RORKE'S DRIFT: FAKE NEWS 1879

  

Blog 3: Chard's Reports, Fake News 1879 and 1880

    As I mentioned in my previous Blog, the two reports written by Lieutenant Chard – the first dated 25^th January, 1879, just two days after the Zulus attacked Rorke’s Drift, and the second submitted to Queen Victoria on the 21^st February 1880 ‒ are the primary sources of every account of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift.

    As he is going to feature prominently in my analysis, it is perhaps appropriate I begin with a description of Lieutenant John Rouse Merriott Chard. In January 1879, Chard was 31 years of age, having been commissioned in the Royal Engineers in 1868 and subsequently posted to Bermuda and Malta to help build fortifications, both, I am assuming, pretty easy gigs. Prior to the battle at Rorke’s Drift, Chard had never seen active service and, hence, had never experienced the stress and confusion that invariably accompanies battle.

    In anticipation of the invasion of Zululand, Lord Chelmsford made a request to Horse Guards for more Royal Engineers to be sent to augment his army, Chard duly arriving in Durban on 5^th January, 1879, the first time he had set foot in Africa. Once disembarked he was ordered to Rorke’s Drift to supervise the maintenance and repair of the ponts use to ferry waggons and other heavy equipment across the Buffalo River. The weather was atrocious, the rain heavy and unrelenting and the tracks churned to mud, such difficult conditions that Chard and his team of sappers didn’t arrive at the Station until the morning of the 19^th January¹. Given that he was in command of just four sappers I’m guessing this was a pretty minor assignment, one in keeping with Chard’s reputation as something of a nonentity. By all accounts, Chard was an unremarkable officer: unprepossessing physically – he was only 5’ 3” or so tall – unprepossessing intellectually and unprepossessing in terms of energy.

    As luck would have it, when Major Spalding, officer commanding the depot at Rorke’s Drift, decided, on the afternoon of the 22^nd January to ride to Helpmekaar to rustle up promised reinforcements, the unprepossessing Chard was left in charge of the Station (Bromhead was commissioned in 1871 so was junior to Chard; Captain Stephenson, commanding the NNC contingent, being a colonial, didn’t count).

    It’s important to remember that Chard arrived on the 19^th, just three days before the Zulus attacked. It is also of note that he established himself and his tent at the ponts about a quarter of a mile distant from the commissariat buildings and ‒ if the way he conducted himself on the 22^nd is any indication – demonstrated little inclination either to socialise with or mess with his fellow officers (Regular officers and Royal Engineers seem to have had something of a strained relationship). The upshot was that he would have had little knowledge of those garrisoning the Station or of the configuration – external or internal – of the buildings that made up the Station.

    Nevertheless, despite these handicaps Chard is the man who, within two days of the end of the fighting, had conceived and written an account of the action which was engaging, lucid, replete in detail and wonderfully scribed. This account – the first Chard Report – was supposedly written by a man who had commanded his men for twelve hours as they fought against overwhelming odds, an ordeal which would undoubtedly have left him exhausted and punch-drunk; by a man who had no detailed knowledge of those serving under him; by a man who, by reputation, had no great talent for report writing; and, moreover, was written under the most trying of conditions (the rain was pouring down and there was nowhere to take shelter). These factors make the quality of the report astonishing … so astonishing that several commentators have refused to believe (rightly in my opinion) that Chard was the author of the report. Chard may have signed it but he sure as hell didn’t have much of a role in composing it.

    A number of writers have spent a great deal of effort trying to determine who was the real author of the report, citing Messrs Crealock (Lieutenant Colonel John North Crealock, Chelmsford’s assistant military secretary) and Cleary (Major Francis Clery, principle staff officer to Colonel Glyn, Commander of No.3 Column) as prime suspects.

    Adrian Greaves in ‘Rorke’s Drift’ contends that, ‘One of Chelmsford’s staff officers, Major Clery, had remained behind at Rorke’s Drift after Chelmsford and his staff departed on 24 January. It is possible, therefore that Clery was the author or the instigator of these two important ‘Chard’ and ‘Bromhead’ reports’.

    More of Bromhead’s report in a later Blog.

