South African actor. Died 1986
Shangani Patrol was the third film made by South African producers David Millin and Roscoe Behrmann under the newly formed RPM Film Studios. The film was shot entirely on location in Rhodesia, in the Marula district, about sixty miles from Bulawayo and not far from the historical battles of the First Matabele War. Shooting was completed in the scheduled six weeks.
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Wilson's Last Stand
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The Shangani Patrol (or Wilson's Patrol) was a 34-soldier unit of the British South Africa Company that in 1893 was ambushed and annihilated by more than 3,000 Matabele warriors in pre-Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), during the First Matabele War. Headed by Major Allan Wilson, the patrol was attacked just north of the Shangani River in Matabeleland, Rhodesia. Its dramatic last stand, sometimes called "Wilson's Last Stand", achieved a prominent place in the British public imagination and, subsequently, in Rhodesian history, similarly to events such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn in the United States, the Battle of Shiroyama in Japan, the Battle of the Alamo in Texas, and the Greeks' last stand at Thermopylae.
The patrol comprised elements of the Mashonaland Mounted Police and the Bechuanaland Border Police. Scouting ahead of Major Patrick Forbes's column attempting the capture of the Matabele King Lobengula (following his flight from his capital Bulawayo a month before), it crossed the Shangani late on 3 December 1893. It moved on Lobengula the next morning, but was ambushed by a host of Matabele riflemen and warriors near the king's wagon. Surrounded and outnumbered about a hundred-fold, the patrol made a last stand as three of its number broke out and rode back to the river to muster reinforcements from Forbes. However, the Shangani had risen significantly in flood, and Forbes was himself involved in a skirmish near the southern bank; Wilson and his men therefore remained isolated to the north. After fighting to the last cartridge, and killing over ten times their own number, they were annihilated.
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King Lobengula and one of his wives.
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The patrol's members, particularly Wilson and Captain Henry Borrow, were elevated in death to the status of national heroes, representing endeavour in the face of insurmountable odds. The anniversary of the battle on 4 December 1893 became an annual public holiday in Rhodesia two years later, and was an official non-work day until 1920. A historical war film depicting the episode, Shangani Patrol, was produced and released in 1970.
Controversy surrounds the breakout before the last stand—which various writers have posited might have actually been desertion—and a box of gold sovereigns, which a Matabele inDuna (leader) later said had been given to two unidentified men from Forbes's rear guard on 2 December, along with a message that Lobengula admitted defeat and wanted the column to stop pursuing him. Two batmen were initially found guilty of accepting the gold, keeping it for themselves and not passing on the message, but the evidence against them was inconclusive and largely circumstantial; the convictions were ultimately overturned.
BACKGROUND
Amid the Scramble for Africa during the 1880s, the South African-based businessman and politician Cecil Rhodes envisioned the annexation to the British Empire of a swathe of territory connecting the Cape of Good Hope and Cairo—respectively at the southern and northern tips of Africa—and the concurrent construction of a line of rail linking the two. On geopolitical maps, British territories were generally marked in red or pink, so this concept became known as the "Cape to Cairo red line". In the immediate vicinity of the Cape, this ambition was challenged by the presence of independent states to the north-east of Britain's Cape Colony: the Boer republics, and to the north of these the Kingdom of Matabeleland under Lobengula. Having secured the Rudd Concession on mining rights from King Lobengula on 30 October 1888, Rhodes and his British South Africa Company were granted a Royal Charter by Queen Victoria in October 1889. The Company was empowered under this charter to trade with local rulers, form banks, own and manage land, and raise and run a police force: the British South Africa Company's Police, renamed the Mashonaland Mounted Police in 1892.
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British South African Company Column.
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In return for these rights, the Company would govern and develop any territory it acquired, while respecting laws enacted by extant African rulers, and upholding free trade within its borders. The first settlers referred to their new home as "Rhodesia", after Rhodes. Though the Company made good on most of its pledges, the assent of Lobengula and other native leaders, particularly regarding mining rights, was often evaded, misrepresented or simply ignored. It also offended Lobengula by demanding that he stop the customary Matabele raids on the Mashona people who inhabited the white-governed areas. Angered by the Company's attitude towards his authority, Lobengula made war on the new arrivals and the Mashonas in 1893. Matabele warriors began the wholesale slaughter of Mashonas in the vicinity of Fort Victoria in July that year, and an indaba (tribal conference) organised by Company official Leander Starr Jameson to end the conflict ended with violence, and dispersion by force. The First Matabele War had started. Company columns rode from Fort Salisbury and Fort Victoria, and combined at Iron Mine Hill, around the centre point of the country, on 16 October 1893. Together the force totalled about 700 men, commanded by Major Patrick Forbes, and equipped with five Maxim machine guns. Forbes's combined column moved on the Matabele king's capital at Bulawayo, to the south-west. The Matabele army mobilised to prevent Forbes from reaching the city, and twice engaged the column as it approached: on 25 October, 3,500 warriors assaulted the column near the Shangani River. Lobengula's troops were well-drilled and formidable by pre-colonial African standards, but the Company's Maxim guns, which had never before been used in battle, far exceeded expectations, according to an eyewitness "mow[ing] them down literally like grass". By the time the Matabele withdrew, they had suffered around 1,500 fatalities; the Company, on the other hand, had lost only four men.
A week later, on 1 November, 2,000 Matabele riflemen and 4,000 warriors attacked Forbes at Bembezi, about 30 miles (48 km) north-east of Bulawayo, but again they were no match for the crushing firepower of the major's Maxims: about 2,500 more Matabele were killed.
Lobengula fled Bulawayo as soon as he heard the news from Bembezi. On 3 November 1893, with the column on the outskirts of the city, he and his subjects left, torching the royal town as they went. In the resultant conflagration, the city's large store of ivory, gold and other treasure was destroyed, as was its ammunition magazine, which exploded. The flames were still rising when the whites entered the settlement the next day; basing themselves in the "White Man's Camp" already present, they set about extinguishing the fire which engulfed the town. Using a tree to improvise a flagstaff, they hoisted first the Company flag, then the Union flag. The reconstruction of Bulawayo began almost as soon as the blaze was out, with a new white-run city rising atop the ruins of Lobengula's former residence. Jameson, who now based himself in Bulawayo, wrote the following letter to the Matabele king on 7 November 1893, in English, Dutch and Zulu:
I send this message in order, if possible, to prevent the necessity of any further killing of your people or burning of their kraals. To stop this useless slaughter you must at once come and see me at Bulawayo, where I will guarantee that your life will be safe and that you will be kindly treated. I will allow sufficient time for these messengers to reach you and two days more to allow you to reach me in your wagon. Should you not then arrive I shall at once send out troops to follow you, as I am determined as soon as possible to put the country in a condition where whites and blacks can live in peace and friendliness.
