The afternoon of 22 January 1879 was hot, even by the standards of the southern African summer. There were no signs, as the day wore on, of the great white thunder-clouds that often gather on the horizon at that time of year and bring fierce flurries of rain in the evenings. The sky was a burning blue, and the temperature rose steadily above 30°, with no more than a light breeze to ripple the tips of the long grass. The landscape was torpid, and at the foot of a distinctive rocky outcrop known as Isandlwana, a smear of white tents marking the position of a British military camp shimmered in the haze.
To a solitary British officer, Commandant Rupert Lonsdale, riding back towards the camp that afternoon, everything at Isandlwana seemed normal. Lonsdale had left the camp the day before with a reconnaissance party, but he was suffering from heatstroke and had secured permission to return to his tent. A sudden shot close-by failed to jolt him from his drowsiness and he was almost at the tents before it struck him that something was terribly wrong.
The first thing that woke me up and put me on the qui vive was a Zulu coming for me with a stabbing assegai, already red with blood, in his hand. I was awake enough then, and on the alert in a moment. I glanced around me and became instantly fully alive to what had taken place, and that the camp had been captured by the Zulus. I saw in a flash dead bodies of both soldiers and Zulus all over the camp …
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