“Everything was perfectly quiet at Rorke’s Drift after the column had left, and every officer and man was going about his business as usual. Not a soul suspected that only a dozen miles away the very men that we had said ‘Goodbye’, and ‘Good luck’ to were either dead or standing back-to-back in a last fierce fight with the Zulus. Our garrison consisted of B Company of the 2/24th under Lieutenant Bromhead, and details which brought the total number of us up to 139. Besides these, we had about 300 men of the Natal Native Contingent; but they didn’t count, as they bolted in a body when the fight began. We were all knocking about, and I was making tea for the sick, as I was hospital cook at the time.”

So begins the account by Private Henry Hook VC of the Defence of Rorke’s Drift, 22-23 January, 1879.  It is the greatest single action of British arms, a not inconsiderable place in history to occupy.

This morning, forty-four years after the release of Cy Endfield’s 1964 film Zulu, the Telegraph reported:-

Battle to restore ‘Zulu‘ hero Henry Hook‘s reputation

A campaign is underway to restore the reputation of Henry Hook, the soldier portrayed as a drunken shirker in the film Zulu.

In the 1964 film, Private Hook, played by James Booth, was shown becoming a reluctant hero by saving the lives of eight patients stranded at an Army hospital during the Zulu war in 1879.

That much was true - but far from being a cowardly, drink-soaked malingerer, Private Hook’s posthumous supporters are insisting, he was a teetotal lay preacher and was given a bonus for good conduct shortly before his heroics.

Major Tim Whedon, from the Royal Regiment of Wales, which incorporated Private Hook’s old regiment, said: “Henry Hook is an example of how a character was distorted to attract the film-goers when the story was captivating enough.”

… With Private John Williams, Private Hook, then aged 28, fought off fighters to bring eight patients to safety. However he was described onscreen as “a thief, a coward, and an insubordinate barrack-room lawyer,” only in the hospital because he was shirking duty.

Despite the distortion, Zulu was an honourable enough attempt to make a film in an already cynical, post-colonial age about a brief moment of extraordinary Victorian valour.  The script accorded the 4,000 Zulu attackers sufficient respect that Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi saw fit to appear as the Zulu war-chief Cetehwayo.  The writers were comfortable with that.  But they were obviously not comfortable with the real-life soldierly virtue of all the defenders.  One wonders how they would like to be remembered themselves.  Presumeably not as traducers.

However, that said, restoration of a reputation besmirched by film people may be a hot ticket in the next few months.  Here’s the Telegraph again:-

Quentin Tarantino angers Germans with film about slaying Nazis

Quentin Tarantino, the master of screen violence and controversy, has outraged Germans with a plan to make a war film in which Americans gruesomely slaughter Nazi soldiers.

The movie - provisionally titled Inglorious Bastards and starring Brad Pitt - is said to be blood-curdling even by Tarantino’s standards and includes one scene where a Nazi has his head bashed in with a baseball bat.

Pitt’s character Lieutenant Aldo Raine leads a group of American-Jewish soldiers who are dropped into Nazi-occupied Europe to wreak revenge on the Germans and destroy their morale.

According to a leaked version of the script, the officer tells his men that they “owe” him one hundred Nazi scalps each which they should bring to him or die trying.

Other scenes are said to include the carving of swastikas in foreheads, the shooting of a German officer’s testicles, and a slow strangling scene.

The movie which starts filming in Berlin on October 13, has already angered many Germans who fear it will turn the Second World War into a comic book adventure in which their countrymen have no redeeming value.

For many, that will represents a regression to the days of the crudest anti-German war propaganda.

“This is pop culture encountering Nazi Germany and the Holocaust with unprecedented force,” said Tobias Kniebe, film critic of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The effects of this collision are utterly unpredictable.”