This letter, carried by John Grootboom, a coloured man from the Cape, reached Lobengula near Shiloh Mission, about 30 miles (48 km) north of Bulawayo. The king replied in English:
I have heard all that you have said, so I will come, but let me to ask you where are all my men which I have sent to the Cape, such as Maffett and Jonny and James, and after that the three men—Gobogobo, Mantose and Goebo—whom I sent. If I do come where will I get a house for me as all my houses is burn down, and also as soon as my men come which I have sent then I will come.
Jameson did not regard this ambiguity as a proper answer, and impatiently waited for further word from the king. After standing by for the specified two days and receiving nothing, he correctly concluded that Lobengula was stalling him, and using the extra time to distance himself from his former capital. Jameson therefore made good on his pledge, and called for volunteers; he assembled a host of about 470 men, mixed together from the Mashonaland Mounted Police, the Bechuanaland Border Police, and Raaff's Rangers, an independent unit led by the eponymous Commandant Piet Raaff. This force was placed under Forbes's command, with three Maxim guns attached. Jameson told the major to scout the area between Shiloh and Inyati for spoor, with the ultimate objective of capturing Lobengula, and sent him out just before sunset on 14 November 1893.
PRELUDE: FORBES'S PURSUIT OF LOBENGULA
The column left Bulawayo heading north, and, in an attempt to expedite its progress, reorganised itself into a more compact 290-man force at Shiloh. Lobengula, meanwhile, rode north towards the Shangani in his wagon, which left obvious tracks in its wake. Following the wagon tracks, Forbes's men were soon hot on the trail, routinely finding recently abandoned Matabele camps, provisions and stragglers. Heavy rain slowed both the king and his pursuers, and led Forbes to split his force again; moving on with a flying column of 160 men, he sent the rest back with the wagons. He pushed on, and on 3 December 1893 reached the southern bank of the Shangani, from where he could clearly see Matabele hastily driving cattle behind an impi (regiment) of warriors. The presence of smouldering fires beside the native column betrayed the fact that they had just crossed. Wishing to know whether the king had crossed here or at another point on the river, Forbes sent Major Allan Wilson across to scout ahead with 12 men and eight officers, and told him to return by nightfall.
Meanwhile, Forbes formed a laager (improvised fort) about 200 yards (180 m) from the southern bank. There, he interrogated a captive Matabele, the son of an inDuna (tribal leader), who said that the king was indeed where Wilson had gone, and was ill (the exact ailment was not known for sure, the prisoner said, but was suspected to be gout). The inDuna's son said that Lobengula had with him a force of about 3,000 warriors, about half of whom were armed with Martini–Henry rifles. They were mixed together from various regiments of the previously routed Matabele army, and largely demoralised, but still fiercely determined to prevent Lobengula's capture. Most prominent were the Imbezu, Ingubo and Insukameni Regiments; the Imbezu, Lobengula's favourite, was generally considered the strongest. After three weeks in pursuit of the king, Forbes's rations were running perilously short. He therefore resolved to attack the next day (4 December), hoping to be able to turn back for Bulawayo with Lobengula in custody before nightfall.
Wilson's men remained north of the river far longer than expected, and had still not returned when darkness fell. Forbes, meanwhile, received a report that most of Lobengula's force, commanded by inDuna Mjaan, had separated from the king and was moving to attack the laager the same night (this was actually an exaggeration; only about 300 riflemen had split from the main Matabele force, though they were indeed south of the river, undetected by Forbes). Visibility was poor by now, and rain periodically fell. The laager received no word from Wilson until about 21:00, when Sergeant-Major Judge and Corporal Ebbage arrived from across the river to tell Forbes that Wilson had found Lobengula's tracks, and followed him for 5 miles (8.0 km). Wilson regarded the chances of taking the king alive as so good that he was going to remain north of the river overnight. He asked Forbes to send more men and a Maxim gun in the morning, but did not explain what he planned to do with them.
The Shangani Patrol continued its approach during the late evening, and scouted close to the bush enclosure housing Lobengula. Captain William Napier repeatedly called to the king in the Matabele language, Sindebele, but received no reply from the Matabele leaders, who remained silent and hid themselves. The patrol's actions confused the Matabele, who could not understand why there appeared to be so few Company soldiers, nor why they would reveal their position like this. They concluded that it must be a trap, and were only satisfied that it was not when Wilson's men had stopped during their approach to call to Lobengula five times. Following the fifth call from Napier, Mjaan ordered his riflemen to gather around the patrol, intending to pocket it. Noticing this, Wilson ordered a retreat, and took up a well-covered position in the bush where he could hide until daybreak. When Lieutenant Hofmeyer and Troopers Bradburn and Colquhoun were lost amid the increasingly stormy night, Wilson briefly backtracked to recover them.
On returning to his bush camp, Wilson sent a further message to the laager, which reached its destination at around 23:00: Napier, Scout Bain and Trooper Robertson were the men acting as runners. Wilson repeated that he was going to stay north of the river overnight, close to the king, and asked Forbes to bring the whole column across by 04:00 in the morning. Forbes thought it unwise to attempt a full river crossing at night, which he reasoned might lead to his force being surrounded in the darkness and massacred, but also felt he could not recall Wilson, as to do so would be to lose Lobengula for sure.
As a compromise, Forbes sent Captain Henry Borrow across with 21 men at 01:00 on 4 December, and told Borrow to relay to Wilson that the laager was surrounded, and "expected to be attacked any moment". Forbes apparently intended for Borrow's reinforcements to secure Wilson's position, but historian W D Gale writes that this was a serious tactical error on Forbes's part: the addition of Borrow's men made Wilson's patrol too large to be a mere reconnoitring force, but still too small to overpower the Matabele and capture the king. Indeed, Wilson and his officers looked on gloomily when Borrow's men arrived soon after dawn, fewer in number than expected and without the requested Maxim gun. Only 20 of the reinforcements (including Borrow himself) reached Wilson—Troopers Landsberg and Nesbitt became separated from the main group along the way, and eventually rejoined Forbes during the morning. Trooper Robertson returned to Wilson with Borrow, giving the patrol a total of 37 men, including its officers.
ENGAGEMENT
MATABELE AMBUSHES ON BOTH SIDES OF THE RIVER
Wilson conferred with his officers, none of whom was particularly optimistic about their prospects: "This is the end" said one. British soldier and historian Roger Marston postulates that the patrol might still have been safe had it not now pursued the king, but Wilson decided to proceed: "Let's ride on Lobengula," he said. Several analysts comment that this was perhaps excessively rash. Marston says that Wilson's actions "had a flavour of doomed resignation about them", and suggests that the major believed no other path was open, and was therefore going for broke. The Matabele hovered around the vicinity, waiting to see what Wilson would do next. On the southern side of the river, the 300 Matabele riflemen took up a well-covered position near the riverbank, about 300 yards (270 m) to the left of Forbes's position. Hidden by a patch of scrub, they remained undetected by the Company troops.
