The backbone of the Rorke's Drift garrison consisted of ninety-five men belonging to B Company, 2nd Battalion 24th Foot. Acts of gallantry performed during the defence resulted in the awards of eleven Victoria Crosses - the highest number ever conferred for a single action; with seven of them going to members of B Company. The action has inspired many artists down the years - Lady Elizabeth Butler's 1880 painting The Defence of Rorke's Drift, January 22nd 1879 and the 1964 film classic Zulu among them. It has been said that some survivors never really escaped from the traumatic events at Rorke's Drift on 22-23 January 1879 and continued to be haunted by visions of the lethal contest between thrusting bayonet and the vicious stab and slash of the assegai to the end of their days. However, at the time, the performance of this handful of men did much to restore British public morale after the Isandhlwana disaster, and has been seen ever since as epitomising the stalwart and disciplined fighting qualities of the British infantryman.

In early January 1879 five British columns intent on the invasion of Zululand marched up through Natal. The strongest column, comprising 1st and 2nd Battalions, 24th Foot; a squadron of Mounted Infantry; about 200 Natal volunteers; 150 Natal Police; two battalions of the Native Contingent; some Pioneers and six Royal Artillery guns, were accompanied by the Commander-in-Chief Lieutenant-General Lord Chelmsford, and his staff. On the Natal side of the Buffalo River, the Reverend Otto Witt's remote Swedish mission station was commandeered as the column's most forward post on the line of march and was adapted for use as a commissariat store and hospital for sick NCO's and men. On the 11th Chelmsford's column crossed the Buffalo River by the ford, or drift, a quarter of a mile away leaving the 2/24th's B Company under Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead to garrison the mission with the help of a company the Natal Native Contingent, some half dozen other details and three commissariat officers. Surgeon Reynolds was in charge of the hospital and the Reverend George Smith, a missionary, acted as unofficial chaplain to the troops. Major Spalding of the 104th Regiment was left in overall command.

At dawn on the 22nd, a young officer rode into the station with a message from Lord Chelmsford concerning a native column coming up under Colonel Durnford and excitedly announced that the main column had gone into camp nine miles away at Isandhlwana and that "a big fight was expected." At about half past six that morning, Lieutenant John Rouse Merriott Chard R.E., who had been left in charge of the ponts, or ferry boats, at the drift, obtained permission from Spalding to ride out to Isandhlwana and ascertain if there were any new orders which would effect the service of the ponts under his command. Chard returned at noon and reported that large bodies of Zulus had been reported working round the left of the camp at Isandhlwana, and said he thought that they might try to make a dash for the mission. This caused some excitement but everyone felt certain that Lord Chelmsford and his column, some 4,000-strong, would never permit the Zulus to move against the mission unmolested. The Rev. Witt, Rev. Smith and Surgeon Reynolds took themselves off to the summit of a neighbouring hill "to watch the fun" through field glasses. About an hour later, however, Major Spalding decided that it might be advisable to bring up the company of the 1/24th left ten miles further down the road at Helpmakaar and, leaving Lt. Chard in command, set off on his self-imposed task. John Chard returned to his ponts.

At about 3:15 pm he saw two men riding "hell for leather" towards the drift. A pont was sent across the river to bring them across. Lieutenant Adendorff of the N.N.C. had a terrible tale to relate. Lord Chelmsford had gone out that morning with half his force to make reconnaissance and select a new camping ground. Some 1,800 officers and men had been left at Isandhlwana. At noon the Zulu force, whose presence had been observed for some hours, had audaciously rushed the unprepared camp in overwhelming numbers and slaughtered the force to a man. Meanwhile nothing had been heard of Lord Chelmsford or his half of the column, and now another Zulu force was advancing rapidly towards Rorke's Drift. Stunned by Adendorff's news, Chard then received an urgent message from Bromhead who likewise had just been informed of the disaster by a Mounted Infantryman carrying a note which said the post was to be strengthened and held at all costs.

After a hurried consultation between Chard, Bromhead and Assistant Commissary Dalton, it was decided to abandon the ford and concentrate all efforts in holding the mission. By 3:30 pm the guard at the drift had been recalled and the preparations for the defence were begun. At about the same time what seemed to be a welcome reinforcement arrived in the form of an officer and one hundred troopers from Durnford's force. The officer reported to Chard for orders and was asked to post vedettes in the direction of the advancing horde and hold it up as much as possible. When forced to retire on the post, the troopers were to help in its defence. Meanwhile the work of strengthening the mission was being carried on apace. A wall constructed of mealie (maize) bags was raised to a height of four feet and continued in the form of a rectangle of which the bottom, or south east and south west, corners were filled respectively by the walls of the thatched hospital and storehouse which stood about forty yards apart.

