Rorke’s Drift, 1879, and Jadotville, 1961; being also a note on a line that nobody says.
Two structures, loaded alike, neither failed. Both defences were engineering before they were fighting: somebody read the ground, decided not to move, built first, and saw to the ammunition. One garrison was thanked too quickly and the other too late. The film is wrong about the regiment, the song, the sergeant, the missionary and Private Hook, right about the rifle and the walls, and does not contain its most famous line. The Major’s maxim, a rifle, a brew and not moving, is upheld with a rider: not moving is a decision, and the brew is a supply problem.
The two actions, the people in them, the figures and their disagreements, the awards and the lines quoted from the film are real and referenced. The two colleges, both authors, the rest of the cast and the trial on the Fellows’ Lawn are not. The invasion of Zululand was provoked by an ultimatum London had not authorised, and the paper says so. Nothing in it is a joke at the expense of the dead of any side. The plan, the map and the engraving of Prince Dabulamanzi are period documents of 1879, and the painting is Lady Butler’s of 1880, in the Royal Collection; the shoebox under Gerald’s desk, in which the paper says two of them were found, is not real.