Wilson, Borrow and the 35 others made for Lobengula's enclosure. The king's wagon was still there, but when Wilson called to him, there was no answer. The king had moved on during the night. At that moment, the troopers heard the sound of rifles being cocked in the wood surrounding them. A Matabele inDuna stepped out from behind a tree and announced that the enclosure was surrounded by thousands of Matabele who wanted to "see if the white men were afraid to die." He then fired his rifle to signal the start of the attack to his men. A volley from the Matabele riflemen followed, but most of the shots went too high; no Company trooper was hit. The only casualties of this opening volley were two of the patrol's horses. Wilson immediately ordered his men to fall back, first to an antheap, then to a thick wood. Three of them were wounded during this retreat, but none fatally.
Hearing the shots from the northern side of the river, Forbes uneasily moved towards the southern bank, intending to cross and help Wilson. However, Forbes's fears of an ambush proved to be well-founded; at an opportune moment, the Matabele in the scrub opened fire, catching the column in the open. The ambushers' shots were initially wild and inaccurate, but they soon began to focus their fire on the exposed Maxim guns and horses, forcing the troopers to retreat to cover. Five Company soldiers were injured. The resulting skirmish lasted about an hour, by which time the Shangani had been severely swollen by heavy rains upstream, causing it to flood.
Meanwhile, Wilson marched his officers and men back towards the river, hoping to reunite with Forbes. They moved on for about 1 mile (1.6 km), but soon noticed that a line of Matabele warriors was blocking their way to the river. Wilson refused to sacrifice his wounded by attempting to break through. In an act of desperation, he instead sent three of his men—American scouts Frederick Russell Burnham and Pearl "Pete" Ingram, and Australian Trooper William Gooding—to charge through the Matabele line, cross the river and bring reinforcements back to help, while he, Borrow and the rest made a last stand. Burnham, Ingram and Gooding broke through while the Matabele closed in on the surrounded patrol from a distance, and began to fire on it from cover, killing several of its men. After a while, Mjaan ordered his men to charge forward and finish them off, but the Matabele soon fell back, having taken about 40 fatalities.
Burnham, Ingram and Gooding reached the Shangani about 08:00, but quickly saw that the water had risen far too high for Forbes to provide any assistance. Realising the futility of turning back to Wilson without help, they decided to rejoin Forbes anyway, and to that end traversed the swollen river with considerable difficulty. They then rode to where the battle on the southern side was still going on. On reaching the main column shaken and out of breath, Burnham leapt from his horse and ran to Forbes: "I think I may say that we are the sole survivors of that party," he quietly confided, before loading his rifle and joining the skirmish.
WILSON'S LAST STAND
We were fighting men of men, whose fathers were men before them. They fought and died together. Those who could have saved themselves chose to stay and remain and die with their brothers. Do not forget this. You did not think the white men were as brave as the Matabele: but now you must see that they are men indeed, to whom you are but timid girls.
When all was over, Matabele inDuna Mjaan told his men to respect the fallen patrol
What happened to the Shangani Patrol after this point is known only from Matabele sources. According to these accounts, the warriors offered the remaining whites their lives if they surrendered, but Wilson's men refused to give up. They used their dead horses for cover, and killed more than ten times their own number (about 500, Mjaan estimated), but were steadily whittled down as the overwhelming Matabele force closed in from all sides. The Company soldiers continued fighting even when grievously wounded, to the astonishment of the Matabele, who thought the whites must be bewitched: "These are not men but magicians," said one Matabele inDuna
Late in the afternoon, after hours of fighting, Wilson's men ran out of ammunition, and reacted to this by rising to their feet, shaking each other's hands and singing a song, possibly "God Save the Queen". The Matabele downed their own rifles and ended the battle charging with assegai spears. Some of the whites allegedly used their last bullets to commit suicide. According to an eyewitness, "the white inDuna" (Wilson) was the last to die, standing motionless before the Matabele with blood streaming from wounds all over his body. After a few moments of hesitation, a young warrior ran forward and killed him with his assegai. The Matabele usually mutilated the bodies of their foes after a victory, but on this occasion they did not: "The white men died so bravely we would not treat them as we do the cowardly Mashonas and others," an inDuna explained. At Mjaan's orders, the bodies of the patrol were left untouched, though the whites' clothes and two of their facial skins were collected the next morning to serve as proof to Lobengula of the battle's outcome. "I had two sons killed that day," Ingubo warrior M'Kotchwana later said, "and my brother was shot in the stomach. The amakiwa [whites] were brave men; they were warriors."
AFTERMATH
After the battle on the southern side of the Shangani was over, Forbes and his column conducted a cursory search for survivors from Wilson's party, but, unable to cross the river, could see nothing to tell them what had happened. Guessing (correctly) that all Company men beyond the river had been killed, they turned and trekked back to Bulawayo in miserable fashion, their supplies all but gone and the Matabele impeding their progress at every turn.
... No news from Wilson's party—Forbes in disgrace—Raaff practically running the show ...
Extract from the journal of a soldier serving in the column during its retreat.
Matabele raiding parties attacked the retreating column six times during its two-week journey back to Bulawayo. In pouring rain, the dishevelled men were soon mostly on foot, existing off horse meat and wearing makeshift shoes made from ammunition wallets. Forbes felt so humiliated by the events that he retreated from command in all but name, surrendering de facto control to Commandant Raaff. In leading the column back to Bulawayo, Raaff repeatedly drew on his experience from the Anglo-Zulu War to ensure the survival of the haggard men. He avoided several Matabele ambushes, and at one point set up a convincing decoy camp that the Matabele fired on for half a day, wasting much of their ammunition.
On the column's inglorious return to Bulawayo on 18 December 1893, Forbes was received in muted disgrace. The officers and men stood on parade for Cecil Rhodes, and the Company chief passed the major without a word. Raaff, on the other hand, was publicly commended by Rhodes, and thanked for ensuring the column's safe return.
Meanwhile, Lobengula moved to the north-east, now well out of the Company's reach for the foreseeable future. However, his sickness, which turned out to be smallpox, sharply intensified and eventually killed him on 22 or 23 January 1894. With the king dead, Mjaan, the most senior of the izinDuna, took command of the Matabele. Mjaan was an old man, and his only son had been killed in the war. He wished to make peace. In late February 1894, he convened an indaba at which he and his contemporaries met with James Dawson, a trader known to them for many years, who offered the olive branch on behalf of the Company. The izinDuna unanimously accepted. They also told the trader what had happened to the Shangani Patrol, and led him to the battle site to survey it, as well as to examine and identify the largely skeletonised bodies of the soldiers, which still lay where they had fallen. Dawson was the first non-Matabele to learn of the last stand.
CULTURAL IMPACT, BURIAL & MEMORIAL
News of the patrol's fate was quickly relayed from Rhodesia to South Africa, and then on to the rest of the British Empire and the world. In England, a patriotic play overtly influenced by the incident, Cheer, Boys, Cheer!, was written by Augustus Harris, Cecil Raleigh and Henry Hamilton, and staged at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, starting in September 1895. The show tells the story of a young colonial army officer in South Africa and Rhodesia, culminating in the third act with a fictionalised account of the First Matabele War. This itself climaxes with a scene strongly reminiscent of Wilson's last stand. The production ran for nearly six months in London, and then toured the British provinces for more than two years, reportedly drawing large crowds. According to historian Neil Parsons, it contributed to the patrol "fast gain[ing] mythological status".
