DUNDEE KZN: Battlefield guides go on the road to nowhere
Our next educational will be entitled 'Dominic's Frustration' and we'll visit 'his' sites so that he can finally give us his talks
The Battlefields Guides Association holds regular ‘educationals’ to many of the lesser-known battle sites, as the people who know where the sites are and what happened there are getting longer in the tooth and we’re attempting to indoctrinate the new generation with this knowledge before it’s lost forever.
This past weekend’s trip was to Ntombe Drift (March 12, 1879), with stops at Conference Hill and Bloedrivierpoort.
The trip kicked off at the Dundee Moth Shellhole on Friday night with a talk on ‘The Border War’ by Sean Friend. It wasn’t my war, so I found it very interesting, especially ‘Oom Willem se Pad’ (constructed so that incoming insurgents could be tracked when they crossed the sandy road).
Ingenious!
In my war, we put up a fenced and mined ‘cordon sanitaire’ instead, at huge expense. It didn’t work too well either – it wasn’t patrolled or lit properly and just provided the opposition with extra unearthed material to blow us up with! Sean gave us a detailed account of the “Porros” in Angola – I think he was surprised to find one in the audience.
Saturday dawned – a beautiful and sunny spring day unlike the cold and miserable weather a couple of days before. Apart from the local guys, we had a mix of guides – Dominic (Johnny English) and Chris from Jo’burg, Brandyne, Richard, Kevin and Neil (and his family) from Durban, Sean and Louis from Newcastle, Rex from Vryheid, and Peter from Babanango. Getting to Ntombe Drift was problematic for the lead guide (me). I haven’t been there for five years and at that time was distracted by a gangrenous leg, so I turned the convoy around one bridge too soon. We therefore took the alternative dirt road route to Luneberg to the sounds of ‘We’re on the Road to Nowhere’ by Talking Heads on the radio, compliments of Pierre.
After an impromptu talk by myself (Johann went AWOL at a critical moment) at the Filter and Larsen Memorial, which incidentally has a large chunk hacked out of it, we ended up at the tiny settlement of Luneberg. I have looked for the site of Fort Clery for many years. Laband and Thompson have it in the wrong place, but Norman tracked it down in the school grounds at Luneberg. Pam snuck into the church and set off the burglar alarm. The German cemetery is as pristine and spotless as ever – as are the graves of Captain David Moriarty and Surgeon Cobbin. Interestingly enough, although they died together, their dates of death on their tombstones differ – March 11 and 12, 1879.
Richard gave us a gratifyingly detailed account of the two men. Then it was on to the site of the Battle of Ntombe Drift itself. And this time, I remembered how to get there.
Ntombe Drift was a disaster for the British. The escort for a wagon train of supplies on the way to Fort Clery was caught on both sides of the flooded Ntombe River. Wet through, exhausted and ‘gatvol’, they failed to take the necessary precautions, laagering their position in a ‘V’ shape with the legs anchored on the banks of the swollen river. However, when the river subsided, it opened up a gap between the ‘legs’ and the riverbank, which allowed the Zulus to zap in and decimate the defenders.
Nearly 100 men of the 80th (Staffordshire) Regiment were killed.
Their commanding officer, Captain David Moriarty, was buried in the Luneberg cemetery, along with Surgeon Cobbin. The remainder are buried on the south bank of the river, in a rough mass grave. The main memorial is, sadly, overgrown and the cross has been smashed off.
After that, I managed to find the right road out, but we kind of ran out of time and ended up in a mealie field while we argued with Sean as to which premonitory was Conference Hill and why it had been given that name. It was Dominic’s turn next for an erudite talk on Blood River Poort, but unfortunately by then we had totally run out of time and we didn’t get a chance to visit the actual site.
Shame – Dominic didn’t get to do his talk at Fort Marshall on the last educational, and was again foiled this time around. Our next educational will be entitled ‘Dominic’s Frustration’ and we’ll visit ‘his’ sites so that he can finally give us his talks.
The day ended with an evening of stargazing with Paul Garner at Battlefields Lodge. I have heard Paul’s talk on the stars and how they received their names from the Bushmen and Greeks a number of times, but on each occasion, the clouds came out and nary a star was to be seen.
This time, we ‘phoned’ ahead and made the necessary arrangements so that the sky was incandescent with their display. Paul struggled along manfully, all the while attempting to dislodge an amphibian in his throat.
I’m always blown away by the immensity of it all – what we were looking at had already happened a couple of centuries ago, and it had taken the light that long to get to us. Paul regaled us with stories about Cancer the Crab and the Bushman ‘upside down’ giraffe, but I couldn’t see it.
I suspect that both Greeks and Bushmen were smoking a noxious weed at the time they named these stars.
We ended off with supper at Battlefields Lodge, the only excitement being the ‘near miss’ of getting Tony into the venue without dumping him and his wheelchair into the duck pond.