    Katie Stossel in ‘A Handful of Heroes’ used stylometry (the statistical examination of the use a writer makes of ‘non-contextual function words’) in an attempt to identify the writer of the reports. Unfortunately, as Ms Stossel advises; ‘… apart from a brief 312-word letter written in September 1879 to Sir John Stokes … it may surprise readers to learn that no usable authentic material written by Chard is known to exist’. Therefore, stylometry can neither confirm nor deny that Chard wrote the reports. In fact, all it can confirm is that while, ‘Both the first and second Chard Reports appear to be in the same hand’ that hand belonged to neither Francis Clery nor Colour Sergeant Bourne (another of the principal characters in the Rorke’s Drift drama though being a lowly NCO I doubt if Bourne’s contribution to the Chard Report extended much beyond identifying troopers of note).

    It should be noted that Katie Stossel’s contention is at odds with that of Ian Beckett in ‘Rorke’s Drift and Isandlwana’ wherein he states, ‘However, stylometric analysis suggests Chard wrote his original report and also that subsequently submitted to the Queen in February 1880’. Interestingly, he cites Katie Stossel as one of his references, though the conclusion he comes to is much different to hers.

    Whilst this speculation as to the Reports’ author is all very intriguing (I cover it in more detail in a later Blog), to my mind settling the question as to who penned the reports is a secondary consideration: it isn’t the ‘who’ which is important but the ‘why’ and the ‘what’.

    Of all the writers, it is Katie Stossel who comes closest to opining what I believe is the ‘why’.

‘It would clearly have been in Lord Chelmsford’s interest to produce such a report of the Rorke’s Drift success, a deterrent to those who might be seeking to humiliate him for the catastrophic defeat at Isandlwana earlier that day. It is possible that Chelmsford’s staff took the initiative in ensuring that Chard, the senior of the two junior officers at Rorke’s Drift, signed a suitably impressive report. The purpose of an early ‘top brass’ report about the ‘victory’ was two-fold. It would deter searching and embarrassing questions from lower ranks and at the same time would create a consensus that made it impossible for an alternative viewpoint or contradictory evidence to be put forward.’

    Ms Stossel goes on to say, ‘In effect, the report was a cover up.’

    I concur with Ms Stossel’s conclusions. The answer as to the ‘why’ is that the Chard Report (and the subsequent Bromhead Report) were written to deflect public opinion in England away from the disaster that was Isandlwana and, by doing so, save Chelmsford’s career and reputation. That the first of the two Chard Reports was written in haste (it’s dated 25^th January 1879, just two days after the fighting finished) is signalled by the Second Report written some months later having to correct certain gaffs and oversights (again, I considered these in more detail in a later Blog).

    I think it’s also important to note that the Chard Report was only one aspect of a misdirection strategy designed to save Chelmsford’s reputation and career. The first was to find a scapegoat, some poor sod to blame for the defeat at Isandlwana. The man selected was Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Durnford, the mercurial commander of No.2 Column and the officer in command when the Zulus descended on the camp at Isandlwana (for the best description of these shenanigans see Ron Lock’s and Peter Quantrill’s ‘Zulu Victory’). Every effort – some of them decidedly underhand – was made to convert the battle of Isandlwana from ‘Chelmsford’s Catastrophe’ into ‘Durnford’s Debacle’. As I describe in later Blogs there were other underhand slights perpetrated to save Chelmsford’s reputation these including the denial by Chelmsford that he received messages warning him of the Zulu attack on Isandlwana and the ‘remodelling’ of orders given.

    And a key component of these shenanigans was the first Chard Report. The aim of the report was, I believe, to puff the engagement with the Zulu at Rorke’s Drift, an engagement that has been described as little better than a ‘skirmish’. By doing this the ‘skirmish’ was elevated into a heroic struggle between a few gallant Redcoats and a horde of blood-crazed savages: just the sort of tale of Boys’ Own heroics needed to distract the attention of ‘the bald-headed man at the back of the Clapham omnibus’ away from the shambles that was Isandlwana. Put bluntly, the darkness of the ignominious defeat at Isandlwana was leavened by the radiance of the over-hyped victory at Rorke’s Drift. Rorke’s Drift became the British Army’s Thermopylae. In short, the Chard Reports are Fake News.

    Having dealt with the ‘why’, the question now arises as to ‘what’ was being faked … what was being covered up/over-embellished/fabricated? This, remarkably, is a question none of the many writers on the subject have chosen to ask. If we accept that Chard’s reports are nothing more than a well-executed pieces of propaganda, we are confronted by the ‘what’ … what was the reality of the events at Rorke’s Drift and how were the facts manipulated so that the story of the engagement better served the purpose of deflecting criticism from Chelmsford?  The uncovering of these ‘whats’ is the purpose of this Blog.