In historical terms, the Shangani Patrol subsequently became an integral part of Rhodesian identity, with Wilson and Borrow in particular woven into the national tapestry as heroic figures symbolising duty in the face of insuperable odds. Their last stand together became a kind of national myth, as Lewis Gann writes, "a glorious memory, [Rhodesia's] own equivalent of the bloody Alamo massacre and Custer's Last Stand in the American West". In 1895, 4 December was declared "Shangani Day", an annual Rhodesian public holiday which endured until 1920, when it was folded into Occupation Day, a national non-work day which commemorated several early colonial events together. Shangani Day remained part of the national calendar, however, and was still marked each year.
The remains of the patrol's members were buried on 14 August 1894, in the ruined city of Great Zimbabwe. Rhodes later wrote into his will that he wished to have the patrol re-interred alongside him at World's View, in the Matopos Hills, when he died; this was done in 1904, two years after Rhodes's death. Also according to Rhodes's wishes, a memorial to the Shangani Patrol was erected at World's View in July 1904, and dedicated by Bishop William Gaul of Mashonaland. The monument, called the Shangani Memorial, is an oblong, flat-topped structure, about 33 feet (10 m) tall and made from granite from a nearby kopje. It was designed by Herbert Baker, and based on the Pedestal of Agrippa at the Athens Acropolis. Each of the memorial's four sides bears a bronze panel by John Tweed, depicting members of the patrol in relief. The main inscription reads, "To Brave Men", with a smaller dedication given beneath: "Erected to the enduring memory of Allan Wilson and his Men who fell in fight against the Matabele on the Shangani River December 4th, 1893. There was no survivor".
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CONTROVERSY
LOBENGULAS'S BOX OF SOVEREIGNS
Soon following the end of the war, one of Lobengula's izinDuna told Dawson that just before Forbes's column had reached the Shangani, two Matabele messengers, Petchan and Sehuloholu, had been given a box of gold sovereigns by Lobengula, and instructed to intercept the column before it reached the river. They were to tell the whites that the king admitted defeat and offered this tribute, totalling about £1,000, on the condition that the column immediately turn back and cease harassing him. "Gold is the only thing that will stop the white men," Lobengula reportedly concluded. According to the inDuna, Petchan and Sehuloholu reached the column on 2 December 1893, the day before it reached the Shangani, and hid in the bush as it went by. They then caught up with it and gave the money and the message to two men in the rear guard.
Two 1842 gold sovereigns side by side, one displaying its obverse face, the other showing the reverse
Gold sovereigns bearing the likeness of Queen Victoria, minted in 1842
Dawson relayed this story to Bulawayo, where Company authorities made enquiries. No man who had been attached to the column corroborated the account. The Company thought it unlikely that a Matabele inDuna would simply invent a story such as this, however, and angrily speculated that if it were true, then negotiations with Lobengula might have been opened and the war ended before Wilson crossed the river, and the entire episode of the Shangani Patrol avoided (though, as historian Robert Cary writes, this surmision ignores the fact that Forbes had been ordered to capture Lobengula, not end the war). Lawyers appointed by the Company launched a formal investigation early in 1894.
Two officers' batmen, William Charles Daniel and James Wilson (no relation to Allan Wilson), soon became prime suspects, with Daniel arraigned as the senior instigator. They were accused of accepting the gold from Petchan and Sehuloholu, then keeping it for themselves and not passing on the message. Both men denied all charges. Neither Daniel nor Wilson had been members of the rear guard on 2 December, though either or both could have been there at some point during the day. No Matabele witness recognised either of them at the court in Bulawayo, where the case was heard by the Resident Magistrate and four assessors.
The evidence against the batmen was largely circumstantial: both had been seen to possess unusually large amounts of gold soon after the column's return, and both had since bought farming rights, paying cash. Daniel said he had won the money in his possession playing cards, while Wilson claimed to have brought his with him when he came to Rhodesia. Witnesses confirmed that there had been heavy gambling at Inyati camp, in which Daniel and Wilson had actively taken part, both possessing noticeable reserves in gold sovereigns. Sehuloholu claimed in his statement that both of the men he had met in the rear guard had fluently and perfectly spoken to him in Sindebele, but neither of the accused men knew the language, and the only member of the column who did at a fluent level was a medical orderly who had never been near the rear guard. The prosecutor proposed that Sehuloholu could be exaggerating the standard of Sindebele spoken by the men he had met, pointing out that most of the phrases quoted were actually relatively basic, and did not imply a profound understanding of the language.
Unable to definitely prove to the court where their money had come from, Daniel and Wilson were eventually found guilty, and sentenced to 14 years' hard labour. However, the maximum term the Magistrate could legally impose was three months, and in 1896 they were released at the order of the High Commissioner for Southern Africa, Sir Henry Brougham Loch. The High Commissioner's legal team subsequently quashed the convictions altogether, saying that the evidence against Daniel and Wilson was not sufficiently conclusive. The existence of Lobengula's box of sovereigns was never proven either way, and the incident never explained beyond doubt.
BURNHAM, INGRAM & GOODING
The version of events recorded by history is based on the accounts of Burnham, Ingram and Gooding, the Matabele present at the battle (particularly inDuna Mjaan), and the men of Forbes's column. Burnham, Ingram and Gooding's stories closely corroborate each other; their version of events was accepted as true by the Court of Inquiry at Bulawayo in December 1893. First-hand Matabele accounts such as Mjaan's, which were first recorded during 1894, appear to confirm the character of the break-out, saying that three of the white men they were fighting—including Burnham, whom several of them recognised—left during a lull in the battle, just after Wilson withdrew to his final position.
While all of the direct evidence given by eyewitnesses supports the findings of the Court of Inquiry, some historians and writers debate whether or not Burnham, Ingram and Gooding really were sent back by Wilson to fetch help, and suggest that they might have simply deserted when the battle got rough. Proponents of this desertion theory frequently portray Burnham as a man who embellished facts and coerced eyewitnesses into falsifying statements. The earliest recording of this claim of desertion is in a letter written in 1935 by John Coghlan, a cousin of Southern Rhodesia's first Prime Minister, Charles Coghlan. John Coghlan wrote to a friend, John Carruthers, on 14 December that year that "a very reliable man informed me that Wools-Sampson told him" that Gooding had confessed on his deathbed (in 1899) that he and the two Americans had not actually been despatched by Wilson, and had simply left on their own accord. This double hearsay confession, coming from an anonymous source, is not mentioned in Gooding's 1899 obituary, which instead recounts the events as generally recorded.