Tarantino’s reputation as a film-maker is not what it was, and is in some need of restoration itself.  But it is perhaps more likely that he will do Germans a favour with his “modern, in-your-face” historical portrayal of the bastard state.  Reading Tobias Kniebe one can almost - almost - hear the exasperated voice of a people who have finally had enough of perpetual dishonour.  I hope to God that turns out to be right, because we need them to break their bonds of psychological slavery, and shame the traducers.

It is long past time coming.  Every serious history of World War II which I have read has been at pains to recognise the immense achievements of the Wehrmacht.  I will not shirk from saying that Lebensraum was violently wrong, and had to be opposed by the Western powers.  But that is a separate matter from the acknowledgement of German valour in the field.  Their military reputation should be no less high than that of the cunning Boers with their smokeless Mausers or the Red Army sacrificing itself for Stalingrad. 

That of the one hundred and thirty nine men of the British Army at Rorke’s Drift, however, is something else.  I will finish by returning to Private Hook’s account of the struggle so that, for MR readers at least, the film-makers cavalier treatment of the facts can be properly dismissed:-

“At a stroke, the defending force had been reduced by more than half to 150 men, of which only the 96 of B Company could be considered a cohesive unit, and 35 of whom were hospitalized {only about 9 of which couldn't defend themselves}. Chard immediately realised the need to shorten the perimeter, and gave orders for a new line bisecting the post to be constructed, with the hospital being evacuated. As the natives disappeared, Private Fredrick Hitch, posted as lookout atop the storehouse, reported a Zulu column of four to six thousand approaching. Almost immediately after the Zulu vanguard, 600 men of the iNdluyengwe appeared from behind Oscarberg and attacked the south wall which joined the hospital and the storehouse. In what is the best-known phrase from the battle, one of the defenders yelled “Here they come, as thick as grass and as black as thunder!”

“Immediately, a heavy volley of gunfire was opened up at 500 yards, and while at first ragged, the British fire soon steadied, piling up the Zulu dead. The majority of the attacking force swept around the wall, while a few took cover, from where they were either pinned by continuing British fire or retreated to the terraces of Oscarberg, where they began a harassing fire of their own. As this occurred, a large force swept onto the hospital and northwest wall, and those on the barricades - including Dalton and Bromhead - were soon engaged in fierce hand to hand fighting. The British wall was too high for the Zulus to scale, so they resorted to crouching under the wall, trying to get hold of the defenders’ rifles, slashing at British soldiers with assegai or firing their weapons through the wall. At places, they clambered over each others’ bodies to drive the British off the walls, but a “peculiar aversion to the bayonet” defeated these breaches.

“Zulu fire, both from those under the wall and around Oscarberg, began to find its mark. Corporal Schiess was shot in the leg, and then lost his hat to a Zulu shot; Commissary Dalton, leaning over the parapet to shoot a Zulu, was wounded in the shoulder by a bullet and dragged out of the line to have his wound dressed; Keefe, ‘B’ Company’s drummer, suffered a skin wound to the head; Corporal Scammell, of the NNC, was shot in the back, and Private Byrne, attempting to help him, was killed by a shot to the head, as was ‘Old King’ Cole, another private in ‘B’ Company {see below at hospital section}. The fire from the mountain only grew worse; Privates Scanlon, Fagan and Chick were slain. At least 1/3 {five} of the 17 killed/died of wounds were killed at the Front wall.

“It became clear to Chard that the front wall, under almost constant Zulu attack, could not be held, and at 6 o’clock Chard pulled his men back into the yard, abandoning the front two rooms of the hospital in the process. The hospital was becoming untenable; the loopholes had become a liability, as rifles poked through were grabbed at by the Zulus - but if the holes were left empty the enterprising warriors stuck their own weapons through to fire into the rooms. Among the soldiers assigned to the Hospital were the following: Corporal William Wilson Allen; Pvts: Cole; Dunbar; Frederick Hitch; Horrigan; John Williams; Joseph Williams; Alfred Henry Hook; Robert Jones; William Jones

“As it became clear that the front of the building was being abandoned, John Williams began to hack his way through the wall dividing the central room and the back of the hospital. As he made a passable hole the door into the central room came under furious attack from the Zulus, and Williams only had time to drag two bedridden patients out before the door gave way, pitting Joseph Williams against the Zulus. Williams managed to kill several before being overwhelmed. The remaining men in the room, Private Horrigan, Adams, and two more patients, were stabbed to death by the rampaging Zulus. Williams then dragged his patients into one of the corner rooms, where he linked up with Private Hook and another nine patients.