It was decided to leave those patients unable to bear arms inside the hospital, as it was generally considered by Surgeon Reynolds and others that neither "building would be taken unless with the fall of the whole place." The defence of the hospital, which measured 60 by 18 feet and was divided into a number of rooms, some with interconnecting doors and others accessible only via outside doors, was left in the charge of Reynolds. Lieutenant Bromhead detailed Private Robert Jones and five other B Company men, namely Privates Harry Hook, 593 William Jones, 1395 John Williams, 1398 Joseph Williams, and Thomas Cole, to assist. The hospital walls were loopholed, and the windows and outside doors barricaded with tables and mattresses.

When word was received that the Zulus had been sighted Missionary Witt, having returned from the hill top with Reynolds and Smith, exercised his right to depart. Every man now took up his assigned post. At 4:15 pm firing was heard beyond the hills to the south and shortly afterwards the officer of Durnford's force rode in reporting that the enemy were at hand and that his men would not stand and were making off towards Helpmakaar. The sight of the fleeing troopers proved too much for the N.N.C. who likewise departed, reducing the total number of men under Chard's command to about 152 of whom some thirty were hospital patients. Chard now realised that the line of defence was too extended for the men who remained, yet he proved equal to the crisis. The eighty by twenty foot storehouse, formerly used by Witt as a church, contained biscuit boxes besides mealie bags and ammunition. The biscuit boxes were feverishly placed across the rectangle connecting the parallel northern and southern mealie bag walls so forming an inner work at the storehouse end, into which the defenders at the hospital end might withdraw. When the wall was only two boxes high the cry went up: "Here they come!"

Private Robert Jones, shortly to earn a Victoria Cross, was stationed at a loophole in a room occupied by patient Corporal Jessy Maher of the N.N.C. at the rear of the hospital. The room contained a barricaded external door and a window, and adjoined the kitchen which extended out from the main line of the hospital rear wall. His view south towards the Oscarberg Hill allowed him to see the approach of the iNdluyengwe regiment as it advance at the run, screened by a line of skirmishers constantly fed by the main body. Making straight for the southern mealie bag wall, the Zulu impi was met by a steady well-sustained fire from the defenders' .577 Martini-Henry rifles but progressed with rare courage to within fifty yards of the wall. Here, however, they were caught in a withering cross fire from the defenders behind mealie bags and the loopholed storehouse, and the main Zulu effort swept to the left and skirting the hospital fell upon the men holding the north west corner of the mealie bag wall. This assault was beaten off and the iNdluyengwe, reinforced by the uDhloko and uThulwana regiments moved eastwards finding cover below the rocky terrace upon which the northern mealie bag wall had been raised. Meanwhile large numbers of Zulu snipers kept up a heavy fire from positions on the slopes of Oscarberg Hill.

Next the Zulus rose up from the terrace and with a wild rush made a determined and ferocious attack on the northern mealie bag wall. The defenders holding that breastwork had to contend not only with the Zulus at their front but also with the uncomfortable thought of a shot in the back. Inevitably as the Zulu fire from Oscarberg became less erratic and after a number of men had been killed by the sniper fire, Lieutenant Chard was forced to give the order for the men holding the mealie bag walls to retire behind the biscuit box wall at the eastern end of the enclosure. This left Robert Jones and his comrades in the hospital completely cut off.

The Zulus swarmed around the building trying to break in at various points and fire the thatch. Having expended all his ammunition, Robert Jones helped Maher into the adjoining kitchen, where 593 Private William Jones was posted with six more patients. Returning to his original room with his namesake, they crossed bayonets and took post at the doorway, which was being smashed in by several warriors. Trooper Lugg firing from a loophole in the kitchen extension wall managed to get a good shot at a number of them but at length they burst through the makeshift barricade. Those Zulus who managed to dodge Lugg's fire were then taken on by the two Joneses who together bayonetted every warrior as he approached. During the struggle in the doorway, Robert Jones received three assegai wounds from the attackers as they leapt forward in their eagerness to enter the room, one of the injuries being "a spear scrape on the abdomen - a particularly close shave". When their duties at the doorway permitted, the Joneses went into the kitchen and helped the patients through the high window which provided the only means of escape into the area between the north and south mealie bag walls from which Chard had withdrawn his men at 6.30 pm.

While the Joneses were holding the enemy at bay in the doorway and attempting to get their last patient Sergeant Maxfield dressed, a pick axe smashed through the wall behind them; this was 1395 Private John Williams making an escape route for Private Harry Hook and their surviving charges who had been quartered in the western end of the building. While Hook and Williams heaved their eight surviving patients through the hole and fought off the pursuing Zulus, the Joneses succeeded in dressing Maxfield who was delirious with fever, but he refused to move and their efforts to get him to do so were interrupted when they had to take over at the escape hole from Hook and 1395 Williams who had to assist their patients out of the window. As Robert and William Jones retreated to join Hook and Williams, the Zulus began to scramble through the escape hole. The hospital roof was a smouldering mass, and Hook, 1395 Williams, 593 Jones and Robert Jones, decided to make their exit. When the other three had climbed out of the window, Robert Jones, having passed out his Martini-Henry, decided to make a final attempt to save Maxfield. Groping his way through the smoke filled room he made his way towards the stricken Sergeant lying on his bed. But it was too late: Maxfield was being repeatedly stabbed by the Zulus.