Peter Emmerson, a historian and supporter of the desertion theory, asks why Wilson would have sent three of his men away at such a precarious moment. J P Lott, another historian, comments that Wilson had sent runners to Forbes twice the previous night, when he was already at very close quarters with the Matabele and with far fewer men; he surmises that it would not be out of the ordinary for the major to do so again. In his evaluation John O'Reilly asks why Wilson sent Gooding back with the two Americans; surely Burnham and Ingram, both seasoned scouts, were enough? Gooding writes in his account that Wilson originally only asked Burnham to ride to Forbes, and that Captain Judd suggested to Wilson that Burnham should take two men with him. The Chief of Scouts requested Ingram, and Borrow asked Gooding to go too. Burnham also says that Borrow sent Gooding.
Burnham, Ingram and Gooding each received the British South Africa Company Medal for their service in the First Matabele War, and all three subsequently served in the Second Matabele War of 1896–97. All of the officers and troopers of Forbes' column reported high praise for Burnham's actions and none reported any doubts about his conduct even decades later. One member of the column, Trooper M E Weale, told the Rhodesia Herald on 22 December 1944 that once Commandant Raaff took over command it was greatly due to Burnham's good scouting that the column managed to get away: "I have always felt that the honours were equally divided between these two men, to whom we owed our lives on that occasion." Burnham proceeded to become a key figure for a number of commanding officers, including Frederick Carrington, Robert Baden-Powell, and Frederick Roberts. Carrington called him "the finest scout who ever scouted in Africa. He was my Chief of Scouts in '96 in Matabeleland and he was the eyes and ears of my force". The US President Theodore Roosevelt described him in 1901 as "a scout and a hunter of courage and ability, a man totally without fear, a sure shot, and a fighter ... the ideal scout." While fighting with the British Army in the Second Boer War, Burnham was adjudged to have shown exceptional heroism and was decorated with the Distinguished Service Order, then Britain's second highest military honour.
LEGACY
The last stand of the patrol was re-enacted once more at the 1899 Greater Britain Exhibition in London, during which scenes from the Matabele wars were re-created as part of a play called Savage South Africa: A Vivid, Realistic and Picturesque Representation of Life in the Wilds of Africa, culminating in "Major Wilson's Last Stand". The show featured Lobengula's son, Peter Lobengula—described as "Prince Lobengula, the redoubtable warrior chieftain". A short war film based the show's version of the final engagement, Major Wilson's Last Stand, was released by Levi, Jones & Company studios in 1899. A song about the events, "Shangani Patrol", was written by the Rhodesian singer-songwriter John Edmond, and first recorded by the South African singer Nick Taylor in 1966 as the B-side for another Edmond composition, "The U.D.I. Song", about Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. The patriotic record topped the Rhodesian hit parade for four weeks. A historical war film, also called Shangani Patrol, was filmed on location and released in 1970. The author Alexander Fullerton wrote a novel about the patrol's last stand, entitled The White Men Sang (1958).
Though much of the mythology surrounding the patrol and the site has dissipated in the national consciousness since the country's reconstitution as Zimbabwe in 1980, World's View endures as a tourist attraction to this day. A campaign in the 1990s to dismantle the monument and remove the graves met with strong opposition from both local residents and the Department of National Museums and Monuments, partly because of the income it brings from visitors, and partly out of respect for the site and the history surrounding it.
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MEN OF THE SHANGANI PATROL
Of the 43 men involved in Wilson's patrol (including the major himself), 37 were present when the battle began. This was reduced to 34 when Wilson ordered Burnham, Ingram and Gooding to break out. Those left behind were all killed in action. Though the men of the patrol came from several parts of the British Empire as well as other countries, most were born in Britain itself: Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Marshall Hole writes that of these "over a dozen were English Public School and University men". Wilson himself was originally Scottish, while Borrow was born in Cornwall. Also represented in the patrol were South Africa (several members, most prominently Captain William Judd), the United States (Burnham and Ingram), India (Troopers Dillon and Money), Canada (Scout Robert Bain), Australia (Gooding) and New Zealand (Trooper Frank Vogel). No member of the patrol was born in Rhodesia.
THE FALLEN
MAJOR ALLAN WILSON
(1856-1893) Scottish
Born 1856 in Glen Urquhart, Co. Ross, Scotland.
Son of Robert Wilson.
Educated: Kirkwall Grammar School, Orkney, and Milnes’ Institution, Fochabers, Co. Moray.
Emigrated to South Africa, 1878.
Came to Mashonaland in 1892.
CAPTAIN HENRY BORROW
(1865-1893) English
Commanded “B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
Born 1865, probably at Lanivet, Cornwall.
Son of Rev. H.J. Borrow.
Educated: Tavistock Grammar School and Sherborne.
Emigrated to South Africa, 1882.
Adjutant, Pioneer Column 1890.
CAPTAIN FREDERICK FITZGERALD
(d. 1893)
Commanded No. 1 Troop, Victoria Rangers.
Previously Sub. Inspector, B.S.A. Companys’ Police at Victoria.
CAPTAIN HARRY MOXON GREENFIELD
(1861-1893) English
Quartermaster, Victoria Rangers.
Born 1861, in Tavistock, Devon
Son of T.W. Greenfield.
Educated: Tavistock Grammar School and the Independent College, Taunton.
Emigrated to South Africa.
Came to Mashonaland 1891.
Married, with 2 children.
CAPTAIN WILLIAM JOSEPH JUDD
(d. 1893) South African
Commanded No. 4 Troop, Victoria Rangers.
Originally from Cape Colony.
Member of the Pioneer Column, 1890.
CAPTAIN ARGENT BLUNDELL KIRTON
(1857-1893) English
Officer-in-Charge of transport, Victoria Rangers.
Born 1857, in Portsmouth Hants.
Son of Major Edward B. Kirton.
Educated: St. Pauls’ Grammar School, Cosham.
Emigrated to South Africa 1873.
Married, with 3 children.
LIEUTENANT AREND HERMANUS HOFMEYR
(d. 1893) South African
No. 4 Troop, Victoria Rangers.
Son of a Clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church in Cape Colony.
LIEUTENANT GEORGE HUGHES
(d. 1893) Irish
No. 1 Troop, Victoria Rangers.
Son of an Irish Methodist Minister.
Educated: Methodist College, Belfast, and the Royal University.
Emigrated, first to America and later to South Africa.
Member of the Pioneer Column 1890
TROOP SARGEANT-MAJOR SIDNEY CHARLES HARDING
(1861-1893) English
Victoria Rangers.
Born 1861, in Kensington, London.
Son of Colonel Charles Harding.
Educated: Felsted School and St. Johns’ College, Cambridge.
Emigrated to South Africa.
Came to Mashonaland in 1893.
SERGEANT CLIFFORD BRADBURN
(1868-1893) English
Victoria Rangers.
Born 1868, in Moseley, Birmingham.
Son of Mr. Alfred Bradburn.
Educated: Queens’ College, Birmingham.
Emigrated to South Africa 1890.
Came to Mashonaland in 1893.
SERGEANT HAROLD ALEXANDER BROWN
(d. 1893) English
Victoria Rangers.
Eduated in Harrow and Exeter College, Oxford.
Travelled in Albania, Asia Minor, Egypt and Morocco.
Member of the Pioneer Column, 1890.