    Of course, doing this will inevitably result in the ruffling of feathers, this the reason, I suspect, why commentators – even those who doubt the authenticity of Chard’s Reports – have shied away from digging deep. The stories of the derring-do of those defending Rorke’s Drift are now so deeply ingrained in the national consciousness (largely thanks to the film ‘Zulu’) that any attempt to criticise the actions of the principals is decidedly infra dig.

    Infra dig it might be, but my studies have persuaded me that the story of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift described in Chard’s Reports has been mightily tweaked, these ‘tweaks’ I will discuss in depth in the Blogs which follow.

    Of course, fictionalising fact is one thing, having that fiction accepted as fact is quite another. In this the authors of the Reports were helped by the engagement being such a confused, muddled affair, the majority of the fighting taking place at night and shrouded in the smoke spewed by the Martini-Henrys and the burning hospital. Hardly one of the defenders would have had a full understanding of what actually happened (least of all Chard!). That the majority of the combatants were illiterate certainly helped in this regard.

    But relying on confusion and illiteracy wasn’t enough for our oh-so-careful conspirators. In order to prevent alternative accounts being written, all the paper and pens held in the Station mysteriously vanished (well, not all, enough of both were found to write the first Chard Report). Not only that but I’m certain efforts were made to persuade those who might have been inclined to tell a tale at odds with this refashioned reality that this wouldn’t be in their or the regiment’s best interest. This was undoubtedly achieved by appealing to an individual’s loyalty to the regiment and if this proved insufficient then they had to be ‘squared’, this done by the awarding of a copious number of medals: more Victoria Crosses/DCMs were awarded per capita than in any other engagement before or since. As these medals were accompanied by an annual gratuity of £10 ‒ equivalent to more than half of what a regular soldier might then expect to earn in a year ‒ they constituted a pecuniary as well as a meritable reward.

    Whilst on the subject of medals it is worth noting that all the officers at Rorke’s Drift – Chard, Bromhead and Surgeon Reynolds – received a Victoria Cross. Generally, officers were rewarded for their heroism by being made Honourable Members of the Order of the Bath but instead they were given the Victoria Cross. My suspicion is that this was done (at the specific instruction of Chelmsford) because awarding them a medal would have greater resonance with the British public.

     But it wasn’t only medals which were awarded to the officers. Both Chard and Bromhead were immediately promoted ‘Captain’ this later made up to ‘Brevet Major’ (‘brevet’ refers to a pro tem promotion – it comes without a pay rise ‒ to a higher rank often granted as a reward for valour in the field). This promotion to Major was later confirmed by the Duke of Cambridge, Commander in Chief of the British Army, Chard becoming the first Royal Engineer to skip the rank of Captain. Reynolds – the officer in charge of the hospital ‒ was promoted to the rank of Surgeon-Major, achieving this rank fourteen months in advance of his seniority, by-passing the claims of sixty-four other medical officers in the process. The Reverend George Smith was offered and accepted a commission as a regular army chaplain.

     All this smacks to me of ‘squaring’, ensuring all of those who might be inclined to voice an opinion at odds with the ‘facts’ included in the Chard Reports were dissuaded from doing so.

 CONTENTION ONE: The reports supposedly written by Chard were designed to distract attention away from the disaster that was Isandlwana and by doing so save Chelmsford’s reputation/career. As such they are primarily an exercise in propaganda and cannot be relied upon to give a true and fair description of the engagement.

    Terrific story though the one carried in Chard’s First Report was (and it caused a sensation when published in Britain in March 1879) having been written in haste it contained a number of inconsistencies (and quite a number of errors). These form the grist of what I’ll be writing about in later Blogs.

    Let’s make a start by looking at Chard’s sojourn to Isandlwana on the morning of the 22^nd January 1879 …

 ¹There are other opinions here. Adrian Greaves in ‘Rorke’s Drift’ says, ‘During the day preceding the invasion (10^th January, 1879), another officer arrived at Rorke’s Drift: he was 31-year-old Lieutenant John Rouse Merriott Chard of the Royal Engineers’. Greaves appears to have retreated from this position by the time he co-authored ‘Who’s Who in the Zulu War 1879’, adhering to the more widely accepted date of Chard’s arrival, 19^th January.