Because we’re here lad. Nobody else. Just us.
Colour Sergeant Frank Bourne, Zulu (1964)
At the battle of Rorke’s Drift on January 22-23, 1879, some 141 men of B Company, 2 Warwickshire (24th Regiment of Foot) beat off an attack by a Zulu impi, around 4,000 men. At the time it was considered a military miracle. The officers in command had nothing in their careers before or after the battle to mark them out as in any way superior. They were typical run of the mill officers and almost all the men under their command were typical troops. The most unusual was Colour Sergeant Frank Bourne who at the battle was twenty-four years old. Two years previously he had attained the rank of Colour Sergeant, making him the youngest Colour Sergeant, the highest NCO rank in the British Army. He would rise to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel during World War I, and die at 91, last survivor among the defenders of Rorke’s Drift, on V-E Day, appropriately enough, May 8, 1945. For a secular purpose the defenders of Rorke’s Drift were willing to fight with all their being, and they won against apparently overwhelming odds.
This little excursion into military history is caused by this quotation from Father Z:
I’ve had a tough few days. How ’bout you?
Beaten down. Demoralized. Confused. Frustrated.
We must get back to our feet: rise again.
Go here to read the rest. I confess that since the release of Amoris Laetitia I have not felt demoralized, but rather exhilarated. Maybe it is my cross-grained personality, or perhaps it is my Irish and Cherokee ancestors who loved a scrap against the odds, but for some reason my spirits are up and I feel more than ready to fight. Maybe it is the clarity of the situation now. There is no more guessing. We who cherish Catholic Truth now know we have an adversary in the seat of Peter. It is up to us, in the words of Frank Bourne, because we are here on this Earth at this time, to stand for the Faith come what may. Of course it is not just us. In standing for Catholicism we are never alone. We are surrounded by armies of martyrs and saints of all types, and the prayers of the Church Suffering in Purgatory. Mary is ever beside us. God Himself will not abandon the Faith He died to create. We should therefore be of good cheer, no matter the odds against us, and be about our task of preserving the Faith.
Castilian Soldier: There are 13 of us and you are alone.
El Cid: What you do is against God’s law. Were you 13 times 13 I would not be alone.
El Cid (1961)
Sinn Féin Amháin (Gaelic) – Ourselves Alone. They cannot take your Faith, Hope and Love; nor your fortitude, justice, prudence, and temperance. .
This is precisely how I feel, Don. Our shepherds may be cowering under the desks in their chancelries (sorry, “pastoral centers”), but the laity are beginning to roar. I’m seeing more than ever a determination to call out the strategic ambiguities written into modern Church documents, and to tie it all back to the Council, where this orthodox-but-with-qualifications strategy first took hold. True, we’re still a small minority among Catholics, but we make up for it with fervor and plain speaking. Thanks be to God, the battle lines are now drawn up clearly for anyone with eyes to see.
The periodical, “Military History”, has had a well-documented analysis of Rorke’s Drift and the prior-day’s disaster, the Battle of Isandlwana, in the course of which about 1300 brave British regimental soldiers and their colonial allies were annihilated (22 Jan 1879).
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Rorke’s Drift is a lesson of course in which a few, focused, disciplined soldiers successfully repelled an assault, the likes of which liquidated a much larger, better equipped, but disastrously-led, force the prior day. Some of the errors are instructive today: Lord Chelmsford, the over-all leader, divided his forces and went on, leaving behind a force with a poorly-situated, really indefensible site, but especially leaving behind a man who was an administrator with little or no battle-knowledge, let alone experience. The forces, though ordered to entrench, for some unfathomable reason, did not do so. “Military History” states that Pulleine (the administrator-commander at the Battle of Isandlwana site, refused to have opened and distributed to the troops ample wood cases of over 400,000 rounds of state-of-the-art Martini-Henry easily-reloadable breech-loading rifles, even by that morning when it was obvious that large Zulu groups were moving about in surrounding distance. It was inevitable, the outcome, say the historian-experts.
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Analogy to today? Our Undefense-Department, being self-dismantled (but oh-so-politically correct). Civilian or entirely untested administrator leaders. Large forces moving about the camp in the distance, accurately reported by the scouts. And the outcome?