CORPORAL FREDERICK CROSSLEY COLQUHOUN
(1876-1893) Scottish
Victoria Rangers.
Born 1876 in Edinburgh.
Son of F.C. Colquhoun.
Educated: Bedford Modern School.
Emigrated to South Africa, 1887.
Member of Pioneer Column, 1890
CORPORAL HARRY GRAHAM KINLOCH
(1863-1893) English
“B” Troop Salisbury Horse.
Born 1863, in Norwood, Surrey.
Educated: Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge.
Came to Mashonaland about 1891.
TROOPER WILLIAM ABBOTT
(d. 1893) English
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
Born in Thornthwaite, Cumberland.
Son of Joseph Abbott of High Hill, Keswick.
Emigrated to South Africa 1889.
Came to Mashonaland about 1892.
TROOPER WILLIAM BATH
(1856-1893) English
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
Born 1856, in Middlesex.
Son of J. Bath.
Educated: Commercial Schools, Clapham.
Emigrated to South Africa 1884.
In business in Salisbury.
TROOPER WILLIAM HENRY BRITTON
(1870-1893) English
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
Born 1870, in Halstead Essex, where he was educated.
Emigrated to South Africa 1889 or 1890.
TROOPER EDWARD BROCK
(d. 1893)
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
TROOPER L DEWIS
(d. 1893)
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
TROOPER DENNIS MICHAEL CRONLY DILLON
(1868-1893) British India
Signaller, Victoria Rangers.
Born 1868, in Burdwan, India.
Son of J.C. Dillon, Postmaster general of the Punjab.
Educated: St. Edmunds’ College, Hertfordshire, and Stonyhurst College.
Emigrated to South Africa 1888.
Member of the Pioneer Column, 1890.
TROOPER HAROLD JOHN HELLET
(d. 1893)
Victoria Rangers.
TROOPER GEORGE SAWERS MACKENZIE
(1870-1893) English
“B” Troop Salisbury Horse.
Born in England about 1870.
Emigrated to South Africa 1892.
Came to Mashonaland with express intention of joining the Volunteers.
TROOPER MATTHEW MEIKLEJOHN
(d. 1893) South African
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
Originally from Cape Town.
TROOPER HAROLD DALTON WATSON MOORE MONEY
(1872-1893) British India
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
Born 1872, in Tulpigori, Bengal.
Son of Major General R.C. Money
Educated: Wellington College.
Emigrated to South Africa (as protégé of Capt. Borrow) in May, 1893.
TROOPER PERCY CRAMPTON NUNN
(1855-1893) English
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
Born 1855, in Bury St. Edmunds
Son of R. Nunn, Professor of Music.
Emigrated to South Africa, 1881.
TROOPER ALEXANDER HAY ROBERTSON
(d. 1893)
Victoria Rangers.
TROOPER JOHN (“Jack”) ROBERTSON
(1867-1893) Scottish
Victoria Rangers.
Born 1867, in Auchnayle, Pitlochry.
Son of John Robertson.
Emigrated to South Africa about 1887
TROOPER WILLIAM ALEXANDER THOMSON
(1871-1893) Scottish
“B” Troop,
Salisbury Horse.
Born 1871, in Aberdeen.
Educated: Elgin Academy.
Emigrated to South Africa, 1889.
Came to Mashonaland in 1891.
TROOPER HENRY ST. JOHN TUCK
(1868-1893) English
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
Born 1868.
Son of W.H. Tuck, M.A.
Educated: Lancing College, and in Germany.
Emigrated to South Africa in 1889.
Member of the Pioneer Column, 1890
TROOPER FRANK LEON VOGEL
(1870-1893) New Zealand
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
Born 1870, in Auckland, New Zealand.
Son of the Hon. Sir Julius Vogel K.C.M.G.
Educated: Charterhouse.
Came to Mashonaland in 1891.
TROOPER PHILIP WOUTER DE VOS
(d. 1893)
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
TROOPER HENRY GEORGE WATSON
(d. 1893)
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
TROOPER THOMAS COLCLOUGH WATSON
(1866-1893) British India
“B” Troop, Salisbury Horse.
Son of Colonel T.J. Watson.
Educated: Wellington College.
Emigrated to Mashonaland in 1891.
TROOPER EDWARD EARLE WELBY
(d. 1893)
Victoria Rangers.
In the afternoon of December 3, I was scouting ahead of the column with Colenbrander, when in a strip of bush we lit on two Matabele boys driving some cattle, one of whom we caught and brought in. He was a plucky boy, and when threatened he just looked us sullenly in the face. He turned out to be a sort of grandson or grand-nephew of Lobengula himself. He said the King's camp was just ahead, and the King himself near, with very few men, and these sick, and that he wanted to give himself up. He represented that the King had been back to this place that very day to get help because his wagons were stuck in a bog.
The column pushed on through the strip of bush, and there, near by, was the King's camp—quite deserted. We searched the huts, and in one lay a Maholi slave-boy, fast asleep. (The Maholis are the slaves of the Matabele.) We pulled him out, and were questioning him, when the other boy, the sulky Matabele caught his eye, and gave him a ferocious look, shouting across to him to take care what he told
The slave-boy agreed with the others that the King had only left this camp the day before; but as it was getting dark, Major Forbes decided to reconnoitre before going on with the column. I learnt of the decision to send forward Major Wilson and fifteen men on the best horses when I got my orders to accompany them, and, along with Bayne, to do their scouting. My horse was exhausted with the work he had done already; I told Major Forbes, and he at once gave me his. It was a young horse, rather skittish, but strong and fairly fresh by comparison.
Ingram, my fellow-scout, remained with the column, and so got some hours' rest; thanks to which he was able not only to do his part of tracking for the twenty men afterwards sent on to us through the bush at night, but also, when he and I got through after the smash, to do the long and dangerous ride down country to Bulawayo with the dispatches—a ride on which he was accompanied by Lynch.
So we set off along the wagon track, while the main body of the column went into laager. Close to the river the track turned and led downstream along the west bank. Two miles down was a drift' (they call a fordable dip a drift in South Africa), ' and here the track crossed the Shangani. We splashed through, and the first thing we scouts knew on the other side was that we were riding into the middle of a lot of Matabele among some scherms, or temporary shelters. There were men, and some women and children. The men were armed. We put a bold face on it, and gave out the usual announcement that we did not want to kill anybody, but must have the King.
The natives seemed surprised and undecided; presently, as Major Wilson and the rest of the patrol joined us, one of them volunteered to come along with us and guide us to the King. He was only just ahead, the man said. How many men were with him? we asked. The man put up his little finger—dividing it up, so. Five fingers mean an impi; part of the little finger, like that, should mean fifty to one hundred men. Wilson said to me, "Go on ahead, taking that man beside your saddle; cover him, fire if necessary, but don't you let him slip."
So we started off again at a trot, for the light was failing, the man running beside my horse, and I keeping a sharp eye on him. The track led through some thick bush. We passed several scherms. Five miles from the river we came to a long narrow vlei [a vlei is a shallow valley, generally with water in it], which lay across our path. It was now getting quite dark.
