RED SOLDIER Letters from the Zulu War 1879, Emery. Isandhlwana Cetshwayo Africa

Description: THE RED SOLDIER FRANK EMERY HODDER AND STOUGHTON 1977 1st edition. 24 x 16 cm. 288 pp + b/w photo plates. HB/DJ 'First comes the trader, then the missionary, then the red soldier.' Cetshwayo, King of the Zulus The short military lesson Britain intended teaching Cetshwayo that turned into the Zulu War of 1879 followed a classic pattern of late Victorian campaigns. It began with the horrifying tragedy of Isandhlwana, followed by the heroic redemption at Rorke's Drift, with its eleven VCs won in twelve hours' fighting and progressed through panic reinforcement to the ultimate victory at Ulundi six months later - not before nearly 30,000 men, a larger number than fought in the British ranks at Waterloo, had been thrown belatedly into the attack. The Red Soldier follows the war's progress through the letters of men writing home, not just the officers whose opinions contributed to official reports or were preserved in regimental magazines, but the NCOs and private soldiers who wrote to their families and whose letters, in the custom of the time, were passed on for publication in local newspapers. This book offers the first opportunity to hear so many of the voices of the men who drove ox-teams a bare sixteen miles in three days across impossible terrain, who slept in their wet clothes with their weapons at their sides for weeks on end, who escaped from the massacre at Isandhlwana or defended the blazing hospital at Rorke's Drift and wrote home with news of their own survival and their comrades' deaths. In many cases the dead were sons of neighbours at home, nowhere more so than among the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 24th Regiment (later the South Wales Borderers) who bore the brunt of the first two dire engagements of the war and were chiefly recruited from the towns and villages of South Wales. The might and courage of the Zulu imp is made a powerful impression on t men who had initially been sent to put a few black scoundrels' in their place, and this comes over vividly in the letters. While the British soldiers were revolted at the Zulu practice of mutilating the dead and chilled by their war songs in the dark eve of battle, they had to respect them as fighting men who gave no quarter in the fierce hand-to-hand encounters described at Hlobane and Kambula, the battle which turned the tide of a hitherto disastrous war. The Zulu War made and broke military reputations and the book covers this aspect of affairs also. Lord Chelmsford, though scapegoat of disaster, was not replaced as the commanding general, while Wood and Buller, who emerged as heroes of victory, were pilloried in tbe anti-war press. One letter offers a wry postscript on the military ambition of Lieutenant Chard VC, the senior officer at the defence of Rorke's Drift. There are also some rare Zulu accounts of their attack at Isandhlwana, and the book draws frequently on the correspondence of officers and men serving with the colonial volunteer and native levies. The letters of the Red Soldiers are remarkable for their fluency, observation, awareness of events, and not least for pungency of phrase. They also raise a question mark against the accepted versions of certain incidents in the war. Collected together here by Frank Emery they make an invaluable and entirely fresh contribution to the study of the South African campaign of 1879, throwing light on the conditions and attitudes of the fighting man in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. THE RED SOLDIER Letters from the Zulu War, 1879 FRANK EMERY HODDER AND STOUGHTON 1977 First edition. 'First comes the trader, then the missionary, then the red soldier.' Cetshwayo, King of the Zulus The short military lesson Britain intended teaching Cetshwayo that turned into the Zulu War of 1879 followed a classic pattern of late Victorian campaigns. It began with the horrifying tragedy of Isandhlwana, followed by the heroic redemption at Rorke's Drift, with its eleven VCs won in twelve hours' fighting and progressed through panic reinforcement to the ultimate victory at Ulundi six months later - not before nearly 30,000 men, a larger number than fought in the British ranks at Waterloo, had been thrown belatedly into the attack. The Red Soldier follows the war's progress through the letters of men writing home, not just the officers whose opinions contributed to official reports or were preserved in regimental magazines, but the NCOs and private soldiers who wrote to their families and whose letters, in the custom of the time, were passed on for publication in local newspapers. This book offers the first opportunity to hear so many of the voices of the men who drove ox-teams a bare sixteen miles in three days across impossible terrain, who slept in their wet clothes with their weapons at their sides for weeks on end, who escaped from the massacre at Isandhlwana or defended the blazing hospital at Rorke's Drift and wrote home with news of their own survival and their comrades' deaths. In many cases the dead were sons of neighbours at home, nowhere more so than among the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 24th Regiment (later the South Wales Borderers) who bore the brunt of the first two dire engagements of the war and were chiefly recruited from the towns and villages of South Wales. The might and courage of the Zulu imp is made a powerful impression on t men who had initially been sent to put a few black scoundrels' in their place, and this comes over vividly in the letters. While the British soldiers were revolted at the Zulu practice of mutilating the dead and chilled by their war songs in the dark eve of battle, they had to respect them as fighting men who gave no quarter in the fierce hand-to-hand encounters described at Hlobane and Kambula, the battle which turned the tide of a hitherto disastrous war. The Zulu War made and broke military reputations and the book covers this aspect of affairs also. Lord Chelmsford, though scapegoat of disaster, was not replaced as the commanding general, while Wood and Buller, who emerged as heroes of victory, were pilloried in tbe anti-war press. One letter offers a wry postscript on the military ambition of Lieutenant Chard VC, the senior officer at the defence of Rorke's Drift. There are also some rare Zulu accounts of their attack at Isandhlwana, and the book draws frequently on the correspondence of officers and men serving with the colonial volunteer and native levies. The letters of the Red Soldiers are remarkable for their fluency, observation, awareness of events, and not least for pungency of phrase. They also raise a question mark against the accepted versions of certain incidents in the war. Collected together here by Frank Emery they make an invaluable and entirely fresh contribution to the study of the South African campaign of 1879, throwing light on the conditions and attitudes of the fighting man in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. 24 x 16 cm. 288 pp + b/w photo plates. Very good condition in a defective dust jacket which has been laminated with a large crease in the rear panel (see photo). Light dust spotting to the top edge of the page block, otherwise very clean and tidy. Images sell! Get Supersized Images & Free Image Hosting Attention Sellers - Get Templates Image Hosting, Scheduling at Auctiva.com.

Price: 11.99 GBP

Location: Carlisle

End Time: 2024-11-07T21:24:34.000Z

Shipping Cost: 16.63 GBP