iSandlwana a private letter for Helpmakaar Moodie Deane Tarburton Swift Macleroy Jackson

Posts : 3458 Join date : 2021-01-04

Natal Witness 15th February 1879
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Hi Kate

The narrator 's last sentence seems to suggest he was a Rorke's Drift defender maybe, unless he heard the fact from someone else that the mission station was short of ammo.

j Deane
F Jackson
R Jackson
G T Macleroy
M Moodie
W Swift
E Tarbaton

All present on the casualty list.

This letter was written by an anonymous Carbineer accompanying the Chelmsford returning column who identified his fallen comrades during the night of the 22nd / early morning of the 23rd. See page 79 of Studies in the Zulu War vol. V. The letter FIRST appeared in the Natal Mercury, 13th February 1879, and was dated Helpmekaar 7th February.
The Natal Witness often repeated letters / stories from the Mercury a day or two after first publication.

The Witness often only uses extracts from the Mercury's full letter.

Posts : 3458 Join date : 2021-01-04

I must admit I did think about the relatives reading about the horrors of iSandlwana in the paper and about what happened to their loved ones
Heres a reply
Natal Witness 18th February 1879
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Kate
I confess that I've never seen Henry Tarboton's letter before. It just goes to show that self-policing in the Press was about as insensitive then as it is today. Looking at pictures on TV coming from Ukraine and from southern Turkey today was a reminder of how callous the media can be in the name of 'freedom of the press'.

Eddie
The last sentence probably means someone with LC , those men were also very low on Ammunition , which was why they never fired on the Zulu's as they passed each other when LC was heading to RD .
90th

90th

Maybe so, I was lead to believe it was because of fatigue both foe avoided eachother.
Who knows, might well have been someone from either.

I tend to think, from the wording, that the ammunition comment relates to the RD post.

Eddie
The clipping in Kate's original post is of course nothing new and the content has been used any number of times in books and essays. I should say that despite my best efforts and also David Jackson's we were never able to find the author from the dozens of Carbineers who accompanied LC's reconnaissance.
It has always niggled me greatly.

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