Seat of War, Jingolover
April 24th, 1879
Dear Father and Mother,
I now take my pen up to write to you a few lines, trusting they will find you all quite well and happy, as I am pleased to inform you that I am quite well at present. We had a hot battle on the 2nd of this month. We had three killed and fourteen wounded. After the battle was over and the enemy had fled we went to count their dead, and we found 470, and the next day we found as many more. It is estimated that the enemy lost – that is killed and wounded – 1,200, and out of the 1,200 there was 1,000 killed. We have not seen anything of them since. We have tomorrow to march towards the King’s capital. We expect to have some hard fighting there, as they are a very desperate race of people, and very plucky. Last Tuesday one of the King’s chiefs come in with eighty men and women to give themselves up, so we made prisoners of them and sent them down to Tugela, our headquarters. There is a few women and children coming to us daily. I expect it will last about two months. The weather here is very hot in the day time and very cold at night, and we have been laying in trenches every night this last six weeks with only a rug and our overcoats. Times are very hard here, I can assure you, but we cannot expect anything else in the battlefield. I hope you will not let this letter depress you in any way, as it is God’s will that I am here to fight for my Queen and country. Hoping it may please him to bring safe back to dear Old England, and if it not to guide me to the right path to eternal life, where I hope we all shall meet to part no more. Dear father tell my brother Robert that the letter he sent me last September I received yesterday. It was seven months old. All out letters were stopped as soon as we got our orders from the Pacific for home, so we have been without letters ever since last September, till I got Robert’s yesterday. Tell him I cannot write to him till I get back to the ship, as I have no more paper with me, but if I can manage to get any I will write again, if not you will know the reason. If you answer you must address as follows:
Pte. John Allsopp, R.M.L.I.
Naval Brigade, Lower Tugela
Zulu Land, South Africa
So now, Dear Father and Mother, I must bid you all adieu, give my kind love to all my brothers and sisters, and accept the same yourselves from your ever affectionate son John, so good bye and God bless you all.
(Source: The Derbyshire Times, June 7, 1879)
Petty Officer Tom
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