Robert Jones clambered out of the window and, just as he dropped down into the dangerous no man's land of the bullet swept enclosure, part of the hospital roof fell in behind him. A series of hair raising dashes across the enclosure brought a total of fourteen patients and their four gallant rescuers into the biscuit box retrenchment. Privates Cole and 1398 Joseph Williams had both been killed defending the hospital patients, the latter being dragged outside, repeatedly stabbed and, in accordance with Zulu ritual, his stomach ripped open.

The struggle to hold the retrenchment now commenced. At 7pm Lt. Chard ordered the construction of a lofty mealie bag redoubt at its centre, in which the wounded were placed for safety and from which an elevated field of fire was maintained as long as daylight lasted.

Meanwhile there had been fierce fighting in the cattle kraal at the opposite end of the position which likewise had been abandoned. When darkness fell, the Zulus used its cloak to mount several attacks, but again each onslaught was beaten off. Then the hospital roof flared up illuminating the surrounding area for hundreds of yards and allowing the defenders to resume their well aimed fire. By 10 pm, however, the hospital thatch had burnt itself out and the men of B Company resorted to the use of the bayonet as the Zulus again attempted force their way over the ramparts. At midnight Lt Bromhead, Private Henry Hook and few others launched a foray into the abandoned yard to recover the vital watercart.

The Zulu onslaughts finally began to slacken after eight hours of ceaseless fighting, but there was still little rest for the defenders as the Zulus continued to maintain a desultory fire until 4 am. The first streak of dawn revealed the extent of the slaughter around the post, and the welcome sight of the Zulus retiring around Oscarberg Hill. Seemingly it was all over. Chard issued orders to remove the thatch from the storehouse roof, to strengthen the defences and send out patrols. When the latter had returned, the Zulus suddenly reappeared lining the heights to the south west. All work was instantly stopped and every man returned to his post. The garrison steeled itself for another desperate struggle, but then the advance of the Zulus wavered, and without any obvious explanation they retired behind the hill whence they had come.

Meanwhile, Lord Chelmsford's force had marched back into camp at Isandhlwana during the night and had stumbled upon the mutilated corpses of the 1st Battalion 24th Foot. In the early hours of the morning of the 23rd, his lordship dejectedly set out for Rorke's Drift expecting to find a similar scene of carnage. He found instead the survivors of "as gallant a defence as the annals of the British Army have ever known".

The Rorke's Drift Victoria Cross Winners

Lieutenant J.R.M. Chard, R.E.
Lieutenant G. Bromhead, 2/24th Foot
Surgeon J.H. Reynolds, A.M.D.
Acting Asistant Commissary J.L. Dalton, C.&T.D.
Corporal Allen, 2/24th Foot
Corporal C.F. Scheiss, N.N.C.
Private F.Hitch, 2/24th Foot
Private A.H. Hook, 2/24th Foot
Private R. Jones, 2/24th Foot
Private W. Jones, 2/24th Foot
Private J. Williams, 2/24th Foot

A note on the Rorke's Drift officers

Major John Rouse Merriott Chard V.C., R.E., a thirty-one year-old Lieutenant at the time of the epic defence of Rorke's Drift against some 4,000 Zulus, fell into the command by virtue of the fact he had held his commission the longest. Following Major H. Spalding's departure from Rorke's Drift on a self-imposed mission to summon reinforcements from Helpmekaar on the morning of 22 January 1879, the officers with Chard were Lieutenant Bromhead, Surgeon Reynolds, Acting Assistant Commissary Dalton, Assistant Commissary Dunne, and Lieutenant Adendorff of the Natal Native Contingent.

Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead, the commander of the backbone of the Defence, B Company of the 2/24th Foot, was from an old army family and suffered from impaired hearing. Prior to 22 January 1879 it was not unusual that the less agreeable subaltern's duties were his lot. He was two years older than Chard but still his junior by date of commission. He received the Victoria Cross for his leading role in the Defence, and after Rorke's Drift went on to serve in Burma and India. He died unmarried of enteric at Allahabad in 1891 aged forty-six.

Surgeon James Henry Reynolds of the Army Medical Department also received the Cross, and ultimately rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. At his death at the age of eighty-eight in 1932 was the longest lived V.C. of the Zulu War.

James Langley Dalton, a former Sergeant in the 85th Regiment had much military experience, and gave Chard a valuable insight into the means of success in the defence - a fact which Chard acknowledged in both of his accounts. Dalton, who also gained the V.C., died at Port Elizabeth in 1887.

Walter Alphonsus Dunne, in charge of the stores at Rorke's Drift, was one of the unsung heroes of the defence, and though named in Chard's report and recommended for the V.C. he did not receive it. He retired with the rank of Colonel and died in Italy in 1908.

Chard, himself, continued in the Royal Engineers, serving in Cyprus, Singapore, and as C.R.E. at Perth, until forced to retire three months before his death in November 189