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By the way, even for its “era”, this is a great fillm. Thank you, DMcC.
Good post. Heartening.
Don
In real life that company was left behind as a bridge guard because the lieutenant in command was medically deaf.
God is not looking for super heroes just faithful ones,
“If God is with us who can be against us?”
Yes, Hank, I understand “Rorke’s Drift” — a “drift” being the Brit equivalent at that time of a ford in the river– was a year-round river and therefore water source, as well as marking the boundary between British Natal and Zululand.
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My understanding, derived only from “Military History” and a few other periodicals that have studied this famous “last stand”, is that the “Buffalo River”, the river of the “drift”, is a fairly major watercourse—British engineers had set up a makeshift “pont” ferry which could accommodate supply train wagons— and Chelmsford’s main force could otherwise be trapped if the trading post site and the ford were not controlled.
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Another fact worth noting: according to a native Natal driver who had fled and hid in one of the caves of the bluff overlooking the trading post, the Brit fire, amply supplied with ammunition deployed freely to the soldiers, was “devastating”.
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One looks by contrast at Islandwana the prior day, where the incompetent officer in charge refused well prior to the battle, when there was time to do so, to distribute and immediately smash open (it took an axe) the wood boxes of thousands and thousands of rounds of Martini-Henry ammunition and distribute them amply to the perimeters of the encampment—hard to do, even if you have an axe first of all, but especially when you need the rounds and you are under threat of being overwhelmed by sheer numbers of Zulu. Martini-Henry rifles were single-shot breech-loaders: very efficient, but you have to literally have rounds at hand NOW. A true nightmare. Over 400,000 rounds of rifle ammunition was said to have fallen into the hands of the Zulu.
Murray saida
“the laity are beginning to roar. I’m seeing more than ever a determination to call out the strategic ambiguities written into modern Church documents, and to tie it all back to the Council, where this orthodox-but-with-qualifications strategy first took hold. … Thanks be to God, the battle lines are now drawn up clearly for anyone with eyes to see.”
What a tumult is going on! What can we expect to happen now I wonder
Steve
Thank you.
At Roark’s drift the British infantry had a situation where did what it does best – stand and fire volleys.
As I remember there are several plausible scenarios as to what happened at Islandawana which put the British in more favorable light, or it might have been as bad as you say or worse. Unfortunately there was no one left to explain. But I forget where my source books are.
Here is another sidelight to “Zulu”: Lord Chelmsford, Frederic Thesiger, played by Peter O’Toole in the film “Zulu”, captures the arrogance that precipitated the disaster at Islandawana and the near-annihilation of the contingent at Rorke’s Drift.
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I guess because I have a late family member who commented on the problem of “insider-ism” in established military units, whether British or US, the “Pointers” (West Point) types vs the ROTC or battle-promoted general-ship—anyway, Lord Chelmsford, who had a previously successful career in suppressing the Xhosa revolt in S Africa, had a low opinion of Africans as fighters, and brought that fatal baggage to the Zulu conflict. No matter, he was well rewarded after his Islandawana defeat with a series of higher and higher offices—while Bourne and Chard and others who saved 140 plus souls drifted into virtual non-history.
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Not new. The lead commander at Chosin Reservoir (Korean War), Maj. Gen Edward Almond (actually a VMI grad, but he obtained early acquaintance with Army bigwigs by working at GHQ’s for many years) had a history of incompetent leadership and disdain for forces who were not “white” (he called the PROC forces in N Korea facing a real hero and battle-commander, Maj Gen Oliver Smith, “Chinese laundrymen”, and castigated Smith for not swiftly dispatching the enemy), even blaming his own inept leadership in the Italian Campaign of WW2 on the alleged poor quality of African American troops, the 92nd Infantry Division, the famed “Buffalo Soldiers”, in 1944-1945 (He even recommended that black troops never be allowed to be in combat forces). Perhaps in part because of people like Almond, at least 2 Medal of Honor recipients were not awarded their honor until 1997, 50 plus years after.
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But, as with Chelmsford, Almond was a favorite of MacArthur’s and went on and was eventually promoted to Lt. Generalship—if ever a man was not deserving of it—and is buried now in Arlington Natl Cemetery, along with Ted Kennedy. Well, I guess that is a demotion, in the end.