was tugged back out of the flesh. If the spear was dropp
ed or knocked aside he could use the knobkerrie, a ball-ended club shaped from a single piece of wood and more than enough to crack a man’s head open like an egg.
The Zulu religion taught that killing a man was an unclean act. Each brave had to go through complex rituals before a battle to ensure he was protected from the taint of causing the deaths of other men. Regimental chaplains—izinyanga—conducted the necessary ceremonies beforehand and would be ready again after the fighting to help each man cleanse his body and soul. Living close to death as they did—the death of animals and humans alike—Zulus were familiar with what happened to corpses left lying around in a hot climate. They believed the bloating of the dead body was caused by the struggling of the soul trapped inside the stomach. After killing a man a brave would therefore split open the belly with his iklwa to ensure the soul could fly free. Failure to do this, the Zulus believed, would lead to their own, unclean but still living bodies swelling up the same way. It was also important to wear a piece of the dead man’s clothing until such times as the izinyanga could perform the cleansing rituals—and for this reason they were also in the habit of stripping the bodies of their slain.
On January 17, outside his kraal at Ulundi, Cetshwayo addressed the largest army ever to gather before a Zulu king. He was a handsome man: over six feet tall, broad-chested and heavily set. In his full ceremonial regalia he was a towering sight. Those who knew him well understood that while he could be easy-going and warm, he was shot through with a ruthless streak. He was understood to be at his most dangerous when backed into a corner.
Perhaps as many as 24,000 men, purified by their izinyangas and existing now in a place set apart from the world of everyday life, a place of war, listened as their great king asked them a question: “I have not gone over the seas to look for the white man yet they have come into my country…I have nothing against the white man and I cannot tell why they came to me. They want to take me. What shall I do?”
