Zulu dawns: Fugitives' Drift

I've lost count of the number of times I've watched Zulu, the 1964 film starring Stanley Baker and Michael Caine in a rare posh role, tagline: 'Dwarfing The Mightiest! Towering Over The Greatest!' It tells the story of Rorke's Drift in which 139 British soldiers successfully defended a hospital and army store against a force of 5,000 Zulus armed with assegais (spears) and rifles on 22 January 1879. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded that day for extraordinary valour in an action that restored the pride of the Empire after the disastrous slaughter of a large part of a British column at the hands of the Zulu army at Isandlwana that morning.

Fugitives' Drift Lodge is a hotel designed entirely around the two battlegrounds of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift. The Lodge was the brainchild of David Rattray who, before his murder by a gang of bandits who burst into the Lodge in 2007, had established an international reputation as a speaker on the Anglo-Zulu War. With the Lodge he aimed to set up a tourist destination that would foster interest in the area and in the history of the Zulu nation and the war that led to its destruction. There's a museum of curios from the wars, including pictures of the soldiers sprouting spectacular facial hair, antique flags and native weapons, that doubles as a dining room.

The Lodge sits at the top of a valley overlooking the Buffalo river, which Lord Chelmsford (played by Peter O'Toole in Zulu's turkey of a prequel, Zulu Dawn) crossed with his army in January 1879, looking to pick a fight with the Zulu nation so that he could disarm and subjugate them. Fugitives' Drift owes its name to its proximity to the escape route of the 50 or so men who fled with their lives from the battle of Isandlwana, leaving behind 1,300 who were butchered and disembowelled.

We heard of the hardships the British endured as they marched through 40C heat in heavy scarlet wool coats, but after driving for five hours from Johannesburg in a gigantic storm on a pitch-dark, potholed road, we would have been grateful for the sunshine. However, the clouds broke as we slid down dirt tracks through the Lodge's safari park, watched by the 13 resident giraffe. We'd missed the tour that morning to Isandlwana so we opted for a ride through the game park instead. My wife rides tolerably well; I ride intolerably badly and the fact that my horse fell over as I mounted didn't help. However, with patient instruction from Dane, our Afrikaner riding instructor, I managed to stay in the saddle long enough to bump through grassland and bush alongside the Lodge's herds of impala and kudu, although the park's wildebeest seemed distinctly hostile and we beat a hasty retreat as they lined up to charge.

We returned to our room --Country Life goes colonial; very easy on an English eye - and relaxed before drinks at six o'clock sharp. There's something very military about the Lodge: the guests are army men; the talk is of battles; the food is hearty and filling and the drinks old-fashioned.

We were up early to make our first tour of the day - to Isandlwana. The battlefield is dotted with mounds of white stones that mark where British soldiers are buried. It is dominated by the eerie skull-like rock that spooked the soldiers of the 24th Regiment of Foot as its shape reminded them of the Sphinx - their regimental badge. George Irwin, our guide, sat us under a tree and fed us tea and flapjacks. However, things rapidly became less cosy as he described the battle in the present tense starting with the Zulus' key battle tactic: the horns of the buffalo - a central column with two horns, left and right, outflanking the enemy. He summoned up images of waves of Zulus braving the firing line of the British and getting behind them; the left horn of the attack coming round and cutting off the supply lines and chasing survivors down to the river. The details are gruesome: Zulus believed that once a warrior on the battlefield was dead, his stomach should be sliced open to release his spirit. They also drank from the gall bladders of slain enemies. They were motivated by the fact that a warrior was not allowed to marry until he had 'washed his spear' in the blood of the enemy.

The circumstances of the British defeat are maddening: Chelmsford broke the cardinal rule and split his army; the senior officer in charge at Isandlwana didn't strike the tents before engaging with the Zulus, so British soldiers were tripping over their own guy ropes in retreat; Chelmsford's scouts looking back with their telescopes took the standing tents as a sign that all was well; the soldiers couldn't open boxes of ammunition fast enough to reload. This has left a legacy, as explained by a retired colonel who was at the dinner that evening: the British army is unique in its specification for ammo boxes that can be kicked open.

The battle ended with a single injured soldier holding out in a cave set in the uppermost crags of Isandlwana for more than 90 minutes as the Zulu attacked. I scrambled up the hill and, entering the cave, saw the bullet holes for myself; he was believed to have been killed by a ricochet --the angle being too steep for the Zulus' rifles.

Shaken by the drama of the morning, we returned to the Lodge for lunch on the verandah outside the Harford Library, which holds a collection of writings on South Africa and in particular the Zulus, followed by a swim in the pool overlooking the valley below.

The afternoon tour was to Rorke's Drift. Our guide was Rattray's friend and colleague, Rob Caskie, who, learning his style from Rattray, has developed a presentation that is immediate and dramatic. Using a knob-kerrie as a prop, Rob walked us round the scene of the battle - no bigger than a few tennis courts, describing a particular death here, another act of heroism there. None was braver than Private Hook. In the film he's a shirking bolshie who steals the hospital booze; in reality this army cook fought for four hours defending his sick comrades in the hospital, and evacuating them to the redoubt after seeing his best friend dismembered before his eyes. Rob occasionally drops into Zulu, a language rich in clicks and glottal stops, for bloodcurdling demonstrations of how a Zulu kills an opponent. I hadn't expected the lecture to be so draining; grown men blinked away tears as he regaled us with yet another tale of the heroism of the beleaguered British at Rorke's Drift. At the end we all quietly peeled off to compose ourselves before bumping back to the Lodge in a battered Land Rover.