15th January

Colonel Durnford smarting from the rebuke of yesterday eventually receives orders to move his column, less two battalions of NNC, to Rorkes Drift. The two NNC battalions remained at Kraanskopas as border guards.
After the dressing down from Chelmsford his mood changed and he wrote:
'Crossing rivers in large boats in the night, horses swimming, then cattle killing, cooking on the red embers, horses feeding, men eating and sleeping. All the sights and sounds of camp life which I love.'
On the Mahlabathini Plain the Zulu regiments had reacted to the messengers and the sounds of the impalimpala, long lines of men ready for war had filed into the amakhanda to the point of over flowing. Tempory camps were set up by the later arriving amabutho. The elders gathered around Cetshwayo waiting for his decision.
The men of Rorkes Drift carried on the work of building the road, happy in the knowledge that they were part of the greatest army in the world armed with the latest in modern weaponry and lead by the Lord Chelmsford. What could possibly go wrong. Confidence and arrogance was high.

7 Days to go!