“The previous scene was played out again; Williams hacked at the wall to the next room with his pick-axe, as Hook held off the Zulus. A firefight erupted as the Zulus fired through the door and Hook returned the compliment - but not without a bullet smashing into his helmet and stunning him. Williams made the hole big enough to get into the next room, occupied only by Private Waters, and dragged the patients through. The last man out was Hook, who killed the Zulus who had knocked down the door before diving through the hole. Williams once again went to work, spurred by the knowledge that the roof was now on fire, as Hook defended the hole and Waters continued to fire through the loophole. After fifty minutes, the hole was large enough to drag the patients through, and the men - save Private Waters and Beckett, who hid in the wardrobe - were in the last room, being defended by a pair of privates going by the name Jones. {Waters was wounded and Beckett died of assegai wounds}. From here, the patients clambered out a window and then ran across the yard to the barricade. Of the eleven patients, nine survived the trip, as did all the able-bodied men. According to James Henry Reynolds only 4 men were killed in the Hospital: one was a Native with a broken leg who couldn’t be moved; Sgt Maxfield and Private Jenkins who were ill with fever and refused to be moved; and a Private Adams who also refused to move. A Private Cole assigned to the hospital was killed when he ran outside. Private Joseph Williams reportably held a small window at the far end of the Hospital and 14 dead Zulus were found later benneth the window; Williams with Private John Williams {above} and two patients tried to hold a hospital entrance with bayonets; but the entrance was forced and Joseph Williams was seized; dragged outside and stabbed with assegais. Reportedly, Jenkins was also killed after being seized and stabbed; another Hospital patient killed was Trooper Hunter of the Natal Mounted Police. Among the hospital patients who escaped were a Corporal Mayer of the N.N.C; Bombadier Lewis of the Royal Artillery and Trooper Green of the Natal Mounted Police who was wounded in the thigh by a spent bullet. A Private Conley with a broken leg was pulled to safety by Hook-although Conley’s leg was broken again}.

“The evacuation of the hospital completed the shortening of the perimeter. As night fell, the Zulu attacks grew stronger as the snipers on Oscarberg - now devoid of targets - joined the attack. The cattle kraal came under renewed assault and was evacuated by ten o’clock, leaving the remaining men in a small bastion around the storehouse.

“Throughout the night, the Zulus kept up a constant assault against the British positions; Zulu attacks only began to slacken after midnight, and finally ended by two o’clock, instead being replaced by a constant harassing fire from the Zulu firearms and assegai - a fire that in turn only ended at four o’clock. Chard’s force had lost fifteen dead, eight more - including Dalton - seriously wounded, and virtually every man had some kind of minor wound. They were all exhausted, having fought for the better part of ten hours, and were running low on ammunition as well. Of 20,000 rounds in reserve at the mission, only 900 remained.

“As dawn broke, the British could see that the Zulus were gone; all that remained were the vast piles of dead - over 370 bodies were counted. Patrols were dispatched to scout the battlefield, recover rifles, and look for survivors. At roughly 7am, an impi of Zulus suddenly appeared, and the weary redcoats manned their positions once again. But no attack materialized. The Zulus were utterly spent, having been on the move for six days prior to the battle and having not eaten properly for two. In their ranks were hundreds of wounded, and they were several days march from any supplies. Soon after their appearance, the Zulus left the way they had come.

“Around 8am, another force appeared, and the redcoats abandoned their makeshift breakfast of rum, tea and biscuits to man their positions once again. This was no Zulu force, however; the vanguard of Lord Chelmsford’s relief column had arrived.”