Coming out of the bush on the near edge of the vlei, before going down into it, I saw fires lit, and scherms and figures showing dark against the fires right along the opposite edge of the vlei. We skirted the vlei to our left, got round the end of it, and at once rode through a lot of scherms containing hundreds of people. As we went, Captain Napier shouted the message about the King wherever there was a big group of people. We passed scherm after scherm, and still more Matabele, more fires, and on we rode.
Instead of the natives having been scattering from the King, they had been gathering. But it was too late to turn. We were hard upon our prize, and it was understood among the Wilson patrol that they were going to bring the King in if man could do it. The natives were astonished: they thought the whole column was on them: men jumped up, and ran hither and thither, rifle in hand. We went on without stopping, and as we passed more and more men came running after us. Some of them were crowding on the rearmost men, so Wilson told off three fellows to "keep those niggers back." They turned, and kept the people in check. At last, nearly at the other end of the vlei, having passed five sets of scherms, we came upon what seemed to be the King's wagons, standing in a kind of enclosure, with a saddled white horse tethered by it. Just before this, in the crowd and hurry, my man slipped away, and I had to report to Wilson that I had lost him. Of course it would not have done to fire. One shot would have been the match in the powder magazine. We had ridden into the middle of the Matabele nation.
At this enclosure we halted and sang out again, making a special appeal to the King and those about him. No answer came. All was silence. A few drops of rain fell. Then it lightened, and by the flashes we could just see men getting ready to fire on us, and Napier shouted to Wilson, "Major, they are about to attack."
I at the same time saw them closing in on us rapidly from the right. The next thing to this fifth scherm was some thick bush; the order was given to get into that, and in a moment we were out of sight there. One minute after hearing us shout, the natives with the wagons must have been unable to see a sign of us. Just then it came on to rain heavily; the sky, already cloudy, got black as ink ; the night fell so dark that you could not see your hand before you.
We could not stay the night where we were, for we were so close that they would hear our horses' bits. So it was decided to work down into the vlei, creep along close to the other edge of it to the end we first came round, farthest from the King's camp, and there spend the night. This, like all the other moves, was taken after consultation with the officers, several of whom were experienced Kaffir campaigners. It was rough going; we were unable to see our way, now splashing through the little dongas that ran down into the belly of the vlei, now working round them, through bush and soft bottoms. At the far end, in a clump of thick bush, we dismounted, and Wilson sent off Captain Napier, with a man of his called Robinson, and the Victoria scout, Bayne, to go back along the wagon-track to the column, report how things stood, and bring the column on, with the Maxims, as sharp as possible. Wilson told Captain Napier to tell Forbes if the bush bothered the Maxim carriages to abandon them and put the guns on horses, but to bring the Maxims without fail. We all understood—and we thought the message was this—that if we were caught there at dawn without the Maxims we were done for. On the other hand was the chance of capturing the King and ending the campaign at a stroke.
The spot we had selected to stop in until the arrival of Forbes was a clump of heavy bush not far from the King's spoor—and yet so far from the Kaffir camps that they could not hear us if we kept quiet. We dismounted, and on counting it was found that three of the men were missing. They were Hofmeyer, Bradburn and Colquhoun. Somewhere in winding through the bush from the King's wagons to our present position these men were lost. Not a difficult thing, for we only spoke in whispers, and, save for the occasional click of a horse's hoof, we could pass within ten feet of each other and not be aware of it.
Wilson came to me and said, "Burnham, can you follow back along the vlei where we've just come?" I doubted it very much as it was black and raining; I had no coat, having been sent after the patrol immediately I came in from firing the King's huts, and although it was December, or midsummer south of the line, the rain chilled my fingers. Wilson said, " Come, I must have those men back." I told him I should need some one to lead my horse so as to feel the tracks made in the ground by our horses. He replied, "I will go with you. I want to see how you American fellows work."
Wilson was no bad hand at tracking himself, and I was put on my mettle at once. We began, and I was flurried at first, and did not seem to get on to it somehow ; but in a few minutes I picked up the spoor and hung to it. So we started off together, Wilson and I, in the dark. It was hard work, for one could see nothing; one had to feel for the traces with one's fingers. Creeping along, at last we stood close to the wagons, where the patrol had first retreated into the bush.
”If we only had the force here now," said Wilson, "we would soon finish."
But there was still no sign of the three men, so there was nothing for it but to shout. Retreating into the vlei in front of the King's camp, we stood calling and cooeying for them, long and low at first, then louder. Of course there was a great stir along the lines of the native scherms, for they did not know what to make of it. We heard afterwards that the natives were greatly alarmed as the white men seemed to be everywhere at once, and the indunas went about quieting the men, and saying " Do you think the white men are on you, children? Don't you know a wolf’s howl when you hear it?"
After calling for a bit, we heard an answering call away down the vlei, and the darkness favouring us, the lost men soon came up and we arrived at the clump of bushes where the patrol was stationed. We all lay down in the mud to rest, for we were tired out. It had left off raining, but it was a miserable night, and the hungry horses had been under saddle, some of them twenty hours, and were quite done. So we waited for the column.
During the night we could hear natives moving across into the bush which lay between us and the river. We heard the branches as they pushed through. After a while Wilson asked me if I could go a little way around our position and find out what the Kaffirs were doing. I always think he heard something, but he did not say so. I slipped out and on our right heard the swirl of boughs and the splash of feet. Circling round for a little time I came on more Kaffirs. I got so close to them I could touch them as they passed, but it was impossible to say how many there were, it was so dark. This I reported to Wilson. Raising his head on his hand he asked me a few questions, and made the remark that if the column failed to come up before daylight, "we are in a hard hole,” and told me to go out on the King's spoor and watch for Forbes, so that by no possibility should he pass us in the darkness.
It was now, I should judge, 1 A.M. on the 4th of December. I went, and for a long, long time I heard only the dropping of the rain from the leaves and now and then a dog barking in the scherms, but at last, just as it got grey in the east, I heard a noise, and placing my ear close to the ground, made it out to be the tramp of horses. I ran back to Wilson and said "The column is here."
We all led our horses out to the King's spoor. I saw the form of a man tracking. It was Ingram. I gave him a low whistle; he came up, and behind him rode—not the column, not the Maxims, but just twenty men under Captain Borrow. It was a terrible moment—" If we were caught there at dawn "—and already it was getting lighter every minute.
One of us asked "Where is the column?" to which the reply- was, "You see all there are of us." We answered, "Then you are only so many more men to die."
Wilson went aside with Borrow, and there was earnest talk for a few moments. Presently all the officers' horses' heads were together; and Captain Judd said in my hearing, "Well, this is the end." And Kurten said quite quietly, "We shall never get out of this."
Then Wilson put it to the officers whether we should try and break through the impis which were now forming up between us and the river, or whether we would go for the King and sell our lives in trying to get hold of him. The final decision was for this latter.
