Mr Greaves
The opening preamble in Into the Jaws of Death is merely a an extension of HCMDB do give the reader a flavour of the frequent tight spots the British infantryman found himself in, and those final desperate moments when raw steel and adrenalin come together.
ITJOD is the perfect book to open up other horizons beyond the Zulu war bubble, the same soldier, with the same weapons and sadly the same leaders, Maiwand, Abu Klea, Majuba, Ingogo, Spion Kop and all those other debacles the poor old foot sloggers found himself in and in many cases is a quite valid critical look at how we ended up in as many disasters and lop sided punch ups, where Tommy Atkins, poor old Tommy Atkins paid the price for cr@p stewardship.
Mikes strong point is he's extensively travelled the areas involved, and looked from a Military perspective, how many authors have stood on the spot Burnaby was killed and where the Gardner gun stood at Abu Klea or Khig, the village that the last remnants of the 66th fought and died in the dying moments at Maiwand.
What it does do, it makes the understanding of what went wrong at Isandlwana come more into perspective, as it was by no means unique, Maiwand is extensively covered, and it brings several interesting things to light, why for example was there no complaints about Rifles Jamming, ammo boxes being hard to open etc etc etc, by the same calibre of Soldier, with EXACTLY the same weapons in an environment far more harsh that Zululand, and where there were a good number of survivors of the 66th?, whereby at Isandlwana, No front line tommy lived to tell the tail..... with that draw your own conclusion, but ITJOD gives a ready, concise overview of those things which if it could go wrong, it probably did.