Tuesday, 14 June 2016

War memorials

Last Saturday's DT carried a very striking picture of a war memorial on the Ncome River in Natal.

A circling of the wagons for a battle in 1838 in which a few hundred Trekkers held off a few thousand Zulus - some fifty years before the British version celebrated in the film 'Zulu' and now memorialised in a circle of bronze replica wagons.

I find it quite extraordinary that a few men armed with muzzle loading muskets could have held off so many, albeit only armed with short spears. That they could have defended such a big circle. But it is not clear that the circle is the right size as other images suggest something rather smaller. With gmaps at -28.105440, 30.540678 suggesting that the memorial, if not the battle, was a closed horseshoe around 100m across.

All in the context of the Trekker invasion of Natal and of sanguinary strife among the Zulus who lived there. Which all sounds very much like an early version of the invasion of the central plains of what became the USA.

It seems that the memorial is part of a clutch of tourist destinations in the area. All of which makes our fuss about the odd statue in Oxford seem rather silly.

Google could not find the image used by the DT, so I offer this one instead.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blood_River for the battle.

Reference 2: http://www.davidbatzofin.com/ for the picture.

Group search key: brb.

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