So we set off and walked along the vlei back to the King's wagons. It was quite light now and they saw us from the scherms all the way, but they just looked at us and we at them, and so we went along. We walked because the horses hadn't a canter in them, and there was no hurry anyway.
At the wagons we halted and shouted out again about not wanting to kill anyone. There was a pause, and then came shouts and a volley. Afterwards it was said that somebody answered, "If you don't want to kill, we do." My horse jumped away to the right at the volley, and took me almost into the arms of some natives who came running from that side. A big induna blazed at me, missed me, and then fumbled at his belt for another cartridge. It was not a proper bandolier he had on, and I saw him trying to pluck out the cartridge instead of easing it up from below with his finger. As I got my horse steady and threw my rifle down to cover him, he suddenly let the cartridge be and lifted an assegai. Waiting to make sure of my aim, just as his arm was poised I fired and hit him in the chest; he dropped. All happened in a moment. Then we retreated. Seeing two horses down, Wilson shouted to somebody to cut off the saddle pockets which carried extra ammunition.
Ingram picked up one of the dismounted men behind him, Captain Fitzgerald the other. The most ammunition anyone had, by the way, was a hundred and ten rounds. There was some very stiff fighting for a few minutes, the natives having the best of the position; indeed they might have wiped us out but for their stupid habit of firing on the run, as they charged. Wilson ordered us to retire down the vlei; some hundred yards further on we came to an ant-heap and took our second position on that, and held it for some time.
Wilson jumped on the top of the ant-heap and shouted—"Every man pick his nigger." There was no random firing, I would be covering a man when he dropped to somebody's rifle, and I had to choose another.
Now we had the best of the position. The Matabele came on furiously down the open. Soon we were firing at two hundred yards and less; and the turned-up shields began to lie pretty thick over the ground. It got too hot for them; they broke and took cover in the bush. We fired about twenty rounds per man at this ant-heap. Then the position was flanked by heavy reinforcements from among the timbers; several more horses were knocked out and we had to quit. We retreated in close order into the bush on the opposite side of the vlei—the other side from the scherms. We went slowly on account of the disabled men and horses.
There was a lull, and Wilson rode up to me and asked if I thought I could rush through to the main column. A scout on a good horse might succeed, of course, where the patrol as a whole would not stand a chance. It was a forlorn hope, but I thought it was only a question of here or there, and I said I'd try, asking for a man to be sent with me. A man called Gooding said he was willing to come, and I picked Ingram also because we had been through many adventures together, and I thought we might as well see this last one through together.
So we started, and we had not gone five hundred yards when we came upon the horn of an impi closing in from the river. We saw the leading men, and they saw us and fired. As they did so I curved my horse sharp to the left, and shouting to the others, “Now for it!" we thrust the horses through the bush at their best pace. A bullet whizzed past my eye, and leaves, cut by the firing, pattered down on us; but as usual the natives fired too high.
So we rode along, seeing men, and being fired at continually, but outstripping the enemy. The peculiar chant of an advancing impi, like a long, monotonous baying or growling, was loud in our ears, together with the noise they make drumming on their hide shields with the assegai—you must hear an army making those sounds to realise them. As soon as we got where the bush was thinner, we shook off the niggers who were pressing us, and, coining to a bit of hard ground, we turned on our tracks and hid in some thick bush. We did this more than once and stood quiet, listening to the noise they made beating about for us on all sides. Of course we knew that scores of them must have run gradually back upon the river to cut us off, so we doubled and waited, getting so near again to the patrol that once during the firing which we heard thickening back there, the spent bullets pattered around us. Those waiting moments were bad. We heard firing soon from the other side of the river too, and didn't know but that the column was being wiped out as well as the patrol.
At last, after no end of doubling and hiding and riding in a triple loop, and making use of every device known to a scout for destroying a spoor—it took us about three hours and a half to cover as many miles—we reached the river, and found it a yellow flood two hundred yards broad. In the way African rivers have, the stream, four feet across last night, had risen from the rain. We did not think our horses could swim it, utterly tired as they now were; but we were just playing the game through, so we decided to try. With their heads and ours barely above the water, swimming and drifting, we got across and crawled out on the other side. Then for the first time, I remember, the idea struck me that we might come through it after all, and with that the desire of life came passionately back upon me.
We topped the bank, and there, five hundred yards in front to the left, stood several hundred Matabele! They stared at us in utter surprise, wondering, I suppose, if we were the advance guard of some entirely new reinforcement. In desperation we walked our horses quietly along in front of them, paying no attention to them. We had gone some distance like this, and nobody followed behind, till at last one man took a shot at us; and with that a lot more of them began to blaze away. Almost at the same moment Ingram caught sight of horses only four or five hundred yards distant; so the column still existed—and there it was. We took the last gallop out of our horses then, and —well, in a few minutes I was falling out of the saddle, and saying to Forbes: "It's all over; we are the last of that party!" Forbes only said, "Well, tell nobody else till we are through with our own fight," and next minute we were just firing away along with the others, helping to beat off the attack on the column.
Shangani Patrol is the soundtrack to the 1970 film Shangani Patrol. It was released in 1970 and was performed by the RPM Studio Orchestra, composed and conducted by Mike Hankinson, and recorded in RPM Studios Johannesburg, South Africa, by Geoff Tucker. Conducted by the composer Michael Hankinson with a session orchestra. A notable member of this group of musicians was trumpeter Eddie Calvert - also known in England as "The man with the golden horn". Part of the proceeds from the sale of this album were donated to Brandwag Fund/Fond comforts for border troops. The film was based on the true story of the Shangani Patrol.
Major Wilson's Last Stand is an 1899 British silent short war film based upon the historical accounts of the Shangani Patrol. The film was adapted from Savage South Africa, a stage show depicting scenes from both the First Matabele War and the Second Matabele War which opened at the Empress Theatre, Earls Courte, on 8 May 1899. It was taken on the field by Joseph Rosenthal for the Warwick Trading Co., Ltd. Copies of this short film originally sold for £3.
The film was shown to audiences at the Olympic Theatre in London and at the Refined Concert Company in New Zealand.
"Major Wilson and his brave men are seen in laager in order to snatch a brief rest after a long forced march. They are suddenly awakened by the shouts of the savages, who surround them on all sides. The expected reinforcements alas arrived too late. The Major calls upon his men to show the enemy how a handful of British soldiers can play a losing game as well as a winning one. He bids them to stand shoulder to shoulder, and fight and die for their Queen. The horses are seen to fall, and from the rampart of dead horses, the heroic band fight to the last round of revolver ammunition. The Major, who is the last to fall, crawls to the top of the head of dead men, savages and horses, and makes every one of the few remaining cartridges find its mark until his life is cut short by the thrust of an assegai in the hands of a savage, who attacks him from behind. Before he falls however, he fires his last bullet into the fleeing carcass of the savage, who drops dead. The Major also expires, and death like silence prevails. The most awe-inspiring cinematograph picture ever produced."
Ndebele warriors—played by Zulu predominantly from the Colony of Natal.
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