Zulu

Yeah, I thought it was good as well

 

It is good, but it contains several historical errors.

 

What errors ? Explain.

 

Well, to begin with, the movie depicts LT Melville as being a company commander, which he was not. He was the battalion adjutant and commanded no troops, which explains why he was free to try and take the colors to safety with LT Coghill; a company officer would have had to stay with his men to the end. Vereker was not with the two officers trying to save the flag; he died fighting alongside COL Durnford, who did NOT die fighting from the back of a wagon; that was someone else, whose name has been lost to history. The British troops did not fight shoulder to shoulder at Isandlhwana; they were spread out along the perimeter of their position. Had they fought shoulder to shoulder, they might actually have won the battle, but by the time any of them could form up like that, it was always too little, too late. And in the first skirmish the British fought with the Zulus, there is a unit of lancers participating in the fighting; there were no regular British cavalry units in South Africa at all at that time, and certainly no lancers. Those units came in with the reinforcements rushed to SA after the disaster. That's all I can remember, for it's been awhile since I last saw the movie.

 

cool , that's good to know , they should get every detail right in a historical film , or any movie about any real life event.

 

The battle at Isandhlwana was not necessarily lost due to the troops being in a line rather than concentrated nor necessarily due to the shortage of ammunition alone. Some study was done into this on the battle site (in 2 tv doc's on bbc1 and ch4) after arguments about not enough ammo getting to the troops or that they could not access/open the ammo crates. Surveys of the site found enough evidence to show the ammo was getting to the line (old amo boxes and spent cases)and that the troops were able to open the cases.

There was a question then on the effectiveness of the Martini Henry. They did some tests with the armoury guys from the Imperial War Museum on the Martini Henry and reproduction ammo made to the same spec as the original. What they found was that the cartriged case walls were rather thin and as the rifle was fired the heat build up resulted in a number of the cartrdges splitting just forward of their base. This meant the base could be extracted but the forward half of the cartridge would be jammed in the breach.

If true it would have meant that a number of troops would have been in the position of having a useless rifle due to a batch of ammo being made with the cartridge walls to thin to cope with heat. To me, if this happened along with the troops being spread too thinly to concentrate their fire they would be in a no win situation as the result of that battle shows. I guess as in all battles no one singular cause but just the right circumstances combined.

 

Likely enough. What did the British in at Isandlwhana was that the Zulu left horn (IIRC) turned the British right flank; everything went downhill for the soldiers from that point on. It should be noted that whenever the British soldiers did manage to concentrate in large enough groups at that battle, they successfully held off the Zulus until their ammunition ran out.

 

My dad knows a lieutenant that owns the rifle used by a soldier in that big zulu battle where the british were outnumbered 40-1 , the british soldier in question won a victoria cross because of his actions at the battle.