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Film Zulu Dawn quote: “Excuse me, my Lord, there's something I must convey to you. I rode along the track down to Rorke's Drift. The sky above is red with fire. Your orders my Lord? Do we move to the drift?”
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I don't think so. The British used to shoot cattle rather than letting the Natives kill them in there usual custom, so my guess it's they shot the horses. We know veterinary surgeons we're available, so they may have had an intervention?
littlehand
Posts : 7086 Join date : 2009-04-24 Age : 52 Location : Down South.
While in Rorkes Drift I assisted the butcher to kill meat bullocks and sheep. The beasts were good, the sheep about two stone weight. Anyone could carry about three couples on a rabbiting spade shaft. We had a herd of cattle come at a time and the natives would mind them for their scoff (or meat) which was all the spare tack, they do not leave anything but the skin and bone eating all the inside as it is, in the raw state without any washing. Every morning these natives would bring up the herd and then someone (generally officers) would shoot down as many as was wanted perhaps four sometimes more for we had to shoot them for our niggers on account of their way of slaughtering. The way they kill is with the assegais as the cattle keeps running round the butcher throws these assegais until it drops sometimes having half-a-dozen or more before falling and our Colonel in Command seeing this gave us the order to shoot them.
Hmm, not too sure. They were still using the axe in WW1 so I'm leaning towards them having used it in the Zulu War but I need to be sure as this is going in a book I am writing
littlehand
Posts : 7086 Join date : 2009-04-24 Age : 52 Location : Down South.
The two regular units of British cavalry would have had the farrier's axe.
I imagine it would have been the same pattern as that still carried by the Household Cavalry, I would offer to check my books on the subject but we have decorators in at present.
Posts : 10156 Join date : 2009-04-07 Age : 64 Location : Melbourne, Australia
Subject: Farrier's Axe Fri Jul 12, 2013 5:10 pm
Hi Horsefixer . I see on impi's post the Farrier Axe is dated c 1800 - 40 , I've read many books on the AZW and have never come across the Farrier Axe , which doesn't mean that it wasnt used in 1879 , if it was used , it may have been used back behind the lines . All the horses that needed to be put down while in zululand , were shot from all the accounts that I've read . 90th.
I saw a colleague of mine try to put a wounded horse out of its misery with .38 pistol, he had to reload it after emptying six rounds into its head, the farrier had to do the job with the spike of his axe. My unit then got sent on a course on where to shoot a horse in the head to put it down.
There's famous painting at the National Army Museum, Chelsea, entitled 'Cruel to be Kind' painted by R. Caton Woodville in 1882, showing a cavalry officer about to pistol a wounded horse in the 2nd Afghan War, but he had the advantage of having a .45 pistol.
'Jimu
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Posts : 3957 Join date : 2008-11-01 Age : 61 Location : KENT
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